A new video recently surfaced on social media showing a Russian T-62 tank being hit head-on, confirming what military analysts have long suspected: these combat vehicles are not intended to be used by the Russian military, they were designed and manufactured.

The video shows how a Russian T-62M tank was hit by Ukrainian forces in a defensive position in a line of trenches built by the Russian military, which was used as static artillery thanks to its 115 mm gun.

The T-62M model entered service with the Soviet armed forces in the early 1980s, being a heavily modernized version of the older T-62, which began rolling off the assembly lines in 1961.

Among the improvements made to it were armor upgrades, which may explain why in this case the tank appears to have withstood a direct hit from the GMLRS missile used by the US HIMARS or the M270 launchers, which were extremely well received by Kiev from the UK.

However, the tank’s armor is modern by 1980s standards, and it is otherwise technologically outdated as a combat vehicle used on the modern battlefield.

Military analyst Chris Owen, since the end of last May, when the first images of T-62 tanks sent by Russia to the front appeared on social networks, explains that they are inferior in all parameters to more modern Russian/Soviet tanks.

In addition, sending the T-62 to the front is associated with significant logistical difficulties. The T-72, T-80 and T-90 all share a similar design with common parts and ammunition and a high degree of interoperability. The T-62 has a completely different origin, coming from the venerable T-55.

The Russian army also sent the “ancestor” of the T-62 tank to the front

Since then, military analysts have expressed caution that the Russian military may indeed use the T-62 tanks in offensive operations, given all these shortcomings. At the time, some speculated that these Soviet-made tanks could be used to bolster the defense capabilities of Russian fire units, given that the Russian military had lost more than 4,000 armored vehicles by May 25, 2022.

That speculation intensified this spring after a video surfaced on social media in March showing that Russia had begun sending in invasion troops, including T-54/55 tanks brought from warehouses in the Russian Far East.

“Even an outdated tank can be more useful than its absence, but we believe that the main disadvantages are the lack of a range finder and ballistic computers (not to mention a fire control system), primitive sights and (on the T-54) worse gun stabilization. of these samples,” said military analysts contacted by Radio Liberty, a channel that discovered the fact that the Russians had sent such combat vehicles to the front.

In its own analysis, published a day later, the Institute for the Study of War in the United States noted that one of the reasons why the Russian army might turn to ancient tanks would be its ability to provide defensive support to Russian infantry, in the conditions in which Ukraine was preparing before the offensive in order to liberate the lost territories.

Russians use “vintage” tanks to strengthen their defense lines

“It is not clear how effective these tanks will be against Ukrainian armored vehicles. Instead, they are extremely vulnerable to the numerous anti-tank systems that Ukraine has at its disposal, and not all of them are expensive,” the ISW said at the time, which did not rule out that the Russian army would try to use these tanks. in offensive maneuvers.

“Russian forces are likely to suffer more casualties using these old tanks in Ukraine. Deploying low-quality equipment to restore Russia’s ability to conduct mechanized maneuvers could lead to further degradation of Russian personnel in Ukraine,” American military analysts explained.

But the emergence of new video footage of a T-62M tank being rammed into a trench by Ukrainian forces and the lack of any evidence of their use in attacks confirms the initial assumptions of military analysts that these tanks are being used as stationary artillery pieces to reinforce defensive lines. By the way, a separate video that appeared on social media platforms late last month also indicates this:

The video, which appeared on social networks in June of this year, also recorded an attempt to attack Russian troops with such a tank: the Moscow military filled a T-62 or T-55 tank with explosives (it is not very clear in the pictures). and then tried to direct it from afar in the direction of the fortified point of the Ukrainian defenders.

But these are obviously not the offensive maneuvers that the tanks were expecting, and the attack was still stopped by the Ukrainian defenders, as a result of which the combat vehicle, converted by the Russians into a kind of kamikaze tank, exploded spectacularly.

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