https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/08/05/it-seems-ukraine-is-struggling-to-form-tank-brigades/?sh=6ea1b4ff669a

This recent article by Forbes only touches on part of the problem facing the Ukraine and it Armor Units.

I am a former Heavy CAV M60A3 Tank Commander from the Cold War days. I trained to kill Soviet Armor in Europe. I do not claim to know it all but it does give me insight into these matters others do not have about these issues.

The real problem is addressed at the end of the article:

"Of course, it’s likely many tanks have sustained damage and await repair. Even so, Ukraine in theory has more tanks now than it did before the war.
But a tank without a trained crew is just a lump of metal and rubber. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Ukraine’s best soldiers have been killed or wounded since Russia attacked in late February. Their skills and experience aren’t easy to replace."

The major problem the Ukrainians are facing when it come to tanks is lack of EXPERIENCED CREWS.
People in the WEST think you can train a armored crewman in a few weeks and they are automatically combat ready to face down Russian Armor.
Folks, that is a deadly pipe dream.

First, these recently trained tankers are barely even familiar with their own tank enough to safely operate it without killing themselves or those around them. In a tank on tank engagement, they would be nothing but a easy target for multiple reasons:

1) There is something called "switchology".
What that means is the ability for a crewman to engage all the switches, buttons, and levers correctly without have to look or think. These things take time to develop. In combat you do not have the time to look away from your sights to find the switch/button you need to push to index the proper elevation change for each type of round. If you do not you either fire low, or high, depending on the round.
Both the gunner and commander have to learn and deal with these things. The less experience you have the longer it takes to fire. Time is everything in Armor combat.

2) Tankers with experience.
Experienced Ukrainian tankers that remain are spread thin throughout your armor units and are not around to train and share real world armor combat skills that are not taught, but only leaned with experience. Some are left commanding tanks themselves, which for many will mean they too have to take time to get used to the commanders position and all the new responsibilities he has. That cannot be done in a couple of weeks either. (Try learning how to override the turret to quickly lay your gunners sight on target just by eye alone from an open hatch. That takes time.)

The Tank Commander now has to learn to work with his own crew AND other tanks to survive. The new TC will need to learn what their own roles are tactically in various situations. That takes time.
Are there any experienced tank commanders around to teach that knowledge to new TC's? Not enough I am sure.

The last thing is the maintenance issue.
The Ukrainian army has very few Maintenance Support and Recovery vehicles left. Any damaged tanks they can find a way to recover mostly has to be sent to Poland to be worked on so it can return to combat. They no longer have the ability to fix broken down tanks in the field and thus those tanks are directly out of the fight when they could be fixed in a few hours if the proper field support was available.

These things are what REALLY matter right now for the Ukrainians.

There will never be a Ukrainian offensive of any real significance because of these issues and more. Let me explain why.

Think of a snowball thrown down a paved road on a hot day.
As it rolls and tumbles. pieces of it begin to melt and fall off leaving a trail behind as it disintegrates and slows because of the friction, heat, and tumbling. That is exactly what will happen to any large Ukrainian push. It will fall apart as it moves forward as pieces of it start to be killed or captured until it loses its momentum.
They have nothing to feed into the path created by the snowball to keep its force and momentum up.
It will eventually stall and collapse inward from the sides if anything, leaving what is left of the snowball trapped in enemy territory evaporating away.

My point is all of this adds up in Armored Warfare.
Our WESTERN military leaders are creating an alternate reality that just does not exist.

NATO/EU does not have enough Armor to deal with Russia, even if they dedicated every single armor asset, to the Ukraine right now.

We never really learned to go on the attack against Soviet forces.

It was always about defense.
Russian Mobile Battle/Tactical Groups were never really addressed because we assumed we would only fight long enough to get Russian armor units to deploy, thus stopping their momentum.
(That was basically our job as a CAV Tank Commander back then in NATO).
Why?
So we could use local tactical nuclear weapons against them as a "Demonstration of force".
(See image below)

We never kept up with the Russians in this type of peer-peer warfare because we relied on the sanity of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Proof- We have far less armor deployed in Europe then we had in the 80's.

In my opinion, currently our own Military Doctrine of being more deployable has simply made us ineffective about fighting a ground war with a peer, especially Russia.
St. Javelin and Javelina do not smite thy tanks with one mighty blow as they, who are in control, told us they would.
This is not just Ukraine Military doctrine on display, it is NATO/EU/USA/UK entire concept of war on display, and it is an epic fail.

Hopefully, we as a fighting force will be given the time to change and rethink our own doctrine of security, for our own nation's sake. We must face reality to do this, and our current "leadership" is incapable of it.
Why?

(Bonus Pic: My tank getting its power pack replaced in the field. I am the guy circled in red probably bitching about everyone just standing there.)