Russia Upgrades More Of Its Old T-62 Tanks—Maybe Only On The Outside

More Russian T-62 tanks are showing up along the front line in Ukraine with add-on armor and other enhancements—modern sights and mine-clearing plows, for example.

A video that circulated on social media last week depicts a T-62 with explosive reactive armor blocks, an anti-drone cage and front-mounted mine-plows. The 60-year-old, but upgraded, tank reportedly belongs to one of the Russian brigades and regiments deployed around the ruins of Marinka in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The up-armored, mine-clearing T-62 showed up on social media just a few days after photos appeared online depicting one of the most upgraded T-62s. This variant of the four-person, 42-ton tank has reactive armor that technicians apparently borrowed from a modern T-90 tank, plus a modern-ish 1PN96MT-02 gunner’s sight for its 115-millimeter main gun.

If there’s a downside to these add-ons, it’s that the T-62s all apparently still have their original 620-horsepower diesel engines, which produce much less power than a modern tank engine produces. An improved T-62 also is a heavier and slower T-62.

It’s obvious why the Russian army in Ukraine is heaping armor and mine-clearing gear onto its aging T-62s, even at the cost of the tanks’ mobility. Every tank on the 600-mile front line in Ukraine, whether Russian or Ukrainian, is vulnerable to artillery strikes, drones and mines. Especially mines.

One open question is the tanks’ habitability. After losing a thousand of its best tanks in the first few months of its now-22-month wider war on Ukraine, and struggling to ramp up production of new tanks, the Kremlin frantically pulled out of storage hundreds of T-62s and speeded them to the front line in southern Ukraine.

In the fall of 2022, counterattacking Ukrainian brigades destroyed dozens of these un-upgraded T-62s, and captured dozens more. The Ukrainians converted some of the T-62s into engineering and infantry-support vehicles, but they also handed over some of the tanks to their own territorial brigades—roughly the equivalent of U.S. Army National Guard brigades—for use as tanks.

Eight months ago, Ukrainian Channel Five interviewed the territorial crew of one ex-Russian T-62. The tankers … didn’t love their aging vehicle. “The T-62 is generally an echo of World War II,” one crew member said.

The crew bemoaned the tank’s lack of modern radios. The driver was especially aghast at the cramped driver’s station. “It is very tight,” he said. Keenly aware of their old tanks’ shortcomings, the crew comically nicknamed it “Leopard 2”—a reference to the modern German-made tanks Ukraine has received from its foreign allies.

The decrepitude of a typical T-62 isn’t just a function of its age. It’s a function of its upkeep. And it’s not clear the latest reactivated T-62s have major internal improvements to go along with their mostly external improvements.

Now consider the roughly 200 1980s-vintage Leopard 1A5 tanks Ukraine’s allies have pledged to the war effort.

Yes, a 40-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5 is less old than any T-62 is. That doesn’t make a Leopard 1A5 new. But the Leopard 1A5s are comfortable for their four-person crews and, as a bonus, well-maintained by their European caretakers. The Leopard 1 with its 850-horsepower diesel engine “is made for driving,” one Danish tank instructor said.

A Leopard’s superior condition and ergonomics helps its crew to fight in the tank. More to the point, they help the crew fight day after day, week after week in difficult conditions. Wet, cold and muddy conditions, in particular.

The instant Russian T-62 crews faced serious opposition in southern Ukraine last year, many of them abandoned their vehicles. It’s an easy choice to flee a tank that’s cramped, uncomfortable, in bad repair and lacking in basic equipment such as modern radios.

Don’t expect Ukraine’s Leopard 1 crews to quit their tanks quite so easily. Yes, we already have observed a Ukrainian crew abandoning a Leopard 1 apparently belonging to the 44th Mechanized Brigade, fighting in eastern Ukraine. But that crew bailed out after the tank struck what might have been a mine, lost mobility then came under fire by artillery.

It’s true: the Leopard 1 despite its usually good condition does have at least one major flaw: scandalously thin armor that, at its best, is just half as thick as the best armor on a T-62.

To make their Leopard 1A5s survivable as well as habitable, the Ukrainians should do what the Russians have done with their latest batch of old T-62s—and prioritize the tanks for add-on reactive armor, anti-drone cages and mine-clearing gear.