Can NATO make the tank and mechanised warfare work again?
By Alexander With
The highly anticipated Ukrainian summer offensive of 2023 ended with pictures of burning Western-made tanks and a clear Ukrainian defeat. The Ukrainians, equipped with modern Western armour and having undergone Western training, were expected to punch through the lines and cut the Russian defences in two. I covered the lack of successful usage of tanks in this war in a previous post. The question in this article is whether the tank is dead, or whether NATO could overcome the problems seen in Ukraine.
That the tank still has a future on the battlefield has been argued by many. In a 2023 article named “The tank is dead – long live the tank”, a number of high-ranking officers from the US Army argue that since its inception, the tank has been instrumental in breaking the enemy’s cohesion and ability to fight. They argue that the failure of the tank in the war in Ukraine has more to do with the failure to conduct combined arms than with the tank itself.
Since that article, both the Ukrainians and the Russians have become somewhat better at combined arms. Rather than the long columns of unsupported tanks the Russians used in the beginning, they have now managed to create a degree of synergy between infantry, artillery, electronic warfare, drones and aircraft. Yet despite the increased ability to conduct combined arms, Russian tanks are at the time of writing mostly absent from the front lines.
In a more recent article from July 2025, the commander of the III US Armoured Corps argues that the recent failures of armour seen first in the Nagorno-Karabakh war and later in the war in Ukraine have been due to a mix of inability to conduct combined arms and the lack of supporting capacities to enable mechanised warfare. Mechanised warfare is still viable, but you need the skills and the enabling capacities to make it work – and in contrast to Russia, Ukraine and Armenia, the US have both.
This argument does have some merit. No one can deny that the US has means of making armour work that other powers can only dream of. Especially when it comes to air superiority, long-range fire support, intelligence and mobility, the US boasts an impressive arsenal that might create an operating environment more conducive for tank operations. It should also be remembered that a war between NATO and Russia would probably be more dynamic than the war in Ukraine. For an example, with a frontline stretching from the Black Sea to Murmansk, the troop density per square kilometre would be lower, thereby making armoured breakthroughs easier.
However, there is also a risk of hubris. During the American Civil War, the increase of firearms’ range and rate of fire made cavalry charges obsolete. Yet this lesson was not heeded by the European countries. Instead, they ascribed the lack of successful cavalry charges to American amateur leadership. As a result, most European powers would only realise the limitations of cavalry against modern firearms during the First World War.
Today, there are simply more things on the modern battlefield that can detect and destroy a tank for a fraction of its cost. Portable anti-tank weapons, precision-guided artillery, fast-deployable minefields and above all drones create a more lethal environment than what tanks have had to survive in before.
While it is probably true that the US could make the tank work, it is also true that employing the tank successfully is more difficult, takes better training and more supporting units than before. In a way, the American argument that the tank still works if only you are better at everything and have every possible enabling capacity is a testament to the vulnerability of the tank.
This raises some uncomfortable questions for everyone but the US Army and especially for small countries with limited resources. If employing the tank necessitates creating synergies between a lot of different capacities, there is a high barrier of entry for tank warfare. Can small countries compete, or do they have to find others means of fighting?
About the author:
Alexander With is commander (OF-3) in the Royal Danish Navy and military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College. His website is https://www.alexanderwith.dk