Ukraine’s US-provided Bradley armored fighting vehicles are turning heads in tough battles against Russia
A Ukrainian soldier in a Bradley fighting vehicle, not far away from Avdiivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
In a snowy landscape near Stepove in eastern Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian armored vehicles went head-to-head in what appeared to be a mismatched fight.
In a video released by Ukraine’s defense ministry earlier this year, a Russian T-90 tank, once billed by President Vladimir Putin as the world’s best, faced off with two Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade Bradley armored vehicles.
The Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, supplied to Ukraine by the US, is primarily designed to carry infantry on assaults with the firepower to engage fortified positions and lighter armored vehicles, while leaving head-on confrontations with a top tank to the Abrams tanks it would normally fight alongside.
The Bradley is equipped with capabilities that allow it to engage an enemy tank should a fight arise, but its light armor makes it vulnerable. The Russian T-90 should have been more than a match for the Bradley, yet the American IFV came out on top. That battlefield win speaks to the strengths of the crew and the boldness to use the Bradley in tough battles without the critical support of more powerful main battle tanks.
In the video of the engagement, the Bradleys fire rounds repeatedly into the Russian T-90 with their 25 mm chain-driven autocannons, appearing to damage the tank’s control systems. The Russian tank’s turret starts spinning, and then the tank veers off course and crashes into a tree.
It’s an example of the crucial role the Bradley has played for Ukraine in the front-line battles against Russia, in which its versatility, speed, armor, and capable weapons have been key.
“It is a very versatile vehicle,” Gustav Gressel, a military analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told B-17, explaining that “a Bradley can both transport and engage any target on the battlefield.”
Adapting after a failed counteroffensive
The US gave Ukraine its first batch of more than 60 fighting vehicles in early 2023 in anticipation of its summer counteroffensive, but their success during that endeavor was limited.
Ukraine deployed the armored vehicles in groups carrying troops in assault attacks on Russia’s defensive lines, but Russia was able to hinder advances using mines and threaten massed armor with drones, artillery, and guided missiles.
Drone footage from June last year showed a large group of the destroyed Bradley fighting vehicles near Zaporizhzhia after they were deployed in a failed attack.
Jacob Parakilas, an analyst at RAND Corporation, told B-17 that in the Ukraine war, attacks using groups of vehicles or soldiers had proven disastrous because they could be more easily surveilled and attacked by drones — but Ukraine has adapted.
“The fact that neither side has established air superiority in Ukraine means that such concentrations (which the Russians have attempted more often than the Ukrainians) tend to become disasters, with numerous vehicles knocked out by artillery, airstrikes, drones, and infantry equipped with anti-tank missiles,” he said.
“As a result, there is a much greater emphasis in Ukrainian usage on vehicles operating individually and flexibly.”
In the wake of the failed counteroffensive last year, Ukraine started sending these vehicles out one or two at a time in more flexible roles, such as supporting ground troops, attacking enemy positions, or even evacuating civilians and injured troops in combat areas.
Beyond the Bradley’s speed and armaments, other beneficial capabilities include night vision, which enables it to be deployed in nighttime combat missions. Ukrainian troops have said the vehicle’s armor provides greater survivability than some Soviet designs, telling CNN in a September report that the Bradley was capable of withstanding some direct Russian hits.
Gressel, the European Council on Foreign Relations analyst, told B-17 the threat posed by drones close to Russian front lines had led to Bradleys operating alone in rapid action missions.
“So armored vehicles dash in, fulfill their combat mission, and then withdraw as fast as they can,” Gressel said.
But there have been other combat adaptations. Analysts and troops told The Washington Post in June that artillery shortages caused by the earlier US Congress aid block meant the vehicles were even being used to target buildings that would normally only be attacked from long range.
The Bradley has a proven record as a versatile weapon. Its American crews destroyed many Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles with its 25 mm cannon and TOW missiles during the 1991 Gulf War, and it later played a key role in the armored thrust into Baghdad in 2003.
Ukraine is also finding these capable weapons useful. In May, a Bradley immobilized a Russian MT-LB tracked armored vehicle in a clash near Adviikva, the scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting. Only weeks later, a Bradley took out two BTR-82 Russian armored troop carriers in the same region.
A Ukrainian military drone loaded with dummy grenades for target practice in April last year
It’s even adapted to modern threats in some cases. For instance, a video released by Ukraine’s defense ministry in June shows a Bradley even taking out a Russian drone using its guns.
In head-to-head battles with Russian tanks, the Bradley lacks the combat power of the heavily armed, heavily armored tanks, but its chain gun has a rapid rate of fire that can prove effective.
Gressel said that even if the Bradley “can’t penetrate a [Russian tank] with the autocannon, the autocannon immobilises the Russian tanks, and usually damages either their cannons and/or optics.”
Learning lessons from the war
The US is drawing lessons from the war in Ukraine and the way it’s using the Bradleys.
Parakilas, the RAND analyst, said the Pentagon was modifying the Bradley vehicles to better defend them against the drone and air attacks that proved devastating against the western-supplied armored vehicles in the summer of last year.
The US, he said, was integrating weapons that could “intercept incoming threats before they can strike the vehicle.”
Ukraine has received 300 Bradleys, of which they’ve lost at least 90, according to open-source trackers. The vehicles, which came in roughly 10 times the numbers as Abrams tanks, have proven tremendously valuable to Ukraine on the front line as all-purpose vehicles, even with the threats they face. And a big part of that goes back to usage.
“It’s pretty clear that the Ukrainians are using Bradleys as jacks of all trades and, given their high value and limited numbers, keeping them separate to prevent a single attack from destroying more than one at a time,” Parakilas said.
