When adjusted for inflation, the military budget over those four years of war came to a staggering $4.1 trillion in 2020 dollars.Īlmost 80 years later, modern day military spending isn’t much of a far cry from World War II budgets. spent about 38% of its GDP on its military. In the final year of World War II, the U.S. Mapped: World’s Top 40 Largest Military Budgets defense official, Ukraine may now have “more tanks in the battlefield than the Russians do.” Oryx, a Dutch defense analysis website that has been tracking battlefield progress in Ukraine using open-source intelligence, estimates that 533 tanks, including several top-of-the-line T-90s, have been captured as of early 2023. Originally armed with upgraded Soviet-era T-64s, as well as donations of T-72s from Poland and Czechia, Ukraine’s tank forces have swelled thanks to captured military equipment left behind by fleeing Russian soldiers. Ukraineĭespite coming in at #13 with 1,890 tanks and initial predictions of a quick victory for Russian invaders, Ukrainian forces have successfully halted and then turned back their numerically superior foes. The country even began testing unmanned tanks, including the Type 59 in 2018 and lightweight Type 15 in 2019. The conflict has also injured or killed thousands of civilians, displaced millions, and upended the post-Cold War security architecture.īut thanks to a whopping $293 billion military budget, and significant industrial espionage, China’s defense industry is capable of producing military equipment at or near world-class standards, including tanks. 1,890).Īccording to a Pentagon official speaking in early November 2022, Russia has lost half of their tanks since their “special military operation” began on February 24, 2022. That’s why, on top of poor morale, inadequate logistics, and inflexible tactics, Russia has struggled to perform on the Ukrainian battlefield despite having more than six times the number of tanks (12,556 vs. On top of that, only one-quarter of those are considered modern tanks-T-72B3/B3M, T-80-BVM, and T-90A/M-that is, fitted with up-to-date fire control systems and sighting.

A 2021 Russian source estimated that their operational main battle fleet was closer to 2,600 tanks, made up of T-72s, T-80s, and T-90s, with another 400 T-72 variants used as range tanks. Of Russia’s nearly 13,000 active combat tanks, only a fraction are main battle tanks. But the headline number misses nuances in the composition of the Russian tank fleet.

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