The Ukrainians have been drilling hard with their new missiles. Ukrainian commanders clearly are counting on the American anti-tank missiles, as well as locally-made ATGMs such as the Stugna-P and RK-3 Corsar, to help front-line troops blunt a Russian attack. Of all the forms of military assistance the Ukrainian government has sought from sympathetic countries, one initiative has been uniquely urgent and controversial-KievвЂ™s acquisition of thousands of American-made Javelin ATGMs. ThereвЂ™s no reason to expect that will change if and when Russia escalates the conflict.Д«ut itвЂ™s worth noting that officials in Kiev seem convinced that anti-tank guided missiles might play an outsize role in any future fighting. Still, the big guns so far have had a lot of luck finding and killing tanks in Ukraine. They survive enemy artillery by digging in or, better, being somewhere else when the shells rain down. ItвЂ™s relatively less burdensome to add enough steel or composite armor to the vehicleвЂ™s front arc to defeat direct-fire weapons such as tank guns or rocket-propelled grenades. Armoring a vehicle against a top-down strike by a heavy shell would impose a serious weight penalty. Tanks are uniquely vulnerable to artillery. Artillery, including rockets and mortars, accounted for most of the losses.

The Ukrainian army last year revealed that 440 of its tanks were destroyed or damaged in Donbas between April 2014 and June 2016.

So in a clash of two Soviet-style armies, what kills tanks? Unsurprisingly considering the doctrine at work, artillery is the biggest threat. No, what matters is the ability of each side to deploy adequate number of tanks for offense or defense, as well as the ability of those tanks to overcome the likeliest enemy countermeasures.

Tank battles