NATO military exercises have convinced some that drones have made tanks obsolete. Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi, however, suggests that armored vehicles still have a role to play.
The lesson for NATO is not to abandon armored warfare, but to rethink how it fights. That is the conclusion Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko draws from Operation Vivaldi, the 3rd Army Corps’ counteroffensive near Lyman. In his view, the operation shows that tanks still have a place on a battlefield where many had already written them off.
Vivaldi is Ukraine’s counteroffensive aimed at thwarting Russian forces’ plans to encircle the cities in the Donetsk region’s fortified belt from the north and south. These include Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka. Since 2014, these cities have helped hold back the Russian advance and prevent the region from falling entirely under occupation.
Kovalenko’s statement challenges a view that has gained ground as drones have come to dominate the front lines: that the mass deployment of armored vehicles is obsolete and persists only through inertia.
The issue matters because recent NATO exercises have reinforced this view. In those drills, small Ukrainian drone teams repeatedly defeated the Alliance’s armored forces. Kovalenko says the Alliance now risks drawing the wrong conclusion from its own defeats.
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