That's a fairly tactical question rather than a strategic one. You're asking how we blow up shoddy tanks (I'm sure @Redleg has 53 ways our troops can do it with a banana peel).
The bigger question is how do we win the war? (Strategic)
I've been listening a fair bit to Peter Zeihan and he's as close to a fortune teller as they come, because he seems to predict every move in this chess match precisely while outlining the downstream impacts to various economies and manufacturing capabilities.
The punchline of his books, 3 hour interview on the JRE, and his website: Russia hasn't learned anything in the past 300 years. They throw bodies at the problem. They always throw bodies into trenches until they win or lose with minimal adaptation. Russia is going extinct, their population curve was such that Zeihan noted they had a five year window to do this war or forever be an Asian country with no European foothold. To defeat Russia, he states they have to lose 500,000 soldiers. At that point, they will no longer be capable of warfare. What's the tally right now? 150,000? 180,000?
Interestingly enough, Zeihan is very interested in population pyramids and points out that China is also going extinct as well which may lead to a "now or never" approach to land warfare at mass scale in the next decade.
I agree. Zeihan is one of the more thought provoking people of our generation.
When speaking of national power potential, he represents an interesting analytical philosophy which I think one could call mathematical determinism. For instance, when applied to the percentage of population available to be sacrificed in a military conflict, he essentially calculates what portion of the critical age brackets that are necessary to run an economy, maintain social order, etc. and the remainder are available for body bags. His analysis says Russia can afford to throw away half a million citizens.
I should note, this doesn't mean 500,000 dead Russians, but rather 500,000 casualties who can not return to combat. I think most credible analysts believe that figure of dead and gravely wounded is somewhere between 150-300 thousand right now - I personally think the number is around a quarter of a million.
There are other factors that can weigh into combat potential analysis. They would include the strategic position of both armies. He touches on the issue in the clip above. For instance, I have noted here several times that Ukraine has the advantage of "interior lines." This is a military term which means the curved nature of the front, with Ukraine holding the inside of the curve allows them to move reinforcements, supplies, mass for attacks, etc, far easier and quicker than the Russians who are on the outside of the curve. They can also do it by expending fewer logistics resources. A good historical example of the difficulties faced by the Russians is the Battle of Gettysburg where Federal Forces held interior lines along Cemetery Ridge allowing them to easily counter Longstreet's slow developing attacks over exterior lines on days two and three.
In modern ground warfare, driven by diesel fuel, exterior lines are a particularly difficult obstacle for the resupply of fuel and munitions. A T-72 tank has fuel capacity of 360 US gal (1200 liters). It burns that fuel at a rate of .9 gal per mile. Even when halted, the tank is usually idling because most systems will not work without engine power. Because of HIMARS missiles and their range, fuel must be trucked in tankers from railheads at least 50 miles from the front line. A Battalion Tactical Group burns approximately 10,000 gal a day - every day. As every Army major learns in staff college, the diesel requirement goes up dramatically as fuel necessary to move the tanker trucks themselves is added to the equation. The farther from the railhead the problem grows exponentially. Ask the Russians stuck in the convoy north or Kyiv early in the war.
Much of the southern portion of the front where Ukraine is staging its offensive operation is a very long way from rail heads in the Donetsk - hundreds of kilometers. As Zeihan so accurately points out, those tankers can not now seek that replenishment from the Crimea either.
The same logistics determinism affects ammunition, food and even potable water.
That then brings up the potential brittleness of the Russian Army which probably should be included in his mathematical analysis. Tired, hungry soldiers with limited ammunition and armor support will at best not fight with the same ferocity as better equipped and trained adversaries. At worst, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down as it did in 1917 - and do so before the 500k figure is reached.
As Napoleon astutely noticed, "In war the moral is to the physical as three to one." Russia is clearly degenerating in both. The question is whether or not the West has the will to stay the course. Clearly the Ukrainian people and armed forces have no doubts. I wish more of our politicians were worthy of them,
