In late March, photos of tank-laden trains unearthed on Russian social media strongly suggested that Russia had finally begun reactivating some of its thousands of old T-54B tanks in deep storage for use in combat in Ukraine, due to massive losses of more modern T-72, T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks.
The T-54 entered production in the late 1940s, and has a crew of four—unlike Russia’s modern three-person tanks.
Photos in April showed the tanks had indeed arrived in Ukraine, without much in the way of visible upgrades such as add-on bricks of explosive reactive armor.
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Now, according to social media posts by Andrei Tarasenko, proprietor of tank-themed Russian-language website btvt.info, sources in the Russian military say that T-54s are indeed being deployed into combat—supposedly used not so much as tanks, but as armored artillery vehicles firing indirect shells at distant targets.
Read more: Popular Mechanics
