Attacking With Tanks Is ‘Suicidal’ For the Russians As Drones Dominate

Tiny explosive drones have rendered large-scale armored assaults practically suicidal all along the 800-mile front line of Russia’s 35-month wider war on Ukraine. “Every single time” Russian regiments attempt a vehicle assault, “the result is zero,” one Russian blogger lamented in a missive translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.

But that doesn’t mean the Russians can’t advance. Indeed, they are advancing—especially south of the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast and along the edges of the 250-square-mile salient a strong Ukrainian force carved out of western Ukraine’s Kursk Oblast in August.

They advance by leaving their vehicles behind and marching into battle on foot. “Infantry, with the support of artillery and drones, slowly but surely take tree line after tree line,” the blogger noted.

The Russians are leaning toward a new infantry-first doctrine “partly [to] reduce equipment losses, but also due to a general inability to overcome prepared defenses covered by pervasive reconnaissance and strike [drones],” explained Michael Kofman, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C. Scattered infantry are harder to target than long lines of vehicles.

However, some Russian commanders keep trying with their tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and improvised combat vehicles including vans, cars and golf carts. But “no one reaches the objective, no troops are dismounted and the enemy isn’t shredded by the fire of autocannons,” the blogger complained.

The blogger sarcastically referred to the officers behind these “suicidal runs” as “geniuses.” In sending vehicles and their crews on pointless “banzai attacks” across the drone-patrolled no-man’s-land, the tank commanders gain nothing, lose everything and “provide uplifting content for the armed forces of Ukraine,” whose drones record the destruction of every Russian column.

The Russians’ shift to infantry assaults puts pressure on the Ukrainians to counter these assaults—with their own infantry. But a deepening shortage of trigger-pullers is one of the biggest problems inside the Ukrainian armed forces as the wider war grinds toward its fourth year.

Tatarigami, the founder of the Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight, blames the brass in Kyiv. “Ukraine’s leaders neglected to prepare for wartime mobilization, convinced large wars were a thing of the past,” Tatarigami wrote. “Tough recruitment decisions during the war were also delayed to balance public approval with the military’s increasing needs.”

Struggling to mobilize enough fresh infantry to make good losses while also forming new units, the Ukrainian military has gotten desperate—and begun poaching specialists from their support units and sending them to the front line. “Mortar crews, drivers or drone operators end up in the trenches,” Tatarigami reported. “This drains support units and sends untrained soldiers into combat.”

Ironically, the poaching of drone units in order to bolster infantry units—a band-aid approach to countering Russian infantry assaults—risks gutting the very forces that have compelled the Russians to attack mostly on foot. If Ukrainian commanders send too many drone operators to the front line to fight as infantry, they might inadvertently make it safer for Russian vehicles to attack again.