The first of potentially two or three hundred 70-year-old T-55 tanks that the Kremlin has been pulling out of long-term storage finally have arrived in Ukraine.
A photo that appeared online on Friday depicts a T-55 reportedly somewhere in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in southern Ukraine.
The photo confirms what some observers grimly predicted: the Kremlin is shipping T-55s to Ukraine without upgrading them. The tank in the photo has the same active infrared optics the T-55 had in the late 1950s.
And there’s no evidence the Russians have added blocks of explosive reactive armor in order to reinforce the T-55’s original—and thin—steel armor.
In other words, the T-55s really are 1950s technology. And hopelessly obsolete compared to even the oldest tank in the Ukrainian inventory.
The mismatch could have profound implications in the coming weeks and months, as Russia’s failed winter offensive peters out and Ukraine moves to seize the initiative with its own, long-planned offensive.
“The Ukrainians, with the infusion of Western aid, have improved the quality of their tanks and other vehicles,” Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army general, wrote in his newsletter. “The Russians, having lost much of their best kit in the first year of the war, are turning to much older tanks and armored vehicles drawn from Cold War stores.”
“This will have an impact on the battlefield,” Ryan pointed out.
Russian technicians began recovering T-55s from long-term storage at the 111th Central Tank Reserve Base in Khabarovsk, in southeastern Russia, in March.
It’s not hard to understand why. In the 14 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, the Russian army and its allies have lost nearly 2,000 tanks in Ukraine. That’s four times as many tanks as the Ukrainian army has lost.
Foreign sanctions meanwhile have deprived Russia’s two main tank factories of the high-tech components—optics and ball-bearings—they need to build more than a handful of new T-90M or T-72B3 tanks every month, or even to restore older T-72Bs, T-80Bs or T-62Ms.
The T-55, which first entered service with the Soviet army in 1958, is from a generation of armored vehicles before modern optics, autoloaders and multi-axis stabilization for their main guns, passive infrared optics and sophisticated computerized fire-controls.
A T-55 unlike a new T-72B3 or T-90M doesn’t need a lot of modern electronics in order to function. The Kremlin is reactivating T-55s because they’re the only tanks Russian industry currently can restore quickly and in large numbers.
There could be as many as 300 recoverable T-55s in storage in Russia. Enough to make good two or three months of Russian tank losses in Ukraine. That’s time the Uralvagonzavod and Omsktransmash tank factories could use to stockpile modern components and ramp up production of T-72B3s and T-90Ms.
“The T-55 in this sense is a resource-saver and an opportunity to buy time,” a Kremlin source told Volya Media.
Even so, it was reasonable to expect Russian industry to make some effort to upgrade the 40-ton, four-crew T-55 by adding a new, but fairly low-tech, 1PN96MT-02 day-night gunner’s sight as well as reactive armor to reinforce the tank’s standard steel armor, which is just 200 millimeters thick at its thickest point.
That’s not what has happened. The photo of that T-55 in Zaporizhzhia clearly shows the tank’s L-2G infrared spotlight. The spotlight, and any target it illuminates, is visible in the T-55 gunner’s active infrared sight out to a distance of several hundred yards.
The problem is, the spotlight also is visible to any enemy forces with infrared optics. “Night-vision devices can be used to detect the enemy’s use of infrared light,” the U.S. Army explained in the 1978 edition of its Field Manual 31-36.
A T-55 can’t fight at night without giving itself away. By contrast, every tank in the Ukrainian inventory—even the Ukrainians’ super-upgraded ex-Slovenian T-55—has passive image-intensification or infrared sights that don’t require a spotlight. All Ukrainian tanks can fight at night without giving themselves away.
It’s always possible the Russian army plans to use the T-55 as crude artillery rather than sending it close to the front to engage in direct combat. The Kremlin expects a Ukrainian counterattack in Zaporizhzhia and has constructed elaborate earthworks in order to defend against it. A few half-buried T-55s could bolster these fortifications.
Russian sources have denied this is the plan, however. And it’s worth noting how poorly the T-55’s D-10T 100-millimeter main gun functions at ranges beyond a few miles. The 54-caliber gun has a muzzle velocity of 3,300 feet per second—pretty good by World War II standards, but lackluster today.
And on a typical vehicle mount, the D-10T can elevate only as high as 18 degrees. That’s low compared to a purpose-built howitzer. The Soviet 2S1, for instance, elevates as high as 70 degrees. The low elevation obviously limits the D-10T’s reach while firing indirectly at targets beyond sight.
Another limitation is that a D-10T’s ammunition, like all modern tank ammo, is “fixed.” That is, it includes the warhead and charge in a single pre-made unit. In contrast to an artillery crew, a tank crew can’t add powder bags to the charge to boost its range.
All this is to say, the T-55 is worse than useless against a well-armed opponent. It’s almost certainly going to get a lot of Russian tankers killed without making much, or any, impact on the battlefield.
The aged tank is a nightmare for its crew. “Imagine you are the tank crew of an old Russian tank that is three to four times as old as you are,” Ryan wrote. “And imagine then you have been briefed that you will be coming up against the latest Western tanks.”
“Regardless of what the ludicrous Russian propaganda tells us,” Ryan added, “this will have a significant impact on Russian morale.”
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