Russia’s T-90 Tank Is No ‘Wonder Weapon’ in Ukraine War

Key Points and Summary: The T-90 tank, a modernized version of the T-72, was once seen as a cornerstone of Russian armored power.

-However, the war in Ukraine has exposed its vulnerabilities, with over 3,000 armored vehicles lost by 2024.

-Western anti-tank weapons like the Javelin, along with drones, have rendered the T-90’s armor and active protection systems ineffective.

-Poor maintenance, degraded electronics, and reports of reactive armor filled with rubber or empty compartments further highlight its shortcomings.

-While the T-90 was designed for a different battlefield, the evolving nature of modern warfare has left it ill-suited for the challenges of today’s conflicts.

The T-90 Tank: From Soviet Strength to Battlefield Liability

When word began to leak in the early 1990s about a new Russian Main Battle Tank (MBT) designated T-90, there was much speculation about what it would look like and how it would be differentiated from the T-72 and T-80.

Some predicted it would look like one of the previously classified US intelligence projections for a “Future Soviet Tank” (FST).

When the original T-90A vehicle finally appeared, it was less of a revolutionary step in MBT design than had been expected. It was rated as a late 1980s modernization of the T-72B model but built on a different chassis plus other modifications that improved the vehicle’s mobility.

The turret was also re-designed, and there was a significant improvement in the fire control system. The initial 992 variant was also fitted with a Buran-PA gunner’s sight, incorporating image amplification algorithms to improve night vision.

Another upgrade, completed in 2004, had all the major sections – chassis, turret powerplant – upgraded and an improved version of the Buran sights. However, the vehicle did not have thermal vision modes for its sighting system.

The Tank For a Colony

The producer of the T-90 series, UralVagonZavod (UVZ), located in the city of Nizhni-Tagil in the Urals, suffered severe financial setbacks during the 1990s collapse of the Russian economy.

This complication accounts for the almost ten years between the introduction of the original models, which were produced only in small numbers, and the first major improvements being introduced not until 2004.

The diesel T-90-series came to be the dominant MBT for the Russian military over the turbine-engine powered T-80 made at the OmskTransMash (which has since fallen under UVZ’s ownership) because the higher speeds that can be achieved with the turbine engine were not the ideal fit for Russian battle planners.

Sitting with one of the senior engineering staff members at UVZ more than two decades ago at the Russian Expo Arms trade show near the plant in Nizhni-Tagil, the representative explained why the T-80 is not a practical addition on the battlefield.

“An armored formation includes a diverse set of vehicles besides the tank,” he said. 

“These are APCs, IFVs, jeep-like vehicles, etc.  So, this a collection of platforms that are essentially a ‘colony’ of vehicles.  Everyone in the colony has to move at the same speed – no one can run ahead or lag behind – so having a turbine-engine tank is a capability that except for maintenance problems does not add much in this scenario.  This makes the T-90 the more effective choice.”

T-90 Tank Performance in Ukraine

According to a report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), by the beginning of 2024, the Russian military had lost 8,800 vehicles in the war in Ukraine including more than 3,000 armored combat vehicles.

One of the leading causes for such high losses of the T-90 is that its armor and active protection systems have proven to be no match for western-design anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) like the US Javelin.

Other aspects of the Ukraine war—topography, the wide variety of other anti-tank weapons, and the emergence of cheap drones being capable of destroying MBTs that cost millions—have rendered the T-90 design of minimal utility in the conflict.

Other factors, such as poor maintenance and the replacement of foreign-made electronics for inferior Russian substitutes have degraded performance across the fleet.

Early in the Ukraine conflict, videos began to appear of Ukrainian soldiers inspecting Russian tanks that had either been captured or abandoned on the field of battle. Examining the vehicles, they would open the individual compartments for the reactive armor sections mounted externally on the vehicle.

What they found inside varied. Sometimes, they found sheet rubber, cardboard, sand, or newspaper—or the compartment was simply empty.  

“Look at this, they are all like this,” one of the two Ukrainians said in the video as he opens the reactive armor blocks one after the other and finding them filled with rubber quadrangles roughly the size and thickness of the average mousepad. “These would not protect against anything.”

This particular video was from 2022. The question now is how much further the quality of the vehicles being sent into the war has deteriorated since then.

T-90 Tank: A Story in Pictures 

T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

T-90M tank. Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot.

T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Russian T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Russian T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

T-90M. Image Credit: Vitaly M. Kuzmin.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson 

Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw and has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defence technology and weapon systems design.  Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.