Forbes: Russians could borrow from Azerbaijan’s experience

Russians could borrow from Azerbaijan’s experience in the war (Second Karabakh war), Forbes said in an analytical article on the Russian army, Report informs.

According to Forbes, in the monthlong territorial war between Armenia and Azerbaijan back in 2020, Azerbaijan deployed at least a company with a dozen T-55 tanks, apparently near the disputed district of Aghdam—and apparently as howitzers and newer T-72s handled direct assaults on Armenian positions.

“Those 70-year-old T-54 and T-55 tanks that the Russian army is pulling out of long-term storage, possibly in order to recondition them for front-line use in Ukraine, wouldn’t last long in a direct fight with the Ukrainian army’s own tanks.

But tank-on-tank combat might not be what the Russians have in mind for the 40-ton T-54/55s with their four crew, up to 800-horsepower engines and 100-millimeter rifled main guns.

There’s ample precedent for tanks-as-artillery in the Ukraine war and other conflicts. The Ukrainian army has compensated for a dearth of howitzers by drilling indirect-fire techniques into the three-person crews of its locally-made T-64 tanks. The Russian army lately has done the same—even with its best T-90s.

It’s important to remember that a tank in essence is a big gun on a rotating mount wrapped in armor and traveling on a tracked chassis. In the T-54/55’s case, the gun is a D-10T, a derivative of the D-10 anti-tank gun that entered service with the Soviet army in 1944,” Forbes said.