Where Are Ukraine’s M-55S Tanks?

The Ukrainian army’s 47th Assault Brigade has been at the very front of Ukraine’s long-anticipated 2023 counteroffensive. We know this because the 2,000-person brigade has lost a lot of vehicles, including as many as 18 of its 90 M-2 fighting vehicles and three of its six Leopard 2R breaching vehicles.

What it hasn’t lost, in the nearly three weeks since the counteroffensive began along three major axes in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts in southern Ukraine, is even a single M-55S tank that anyone can confirm.

Which might imply that the 47th Brigade’s tank battalion has been extraordinarily lucky. Much more likely, the brigade chose to hold the battalion in reserve.

The 47th Brigade is a special unit. It began last year as an all-volunteer battalion in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, then quadrupled in size to become a brigade. Equipped mostly with American and European weapons and trained to NATO standards, it’s one of the most Western of Ukraine’s brigades.

The 47th Brigade’s infantry ride in M-2s and Panthera armored trucks. Combined-arms doctrine says the four-person, 36-ton M-55Ss—old ex-Soviet T-55s with reasonably modern Israeli fire-controls and an accurate, British-made 105-millimeter gun—should lead the most dangerous assaults and support the infantry when they get into trouble.

That’s not what happened when the 47th Brigade rolled into action just south of Mala Tomachka on June 8. The ex-Slovenian M-55Ss were nowhere to be seen as the 47th’s M-2s and Leopard 2Rs instead teamed up with an adjacent brigade, the 33rd Mechanized, and joined that unit’s Leopard 2A6 tanks in a direct assault across a dense Russian minefeld.

It’s not hard to see why the 47th’s leaders may have preferred to combine their M-2s with the 33rd’s Leopard 2s. The 69-ton Leopard 2A6 with its cutting-edge optics and 120-millimeter gun is one of the best tanks in the world.

What the 33rd-47th battlegroup was attempting to do on June 8—a breach of layered defenses—was hard. The brigades went all in with their best equipment.

And failed. The assault faltered when Russian helicopters and artillery—not to mention all those mines—knocked out a Leopard 2A6, three Leopard 2Rs and more than a dozen M-2s. A rescue force riding in additional M-2s saved many of the crews, but there were fatalities. And the hardware losses stung. The U.S. government promptly pledged replacement M-2s, but they could take a while to arrive.

The M-55Ss with their thinner armor surely would have fared even worse than the M-2s and Leopards did. The latter for the most part protected their crews and passengers as the mines, shells and missiles exploded. The old Slovenian tanks might not have done the same.

On the other hand, the Mala Tomachka assault arguably was a waste of the Leopard 2A6’s best asset—its accurate, far-firing, 55-caliber gun. The Ukrainian army surely would’ve preferred to lose all 28 of its M-55Ss before it lost even one of its 21 Leopard 2A6s. Instead, nearly three weeks into the counteroffensive, it’s written off up to four of the modern Leopard 2A6s while the aged M-55Ss apparently continue to sit out the fighting.

It remains to be seen whether and when the 47th Brigade might finally commit its tank battalion. It’s no secret Kyiv is holding in reserve the bulk of its counteroffensive forces—waiting and hoping, apparently, for one of the lead brigades to open a major gap in Russian lines through which the reserve forces might roll.

Maybe the M-55Ss finally will appear when the rest of the counteroffensive corps also appears.