Jan 11, 2026
Social Media Capture
Despite ongoing peace talks, Russia continues its large-scale offensive in an effort to seize key Ukrainian territory. Over the past year, these assaults have primarily consisted of waves of dismounted soldiers, sometimes employing motorcycles, ATVs, and even horses. Notably absent from these operations is Russia’s once-impressive fleet of tanks, which has largely been withheld from combat due to the threat posed by Ukrainian FPV and bomber drones. Russia has made several attempts to return armor to the battlefield, including fitting tanks with nets and improvised protective shells, but these efforts have had limited success. Without effective armored support, Russian infantry assaults are slower, more exposed, and far more vulnerable to Ukrainian fires, resulting in high casualties and limited gains. In response, recent statements from the Russian Ministry of Defense indicate that Russia is adopting a new tank tactic to bring armored vehicles back into combat operations.
Russia’s New Tank Tactic
The statement from the Russian Ministry stresses a desire to bring Russian tanks back into the fight through the employment of a new tactic. This tactic pairs two tanks with continuous drone support. One tank operates from a standoff position to deliver fire, while the second conducts a rapid forward maneuver toward the line of contact. Drones help coordinate movement and fires by providing target detection, fire correction, and battlefield awareness. The two tanks switch roles frequently to avoid becoming stationary targets, while still laying down a significant amount of fire against adversarial lines. This approach emphasizes desynchronizing enemy sensors and strike systems while pushing forward to achieve immediate, decisive penetration.
Social Media Capture
This tank deployment tactic differs sharply from how the Russian military has traditionally employed tanks on the battlefield. Soviet doctrine emphasizes combined maneuvers involving tanks and artillery. An assault typically begins with a heavy artillery barrage. Immediately afterward, a large mass of armored vehicles advances into the targeted area, now weakened by the bombardment. This concentration of tanks, coupled with mechanized infantry, is intended to overwhelm remaining defenders and secure the objective. Artillery then displaces forward, and the process repeats.
The new tactic deviates from this model and reflects the changing dynamics of the battlefield, where massed armored assaults are no longer viable. Large movements are quickly detected by reconnaissance drones and subsequently targeted. In the urban terrain where many of these units operate, natural bottlenecks are common, such that a single destroyed tank can block movement and bring an assault to a halt. Once immobilized, the remaining tanks become easy targets, as seen during a tank assault near Pokrovsk in early 2025.
Additionally, this tactic underscores the increasingly central role that drones now play in combat operations. While Russian forces have integrated drones into their tactics for over a decade, this approach effectively substitutes drones for traditional artillery functions. Although artillery remains important, this shift reflects a broader trend across the battlefield, where drones have become the leading cause of battlefield losses.
Issues With Russia’s New Tank Tactic
While this tactic represents a stark departure from Russia’s previous tank maneuvers, it does not fully address several broader challenges that have constrained Russian operations. First, although dispersed and mobile tanks are less susceptible to massed drone attacks, they remain vulnerable. Ukrainian drones are typically operated from outside of direct-fire range, limiting a tank’s ability to suppress the drone operators. Further, the firing tank becomes readily detectable through both acoustic and visual signatures. This vulnerability is likely to increase as drones incorporate more advanced sensing capabilities and automated detection algorithms.
Social Media Capture
This maneuver tactic also depends on reliable communication links between the two tanks and their supporting drones, as well as coordination with the infantry units they are intended to support. Ukrainian electronic warfare capabilities complicate this requirement by degrading, disrupting, or intermittently denying these communication links, reducing the effectiveness of coordination and increasing the risk of isolation.
Logistics present another significant challenge. Tanks require substantial quantities of diesel fuel to maneuver and sustain operations. Russia is currently struggling to provide water, food, and ammunition to frontline units, as resupply vehicles are frequently targeted by Ukrainian drones, particularly when operating close to the front. Reintroducing tanks into these operations will further strain logistics systems and increase the need for reliable, protected resupply under persistent drone surveillance and attack.
The Impact of This New Tank Tactic On The Battlefield
Despite these issues, this tactic is likely to provide Russia with short-term gains. Russia urgently needs armored vehicles on the battlefield if it hopes to achieve any substantial progress against a resilient Ukrainian defense. Across the 600-mile front, Russian gains have been limited despite heavy losses, as forces push to seize strategic hubs such as Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, Chasiv Yar, and Toretsk. While dismounted assaults have achieved limited penetration into Ukrainian lines, they generally lack the firepower required to hold captured positions. The new tank deployment tactic has the potential to provide this additional firepower, enabling dismounted troops to penetrate more deeply and retain control of seized terrain.
More broadly, given the current stalemate, this tactic introduces a disruption to the status quo that temporarily favors Russia. The renewed employment of tanks represents an aggressive reintroduction of a key weapons system that has been largely absent from the battlefield over the past year.
Social Media Capture
However, Ukraine will adapt quickly, as it has with previous changes in Russian tactics, returning the conflict to a stalemate. Drones will again play a central role in this response. Ukraine’s fleet of FPV and bomber drones is likely to incorporate enhanced sensing and targeting capabilities, focusing not only on tanks but also on their diesel resupply. Additionally, Ukrainian forces will likely increase the use of obstacles along Russian avenues of approach, including anti-tank mines, barriers, and ditches.
As a result, this new tactic may yield short-term gains but is unlikely to translate into lasting operational success. With the prospect of peace on the horizon, Russia may be less focused on long-term battlefield outcomes. Further, reintroducing tanks into combat may serve an additional purpose of attempting to restore Russia’s reputation as a producer of effective armored vehicles. That reputation has suffered significantly during the war, with several countries moving away from procuring Russian armor.
Russia’s new tank tactic reflects both adaptation to a drone-dominated battlefield and the limits of that adaptation. While it may temporarily improve Russian offensive capability, persistent vulnerabilities in sensing, communications, and logistics suggest that it will not decisively alter the balance of the war.
This new tactic will fail miserably. It requires well-trained soldiers on multiple levels of operation, which the mafia army does not have. But maybe we can see those coveted turret launches into low orbit again.
“Further, reintroducing tanks into combat may serve an additional purpose of attempting to restore Russia’s reputation as a producer of effective armored vehicles. That reputation has suffered significantly during the war, with several countries moving away from procuring Russian armor.”
That’s not going to happen. No one with any sense will procure turret-tossers anymore, unless they are nearly broke and can’t afford anything else. When the images and videos go around the world again, showing burning, exploding, and turret-tossing roach tanks, the ruskie tank reputation will remain where it currently is: dead.