0:00 The war in Ukraine has upended many long-standing realities of modern warfare. Weapon systems that dominated the battlefield for decades no longer have quite the same impact. New and emerging systems are gradually replacing them as the most effective means of combat. The shift is particularly striking in the case of that longstanding store of every military that can produce or procure them, the tank. In an era increasingly defined by autonomous systems, AI enabled targeting, pervasive surveillance, and precision strike warfare, the tank's reputation has taken a serious battering on the battlefields of Ukraine. In particular, the prodigious use of small, cheap, and highly maneuverable attack drones has rendered many of the benefits formerly provided by tanks largely
0:46 obsolete. But that's all about to change. The US has recently unveiled a new tank designed to overcome the challenges of today's battlefield and restore the tank's supremacy on the battlefields of the future, the Abrams M1 E3. So, here's the inside story on this latest US armored innovation and why every military on Earth is watching closely green with envy. The Abrams tank has of course been the main battle tank of the US military for several decades. Originally introduced into service in 1980, it's been constantly upgraded and modified over the years to keep pace with evolving technology and battlefield demands. The current iteration, the M1 A2 set V3, also designated M1 A2C,
1:34 started appearing in service around 2017. That variant along with the slightly older M1 A2 set V2 is currently undergoing the latest modernization program. The tanks are being fitted with trophy ready survivability integration, advanced turret stabilization, mounted family of computer systems, tablets, maps generation 2 protection architecture, and more. The program is slated to continue while development of the new M1 E3, which is intended to ultimately replace them, takes place. But make no mistake about it, the M1E3 is a major leap forward for this legendary tank. That's because the new iteration has been fundamentally redesigned to thrive on the battlefields of the future. More specifically, the
2:21 M1E3 is intended to reshape how heavy armored forces operate on battlefields increasingly dominated by loitering munitions, FPV attack drones, longrange precision fires, and persistent aerial surveillance. And that's why the world's militaries are watching development so closely. Everyone has been trying frantically to adapt to the new realities, but the M1 E3 appears to offer a workable solution. Now, it's one thing to hastily attach workarounds like cop cages, mind sweeping trolls, and drone signal jammers onto tanks post-prouction to improve their survivability against these new threats. But the M1 E3 is designed to integrate these kinds of ultramodern features from the ground up. For starters, it resolves one of the key learnings from the tank
3:07 war in Ukraine. Heavier doesn't always equal better. Heavier platforms certainly have their advantages. They can accommodate thicker armor packages and extensive modular add-ons like Tusk urban survival kits without compromising structural integrity. Those hefty add-ons offer significantly higher resistance against kinetic energy penetrators and chemical energy warheads in comparison to lighter designs. A weightier platform also means you can mount more powerful weaponry. The extra mass absorbs the immense recoil of these larger caliber guns more effectively, allowing for higher accuracy during rapid fire. And in dry, arid conditions, they reign supreme. But these benefits come with a massive trade-off, mobility. In the soft, muddy conditions of eastern
3:53 Ukraine, heavyweight tanks like the UK's Challenger have proven susceptible to getting bogged down easily. Tanks exceeding 70 tons also often can't cross civilian bridges in Europe or Asia without engineering support. With a high likelihood of future operations in Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific in mind, these factors greatly complicate logistics. So, as one of the heaviest main battle tanks in service, the M1 A2 set V3 just isn't that well suited to those regions. Their fully armed base weight is approximately 73.6 six short tons, but the actual weight often exceeds 74 tons with full urban survival kits and active protection systems installed. Some older versions could weigh as much as 80 tons after being
4:39 upgraded with modernized armor, sensors, and heavier weapons. The only other modern battle tanks in the same weight class are the British Challenger 3 and the Turkish Alai at 73 and 72 tons, respectively. Most modern Western tanks are a level down on the heaviness scale, falling into the 65 to 67 ton range. For example, Germany's latest iteration of its Leopard, the 2 A7 Plus, weighs around 67 tons, and the Israeli Macava MK4M weighs around 65 tons. In fact, in part due to innovations in armor technology, there's a clear trend towards even lighter weights in the next generation of modern battle tanks. The South Korean K2 Black Panther weighs in at around 55 tons. And the Chinese Type
5:25 99A weighs around 57 tons, the same as the forthcoming Frenchlair XLR. And the M1 E3 seems to have taken a page from their books. With an anticipated weight of around 60 tons, the M1 E3 should eliminate most of the mobility issues with previous ABS models. The 21 to 23% reduction in weight compared to the set V3 is expected to improve the M1 E3 strategic mobility, bridge crossing capability and deployment flexibility. That should make a world of difference in the Indo-Pacific theater where infrastructure limitations, maritime transport constraints, and disperse island operations remain major operational challenges. It'll also improve strategic mobility in Europe, allowing the tank to cross more bridges
6:12 in NATO territories and broadening the range of transportation options. Two more new features further enhance the M1 E3's mobility, a new hybrid powertrain and suspension. The new lightweight tracks are from American Rhin Metal, and the new hydronneumatic suspension system is understood to have come from Horseman Group. The US has tested this kind of suspension on Abrams tanks before, but has decided to take the plunge on the M1E3. You can probably understand why. A hydro pneumatic suspension system allows the hull of the tank to be raised and lowered in ways that can help improve survivability and offer other operational benefits. In addition to resolving the weight and mobility limitations of the set V3, the M1 E3
6:57 also solves another of the set V3's operational shortcomings, which puts frowns on the faces of both operational planners and the Pentagon accounts department alike. The set V3's gas turbine engine makes it somewhat of a gas guzzler. The M1E3 offers a solution that turns those frowns upside down. A new hybrid propulsion system. The new propulsion configuration includes a modified Caterpillar C13D inline six-cylinder engine rated at 1,100 horsepower paired with a Sappa ACT 1075 LP transmission that incorporates a 250 horsepower electric motor. This hybrid architecture is expected to extend operational range and lower thermal and acoustic signatures significantly.
7:43 Meanwhile, additional onboard electrical power provides the juice needed for future sensors, protection systems, directed energy technologies, and electronic warfare capabilities. That should ensure that the tank remains futurep proof as battlefield conditions inevitably continue evolving. The extra mobility and flexibility provided by the new system should be met with nods of approval from operations folk and the anticipated 40 to 50% fuel efficiency improvement should likewise be music to the department of war beam counters ears. This pragmatic yet cuttingedge system also meets the demands of current US army modernization priorities. The doctrine emphasizes reduced sustainment demand and improved battlefield endurance during large-scale combat
8:29 operations. Where fuel convoys are lowhanging fruit for enemy drones and precision strikes. The M1 E3's reduced fuel requirements combined with its extra mobility and flexibility fit the Ethos snugly. Now, you might be thinking that the reduced weight and more complex propulsion and power system probably mean compromises elsewhere, particularly in the amount of firepower and protection the M1 E3 can provide and possibly the crew configuration. Well, think again. The M1 E3 doesn't compromise on firepower protection and crew ergonomics. It expands on them. One of the most striking change from previous Abrams variants is the introduction of an automated turret and auto loader. The main gun appears to be the same modernized 120 mm M256 smooth
9:16 boore gun installed in the set V3, another more recent Abrams variant. It's likely to be paired with a coaxial machine gun. Interestingly, the main turret housing the M256 is supplemented by a smaller secondary turret mounted on its roof. This secondary turret carries a 30mm Northrup Grman M230 LF cannon chambered for 30 rounds of 113 mm ammunition. So in effect, the M1E3 has two turrets. What that means is that while the main gun targets typical tank targets buildings armor heavy equipment, and so on, the 30 mm gun can take care of incoming attacks from those pesky drones. But those are far from the only capabilities the M1 E3 is likely to ultimately field. The early prototype
10:03 presented at the Detroit Motor Show in January featured a Leonardo DRS stabilized sight system, a mix of electrooptical and infrared cameras along with a remote weapon station or RWS from EOS on top of the turret. The RWS was armed with a 40mm automatic grenade launcher, a 7.62x 62x 51 mm machine gun and a Javelin anti-tank guided missile. The M1 E3's complete armament package could still expand, including the addition of launchers for loitering munitions. Indeed, in a more recent rendering provided by the US Army, there's a structure visible in a basket behind the turret bustel that defense analyst Martin Chsky speculates may be a container for an unmanned aerial vehicle intended for reconnaissance. So, as you can see on
10:51 the Military Show, we don't just blandly regurgitate the same headlines and stories as everyone else. We bring you the most important stories of the moment, packed with the data and detail you need to understand exactly what's going on and why it matters. So, subscribe to the channel so that you always have your finger right on the pulse. Concerning defensive armorament, the army has also made a dramatic switch compared to the set V3. In particular, the active protection system or APS. APS is a relatively innovative and significant improvement compared to earlier tank defense technologies like explosive reactive armor or ERRA. This armor stopped anti-tank rockets by detonating charges on a tank's hull, but often near infantry standing near the vehicle. More importantly, tanks are
11:38 more endangered than ever by smart weapons such as laserg guided ATGMs, which APS is designed to counter. The set V3 is equipped with the Israeli Raphael ADS Trophy HV system, while it's expected that the M1E3 will use the XM251 Iron Fist. Both are originally Israeli systems. The former manufactured by Raphael and the latter by Elbit Systems, but the XM251 is actually the Americanized version of Elbit's original M251. The XM251 is already in service on the M2 A4E1 variant of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. It's also expected to be integrated onto 8x8 Striker wheeled light armored vehicles and the future replacement for the Bradley family
12:25 tentively designated the XM30. So it would be no surprise to learn that the Iron Fist is to be installed on further lighter armored vehicles. But on a heavyweight main battle tank, that's a first for the US Army. And it's a change that underscores the new realities in which tanks must survive and thrive. That's because the two systems represent two distinct philosophies in APS, namely aerial denial via fragmentation versus precision interception via projectile. But more plainly, they offer very different kill methods. The Trophy HV utilizes a shotgun-like blast of explosively formed penetrators or metal balls scattered in the path of the incoming threat. This created a wide kill zone roughly 33 to 50 ft from the vehicle, effectively shredding the
13:11 warhead. In contrast, the Iron Fist launches a miniature kinetic interceptor missile with a small blast fragmentation warhead. It physically hunts and collides with or detonates near the threat at a longer standoff distance of up to 98 to 164 feet, offering a more precise engagement. The 1,870 lb trophy system carries six interceptors at a time. It's optimized for heavy threats like ATGMs and RPGs, but not so much against top attacker drones or kinetic energy or K penetrators. The much lighter 440 to 550 lb iron fist carries four interceptors in its standard configuration along with integrated electrooptical jamming softkill capabilities against second generation 80GM. It's uniquely capable
13:59 of engaging K penetrators like tank rounds due to its ability to hit the projectile at a sharper angle and further out that also makes it considerably more effective against drones. Since the M1E3 is designed for survivability in K and droneinfested scenarios, you can see why the US Army decided to make the switch. The Iron Fist's lighter weight and reduced collateral footprint align smoothly with the tank's new doctrine of operating closely with infantry and drones, while its ability to counter K penetrators and drones adds a layer of protection that the Trophy can't offer. But the M1E3's protective features certainly don't end at the new APS. In fact, unlike previous Abrams iterations, this tank has been designed to integrate survivability
14:45 features directly into the vehicle rather than relying heavily on externally mounted add-on kits. US Army officials have described its future protection capabilities as organic to weapon systems that strongly suggest a shift toward embedded survivability architectures that combine active protection, electronic warfare, signature reduction, and advanced armored technologies. If you needed any evidence that the US is deeply integrating the lessons hard learned from the war in Ukraine, that's exhibit A. Here's exhibit B. The tank is operated by using what appears to be an actual gaming controller or a controller designed very much to look and feel like one. The M1 E3, demonstrated by the US Army in March 2026, reportedly used a Fanitech gaming controller. Why go with
15:33 a widely used commercial gaming controller? Well, as Colonel Ryan Howell, the program lead for the M1 E3 suggests, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, it now takes just 30 seconds to train a young soldier to drive that tank. Something that used to take us days, even weeks. He may have been exaggerating the training timeline ever so slightly there. But he did follow up with an example that highlights how a gaming controller genuinely shortens the learning curve dramatically. Regarding one particular soldier, he said, "When we first sat down with him at the crew station, he was already in the process of transitioning out of the army, but he was assisting us by informing key design decisions." He told us, "If I had known I could work on a platform like this, I would have stayed in the army." That's exactly why drone operators in Ukraine
16:19 tend to use gaming or gaming style controllers for their operations. It's second nature for around 3.6 to 3.7 billion avid gamers around the world. Now, the automated turrets and userfriendly control configuration improve the speed and efficiency of fire, but it's the introduction of the autoloadader that's arguably the most consequential innovation in the M1 E3. In truth, it's pretty rare for US tanks, or indeed Western tanks in general, to feature an auto loader. They've historically been more of a Soviet, Russian, and Chinese thing, but it's easy to understand why the US decided on an auto loader for the M1E3. Its inclusion means the tank can reduce the crew by one, the loader. So instead of the four crew members needed to operate the set V3, the M1E3 now only needs
17:07 three. In terms of the interior of the tank, that means one thing, more space, and the M1 E3's designers have used it wisely with survivability in mind. The smaller crew is now positioned inside an armored capsule within the hull. This provides a tough physical barrier between them and any live ammunition, offering substantial protection against potential cookoffs. Operators of Russian tanks must be green with envy. The Abrams in all its guises has always been renowned for its robust armor and high level of crew protection, particularly when compared to Russian tanks. But even with blowout panels, there's always a risk of ammunition detonations harming or killing crew members. With this new configuration, that risk is effectively reduced to nearly zero. That is, assuming the armor is tough enough at
17:54 this point. While the Army has confirmed that the level of armor on the E3 will remain the same as on earlier M1 tanks, the specific armor that'll ultimately be used is still unclear. In truth, much about the new tank is yet to be determined. It's still at the prototype stage, after all. The Army says it hopes to see production of a finalized version begin next year. The exact timeline will depend on the performance of early prototype tanks in testing by operational units, which is slated to kick off in 2027. Still, we're fortunate to know as much about it as we do at this point. The official unveiling of the first early prototype M1E3 at the Detroit Auto Show in January was delivered years ahead of the program's original schedule. What's clear from what has been revealed so far
18:39 is that the M13 is a bold statement. The US intends to preserve the battlefield relevance of heavy armor in the warfare of the future and then some. Many have been writing off the main battle tank as a historical relic. But rather than abandoning the main battle tank concept, the army is redesigning the Abrams for a future conflict environment shaped by the tough lessons learned on the battlefields of Ukraine today. It's an environment where survivability depends as much on electronic protection, reduced signatures, automation, and mobility as on traditional armor thickness and firepower. And the M1 E3 seems to have the whole package. So, is it the ultimate tank for this new reality? We'll have to wait and see, but it's unlikely to be invincible. Nothing is, at least for not long. Not with
19:25 drones everywhere. In any highintensity conflict, no platform can be 100% safe from unmanned aerial systems. Jammers can be circumvented by fiber optic guided drones and other means, and APS's can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Given the current state of the Ukrainian front lines, the four interceptors that can be launched by the Iron Fist without reloading seem on the low side, to say the least. When Finland joined NATO, it shattered an illusion that Putin was trying to create. The Russian president's threats amounted to nothing. Finland thumbmed its nose at Putin and did the one thing that he didn't want to see. But now things are getting so much worse for Russia's president. Finland just sent Russia a dangerous nuclear message. The NATO alliance has been
20:13 further strengthened. As for Putin, he's just learned that the nuclear threats that he likes to throw around so readily can be matched by a power much greater than Russia's. Hold on a second. You might be saying, "We're going to stop you right there. Finland doesn't have nuclear weapons, so how could it present a nuclear threat to Russia?" Good question. And you are right. Finland doesn't have nukes. But what it does have is a 1,335 km border with Russia and membership in a collective defense organization that does bring plenty of nukes to a fight. And that's Putin's problem. Finland isn't saying that it will hit Russia with nuclear weapons. It's saying that for the first time, it's going to allow nukes to be stationed on its territory, ready to strike at a moment's notice if
20:58 Putin's threats transform from bluster into reality. On June 17th, Finnish lawmakers sat down to cast their votes on a new law that changes everything. And by a margin of 125 to 61, the vote passed. What this means is that Finland has just lifted a decadesl long ban on nuclear weapons, which marks perhaps the largest shift in the country's military posture since World War II. The deepening integration with NATO is evident in this decision. But for Russia, the massive problem this decision poses is that it finally means that NATO has the opportunity to station nuclear weapons right on the border with Russia. This is Putin's worst nightmare. And it's not a decision that Finland has
21:43 taken lightly. Taking to X in the wake of the vote, Finnish Defense Minister Antie Hackinan said that this was a move that was a long time in the making. The overall nuclear weapons policy has been one of the most challenging issues in the Ministry of Defense during this parliamentary term. years of study, discussions with nuclear weapons states and other allies, and assessments of how Finland security can be best strengthened in NATO, he declared, as he labeled the decision essential to Finland's security and the wider NATO posture against Russia. The Finnish nuclear ban has been torn up. This decision paves the way for Finland to receive, transport, and facilitate the movement of nuclear weapons throughout its territory, which runs counter to the posture that it had held for years. Before the Ukraine war, Finland wanted
22:29 to avoid antagonizing Russia. That's why it stayed out of NATO, and it's why nuclear weapons on Finnish territory weren't even being discussed. But everything changed after Putin launched his invasion. Now Russia is a threat conventionally and on the nuclear front. With that change, Finland has to adapt. And the passing of this new law, or more accurately, the tearing to shreds of an old law, is Finland's way of accepting the reality it faces in the 2020s, while letting Putin know that he can't have everything his own way. Putin's goal, both with the Ukraine war and beyond, is to present Russia as a major threat to every country in Europe that doesn't ask how high when Putin says jump. The Ukraine invasion was supposed to be over in a flash, reinforcing that threat. But years of brutal fighting and failure on
23:15 Russia's part to do what Putin threatened have only led to a years'sl long transformation in Finnish defense policy that has culminated in this. Nuclear weapons can now be moved through Finland and that means the nuclear path to Russia is shorter than ever before. This decision also signals a change in the Finnish attitude toward nuclear weapons. Few in Finland actually want nukes on their territory. As the New York Times points out, Finland avoided joining NATO for decades, and it has a deep-seated and justified fear of nuclear proliferation due to its border with Russia. But Putin's actions have forced Finland to make a decision that in an ideal world, it would never have made. And that is another blow to Putin. Fear was supposed to stop Finland from doing anything like this. Instead, Putin's actions have led to Finland
24:00 accepting the maximum role it could take in NATO, perhaps out of necessity rather than desire. And that has transformed everything about Putin's plans for taking on NATO in the future. Let's look at the brass tax of all of this. Now, Finland has no nuclear weapons program, which likely means that it also has no facilities in place for storing nukes. But that's not the point. What this decision has opened up is the possibility for nuclear weapons to be moved through and potentially launched from Finnish territory into Russia. And NATO's nukes are the great equalizer when it comes to dealing with Russia. According to Statista, NATO allies, which essentially amounts to the US, the UK, and France as nuclear capable nations, combined to bring 4,215 nuclear warheads to bear against Russia
24:45 in 2026. The number used to be much higher during the height of the Cold War when the nuclear arms race was at its pinnacle. Back in 1966, NATO allies had access to 31,492 nukes, with Russia having a similar number, which goes a long way toward explaining why Finland wanted to stay out of NATO for so long. But with Russia actively invading Ukraine and Russian threats spurring many, including Germany's Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, stating outright that NATO needs to be ready for war with Russia. The Cold War calculus no longer applies. Finland can't appease and avoid by staying out of Russia's crosshairs anymore. Instead, it has to point crosshairs of its own in Russia's direction. And this new decision is the perfect way to do it. For Russia, this
25:31 doesn't just mean yet another European nation has approved stationing of nukes on its territory. This is the nation that is closer than any other to Russia, at least in regard to NATO's defense posture. The UK and France host nuclear weapons that they built themselves. Beyond that, five countries play host to US-made nuclear weapons. Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, and the Netherlands. None of these weapons are armed or deployed on aircraft. The arms control center points out. All are kept in WS3 underground vaults at air bases, and none can be armed without the permissive action link or PAL codes that the US controls. To be used, these nukes have to be loaded into dual capable NATO fighter jets or bombers. and the US has to approve all of these and provide the PAL codes. On one hand, this does mean
26:16 that Finland isn't an immediate nuclear threat to Russia. Plus, it has only just torn up its old laws. We don't yet know if the US is going to follow through by using Finnish air bases to store nukes. But on the other hand, the practicalities are all problems for the future. What's important right now is the message. NATO is getting stronger and Finland lies at the heart of it all. Now, the nation that has the largest border with Russia out of all in the NATO alliance has said that it's ready to accept nuclear weapons. That alone is terrifying for Putin. Every threat that he has ever made to a NATO aligned nation is coming back to haunt him, courtesy of the newest addition to the alliance. But to make matters even worse for Russia's president, Finland's nuclear decision isn't the only problem that he faces. Behind this major decision lies the bigger issue of NATO
27:02 taking Russia more seriously as a conventional and nuclear threat than it has since the fall of the Soviet Union. That changes everything for Russia. But before we go deeper, this is a reminder that you are watching the Military Show. If this is the kind of insight that you want to see more of, make sure that you are subscribed to the channel. Finland's massive nuclear decision came on the back of another huge NATO move that has Putin sweating. On June 8th, NATO announced that it has bolstered its posture in the high north and Arctic regions with the creation of the latest multinational forward land forces or FLF that the alliance has available. That FLF began operations on June 6th and is stationed in Finland and Sweden. Though led by Sweden as the framework nation, FLF Finland is the ninth of NATO's FLFS,
27:50 the first of which was established in 2017 to run across the collective defense allianc's eastern flank. The decision to create this FLF was actually made in 2024, not long after Sweden and Finland joined NATO. So, Russia would have known that it was coming. Now, don't get us wrong, this isn't a massive force. According to the Nordic Defense Sector, FLF Finland will consist of a Swedish battalion containing 600 soldiers, which is obviously not enough to stop Russia if it mounts a full invasion into the Nordic territories. But that isn't the point. For a start, FLF Finland can grow through contributions from other nations. In fact, the UK, Italy, France, Denmark, Iceland, and Norway have already announced that they will work alongside Sweden and Finland to develop the force. So 600 soldiers are the starting point
28:36 rather than the full might that FLF Finland will bring to bed. But more important than that is that FLF Finland means that NATO now has the ability to coordinate ground forces in a region that seems to be close to the top of the list for areas that Russia would choose to invade if Putin completely loses his mind and decides that failure in Ukraine means that Russia must escalate to all of Europe. And who knows, maybe this FLF will end up playing a part in developing Finland's new nuclear posture. Returning to the subject of nukes, Finland isn't alone in letting Putin know that he's going to get burned if he keeps on playing with fire. On June 18th, just a few days after Finland passed its new law, the UK Defense Journal reported that NATO's nuclear planning group had issued a ministerial statement. That alone might not necessarily seem remarkable, but what's important about
29:22 this statement is that it's the first that the NATO nuclear planning group has released since 2007, and it was all about modernizing NATO's nuclear capabilities and strengthening the alliance's nuclear planning capacity. The timing is too perfect to be a coincidence. This is NATO taking the knife that Finland just plunged into Putin's side and giving it a nice little twist. Now, the statement isn't anything too dramatic. It doesn't say that NATO is ready to launch nukes at Russia at a moment's notice. But what it does, said one unnamed NATO official, who the UK Defense Journal quotes, is show that NATO has shifted back from expeditionary warfare to an active policy of defense and deterrence in the Euroatlantic area. And that's not all. The same official says that the US is completely on board with this shift. rubbishing claims that
30:07 the US Secretary of War Pete Hexath simply turned up to make opening remarks at the Brussels meeting where the statement was drafted. The official says that the US is fully leaning into NATO's nuclear sharing mission. It along with France and the UK is actively modernizing its nuclear forces. The official claims they add that the US has repeatedly affirmed its nuclear guarantee to the rest of NATO regardless of individual shifts. This statement was made despite reported adjustments to the B-52 bomber fleet and claims that the US is going to reduce the deep strike capabilities available to European NATO by withdrawing warships and cutting down on the number of F-16 and F-15E fighter jets available to NATO from the 150 it has now to 100. We mentioned timing a minute ago, and it's not just timing
30:52 with Finland's decision that's notable here. NATO's new statement comes about a month after Russia held a 3-day exercise that involved Bellarus and included 64,000 troops, 200 missile launchers, over 140 aircraft, 73 warships, 13 submarines, and eight intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. NBC News reports those exercises were clearly an attempt to threaten through nukes as Russia has done so many times before and there are suggestions that they focused on training troops on how to deploy the archnic hypersonic missiles that are reportedly stationed in Bellarus. Putin has been engaging in plenty of nuclear saber rattling. Both Finland and NATO have combined to show Russia's leader that he isn't the only one with a saber that can be rattled. Interestingly, what we've just seen from Finland and NATO
31:39 may be precisely what the European Council on Foreign Relations or ECFR said was needed in a June 17th piece where it labeled Russia the bear with the bomb. The ECFR's key argument was that European NATO needed to go into overtime to plug the gaps in its nuclear capabilities. However, the bulk of the article focused more on how European NATO needs to find a way to do this without US support given the constant uncertainty about the US position on NATO under the Donald Trump administration. So perhaps we can see what Finland just did under a different light. If the US wants to station nukes in Finland, then great. The posture of the official who spoke to the UK Defense Journal is a reality and Russia faces a massive deterrent. But if for whatever reason the US withdraws nuclear weapons from Europe, Finland has still just made
32:25 itself available to the UK and France as a potential site for their nukes, which still means there is a clear and very present threat to Russia if Putin goes beyond the conventional and gets too happy with the atomic trigger. The US nuclear umbrella is irreplaceable for the foreseeable future. Europeans cannot abandon it. They must build something that approximates its deterrent effects. Less Russia's leaders see America abandoning its defense of Europe as an opportunity to apply their theory of victory concepts and capabilities. The ECFR declares perhaps we're seeing the first step toward building something that can mirror the current deterrent effects provided by the US. And if we are, Finland is right at the heart of it. Let's return to Finland as we round out the video. In recent months, Finland, along with other Nordic nations, has started to voice loud concerns over a Russian military buildup
33:11 on their borders. Satellite photos show that this buildup, which includes the construction of new barracks and facilities, could be enough for Russia to station 115,000 troops on the borders of the Nordic and Baltic regions. All of this is happening as some within NATO suggest that a war with Russia could be coming in the next 3 to 5 years, GIS reports says. So, it's not as though Finland has just made its massive nuclear decision unprompted. It's done it at least in part because Russia is making it very clear that Putin is planning something. If that something is an invasion of NATO, then tens of thousands of troops on the Nordic and Baltic borders seems like a natural starting point. Finland needs to deter Russia from moving forward with these plans in any way that it can. The country's nuclear decision is the
33:56 culmination of a full-blown evolution in defense posture that Finland has been undertaking for years. Except Finland hasn't spent the last few decades treating Russia casually. Yes, it stayed out of NATO until Putin forced the Finnish hand, but it's not as though Finland was completely neutral towards Russia either. As GIS reports finds out, Finland was one of the few European countries that chose not to lower its guard once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. While others tried to welcome a new Russia, which has since developed into what we see today, Finland was quietly preparing for a fight that it always felt could be coming. We see hints of this in the Finnish military. Though Finland has just 24,000 active duty personnel in its army, it has reserves that number 870,000 and paramilitary forces of almost 54,000
34:43 in a country that has a population of a little more than 5.6 million people. Finland has never stopped training soldiers, and when Russia invaded Ukraine, pushing Finland into joining NATO in the process, we started to see why. Now that Finland is moving closer to battle mode, its preparation, which may have been seen as pointless in the '90s, is paying off. Along with Estonia, Finland controls access to the Gulf of Finland. That's leverage that can be used against Russia. The FLF we discussed earlier could balloon to 6,000 soldiers, GIS reports says, and it combined with Nordic air power supported by NATO would enable the air superiority needed to prevent Russian access to the Gulf of Finland. And now nuclear weapons are allowed to move through Finland. What all of this means is that Putin has a major Finland problem. And that
35:29 problem is only going to get bigger from here. Now, its nukes along with all of the other preparations. Tomorrow, it will be an even stronger Finland. In early June, Finland's Parliamentary Defense Committee proposed raising the country's defense expenditure from the $ 8.8 billion it is now to a little over $16 billion by 2029, and then maintaining spending at about 17.2 billion through to 2036. That proposal hasn't been accepted yet, but it perfectly showcases the mood that the Finns have toward Russia right now. Putin is a threat. Finland's response to that threat hasn't been to cow. It's been to show Putin that Russia can't intimidate Finland into backing away. The posture will only get stronger. The military spending will only get more pronounced. And if NATO makes the most out of Finland's nuclear decision, the deterrent posed to Russia will be more
36:16 lethal than it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The war in Ukraine has raged on for over four years and is the bloodiest conflict Russia has seen since World War II. But it's not just humans that have been lost in the battle, its machines, too. Specifically, Russian tanks. The numbers here are genuinely staggering, but they also come with a big asterisk since sources vary. The most conservative defensible figures belong to Orics, the open-source intelligence project that counts only losses it can verify with a photograph or a video. Thus, Orex has confirmed somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,400 Russian tanks destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured between February 2022 and June 2026. But after all that, Russia has been churning out replacements and may actually be on the
37:03 verge of having more tanks in active service than before it started its so-called special military operation, according to some sources. That sounds like something which should make Kev nervous. And yet the dirty secret behind that growing fleet is that Russia can barely use it. Because in the time it took Moscow to rebuild its armored juggernaut, Ukraine quietly did something far more devastating than destroying tanks one by one. Ukraine changed the battlefield itself and in doing so turned the main battle tank, which had ruled ground warfare for a century, into something close to a liability. By comparison, Ukraine's confirmed tank losses sit at roughly 1,400. And Orex itself suggests that this is a floor, not a ceiling, because again, it only counts losses that it can
37:48 verify with a photo or video. So the true number of vehicles destroyed may be significantly higher than the records. A secondary aggregator suggests that these accounts only display between 50 and 70% of actual Russian tank losses, which means the true number might be higher, plausibly in the range of 6,300 to 8,800 tanks. The Ukrainian general staff, for its part, claims figures north of 10,000. While that number may be close to the reality, it's coming from a government that stands to gain from its enemy's dead machine. So treat it as the ceiling. But regardless of what numbers you take, at minimum, Russia has lost the equivalent of its entire pre-war active tank fleet and probably closer to double that. According to the International Institute for Strategic
38:35 Studies, Russia went to war with roughly 3,000 tanks in active service and probably had triple that in storage. And the Institute calculated that in just the first 13 months of fighting, between February 2022 and March 2023, Russia lost nearly 1,900 of those active tanks. More than half the standing fleet was gone in little over a year. No army in the modern era has hemorrhage armor at that rate. So, how after all of that is Russia about to field more tanks than it started with? Well, the answer lies in that storage we mentioned. Most of the tanks in there were stockpiled from the Soviet Union era, where old units were just left with occasional maintenance. The IIS claimed that there could be 9,000 tanks in reserve, while some outlets suggested the number could very
39:21 well have five figures. An OSENT researcher Jumpy used satellite imagery of tank yards to count a more modest number of 7,342 tanks. And when the losses started piling up in 2023 and 2024, the Kremlin had a problem with simple arithmetic. Some experts claimed that Russia's only plant building genuinely new tanks from scratch, Ural Vanzavod, the Nisny Targil, can produce only around 250 new modern T90M tanks a year. The Mstrands Mash plant can make another 150 T80 BVMs, a modernized version of an older model. That's only 400 per year against the losses that averaged at least 85 per month. So, Russia had to turn to those boneyards of thousands of old tanks from
40:07 the Soviet Union. Every other so-called new tank reaching the front ended up not being new at all. It was an old Soviet hole pulled from storage, stripped, refitted with fresh optics, radios, and reactive armor bolted onto the sides and pushed back into service. But here's where it gets almost absurd and where you start to see Russian industry doing things that border on archaeology. As Russia worked through the easier candidates, it eventually reached the older tanks in the yards. around a thousand T72As dating from the early 1970s. These machines were so degraded that their engines were considered dead. So in September 2024, an industry representative told the state doomers defense committee that Russian industry had launched a so-called new regeneration program, taking the old
40:54 engines that powered these 45 ton tanks and rebuilding them with new internal parts. Essentially resurrecting engines that had been written off as scrap. The catch was that this program was only expected to produce around 100 working engines, enough for about 10% of those stored T72As. So in December 2024, Russia doubled down with the Kingish machine building plant in Lenningrad Oblast, signing a contract to refurbish a different, more powerful engine that also fits the T72A. Russia was so determined to put 50-year-old tanks back on the road that it stood up an entire industrial effort to bring dead engines back to life. With fresh components, a 1970s T72A could be brought up to something roughly
41:39 resembling a modern T72 B3M, though never as well protected. The analyst Jia said that this was the moment he became convinced Russia intended to restore nearly its entire stored fleet, anything that was not completely rusted through. So, let's actually do the tank math because it's the spine of this whole story. As we mentioned, Russia started with roughly 3,000 active tanks. It lost somewhere around 4,400 confirmed up to around 6,000. New production has added perhaps 1,600 tanks across the two most modern models. And the storage drawd down could have yielded around 5,000 recoverable hulls after you subtract the roughly 2,100 that were either rusted beyond saving or belong to the old T64 family. When you add all that up, the
42:26 Russian ground forces could be building somewhere between 3,600 and 5,200 tanks based on the lower limit of losses. That upper figure is almost twice the starting force. So on paper, Russia's rebuilt its armored force and made it bigger. But that same force is also increasingly comprised primarily of museum pieces. To understand why, we need to look exactly what kinds of tanks are in this fleet. Because not all tanks are created equal, and Russia's lineup tells you everything about a military stretching backward through time to keep its formations full. Now, let's start with the workhorse, the T72. First rolling off Soviet lines in 1972, the T72 was designed to be cheap, simple, rugged, and producible by the
43:12 tens of thousands, the armored equivalent of the AK-47. And it's everywhere, being the most common tank on both sides of this war, as Ukraine inherited huge numbers of them, too. The modern Russian frontline versions are the T72B3 and the upgraded T72B3M with better fire control and reactive armor. But the T72 is also the tank that turned into a global meme for catastrophic destruction. By Orex's visually confirmed count, Russia has lost on the order of 1,800 T72s, more than any other single type. The reasoning for that is baked into the tank's design, which we'll come back to later after we run through the other types. The second model is the T80, which suffers from its own share of problems. Introduced in 1976, it was the
44:00 world's first mass-produced tank powered by a gas turbine engine. The same basic principle as a helicopter or a jet, which made it blisteringly fast and quiet for its size, able to hit 40 mph across open country. The Soviets and later Russians built roughly 5,400 to 5,500 of these tanks with production extending until 2001. In Ukraine, the T80 has been ground down relentlessly. By December 2024, open source counts confirmed at least 1,000 T80s destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured. And some analysts argue Russia has effectively burned through its entire deployable T80 fleet. Though that stronger claim should be treated as an estimate rather than a settled fact. Russian commentators have suggested
44:46 Moscow had committed around 90% of its available T80s, funneling the survivors back to the OMS plant in Siberia to be rebuilt into the latest T80 BBM standard. Russian tank crews are said to have given the T80 a grim nickname, the steel coffin, after watching too many of them lose their turrets in a single violent instant. At the top of the lineup sits the T90 and specifically its most modern form, the T90M Praif, which is the tank Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine likes to call one of the best in the world. The T90 itself derived from the T72, but layered with improvements. Better gun and fire control system, relicked reactive armor, the SNAU gunner sight, and a commander's panoramic sight that brings it closer to
45:33 Western standards. It's the best tank Russia actually fights with. And yet, it's been dying in numbers that expose the entire problem. Orex figures for June 2026 point to somewhere over 220 T90 variants lost with 155 of those being the T90M. But there's another crucial piece of information that might be shocking. Russia is believed to have started the war with fewer than 70 T90M. In 52 months, it's lost more than twice that many. So those earlier figures suggesting the factory can output 250 of them in a year, possibly the result of the propaganda machine. And then when even the T72 stockpile started running thin, Russia was fully desperate. It went past the 1970s past the 1960s and
46:21 pulled out the T62, a tank that entered service in 1961. And the T-55, a design whose heritage extends back to the immediate post-war Soviet tank programs. These are antiques with thinner armor, less capable guns, and ammunition storage arrangements that are, if anything, even more dangerous than the newer tanks. Seeing T-55s rumble toward the front in the 2020s was, for many analysts, the single clearest signal that Russia was scraping the bottom of the barrel, trading away every advantage of quality for the brute reassurance of quantity. A tank from 1946 can still kill you, but it's not going to win you a modern war, and Russia knows it. Now, if you want more detailed analytics like these, make sure to subscribe to the
47:07 Military Show. We post videos on everything important going on in the world. Now, all of this brings us to the crux of this entire story, the tank that was supposed to change everything and ended up being a flop, the T14 Armata. When Russia first paraded the Armada through Red Square in 2015, it was built as a revolution. A genuine next generation tank with an unmanned turret, a protected crew capsule, an active protection system designed to shoot incoming missiles out of the air, and a design explicitly built to defeat the Western Contemporaries. But in the largest tank war of the 21st century, where Russia has been desperate enough to deploy machines from 1946, the Amata has been almost completely absent. It made a brief cautious appearance in
47:53 2023, reportedly used only in a rear indirect fire roll and was withdrawn within the month. The official explanation was that the Amata was simply too expensive and that it made more sense to buy a larger number of cheaper vehicles. Reported unit costs run somewhere between 5 million and $9 million. Far more than a T72, T80, or T90. And because it's an entirely new platform, it couldn't even use the existing production lines. Now, it would be easy to mock the Amata as a parade prop. But there is a more interesting counterargument worth taking seriously. In some ways, the T14 is not really a design failure at all, but a casualty of timing. A superb tank delivered into a war that no longer rewards superb tanks.
48:38 In an era where a thousand drone can disable a multi-million dollar vehicle, pouring those millions into a single tank is basically suicidal. Which brings us to the crux of the issue. We've established that Russia has rebuilt a massive fleet of mostly Soviet era tanks. So why exactly did all these tanks fail so catastrophically in the first place? The answer comes in three distinct layers. The first lay involves a vulnerability of the T72 design that appears repeatedly in footage, even if you didn't know where you were looking at. A Russian tank is hit, there's a flash, and then the entire turret is hurled dozens of feet into the air. Soldiers and analysts call it the jack in the box effect or the turret toss. This is a quirk of the tank's original engineering. Russian tanks like the T72,
49:25 T80, and T90 use an automatic loader instead of a human one, which lets them run with a smaller three-man crew and a lower, harder to hit profile. To feed that auto loader, the tank stores its ammunition, around 20 ready rounds, in a carousel ring at the base of the turret, right in the center of the vehicle, which surrounds the crew compartment. When a penetrating hit reaches that ring, even one propellant charge can trigger a chain reaction that detonates the entire stockpile at once. The pressure has nowhere to go but up, blowing the turret clean off. The contrast with Western tanks is the part that really exposes the trade-off. A tank like the American M1 Abrams stores its ammunition in a separate compartment in the rear of the turret, sealed off from the crew by an armored door and
50:11 fitted with blowout panels. When that ammunition is hit, the panels are designed to vent the explosion up and out away from the crew compartment. The crew can and have survived ammunition fires that would have annihilated a Russian crew instantly. Now, the Soviet designers were not stupid. They made a deliberate choice, accepting a catastrophic failure mode in exchange for a smaller, lighter, cheaper tank that was easier to mass-produce, easier to transport by rail, and harder to spot on the battlefield. For the kind of war Soviet planners imagined, a fast continental clash where individual tank survivability mattered less than overwhelming numbers, it was arguably a rational bargain. The problem is that this isn't that war. When you have scores of drones hovering right above the tank in one of the most surveiled
50:57 front lines in history, that failure mode suddenly went from an occasional hit to a deliberate target. Now, the second layer of failure has nothing to do with the tanks and everything to do with how Russia used them. The clearest case study here is the opening drive on Kev. Russia sent long armored columns racing down predictable highways toward the capital and those columns were chronically short of fuel and more importantly infantry. A tank for all its armor and firepower is effectively blind and deaf at close range. It has terrible visibility, especially to its sides and rear. And in forests, towns and villages, it's desperately vulnerable to anyone who can get close. The job of screening infantry is to find and flush out ambushes before they spring. The modern war institute drew the comparison
51:43 with the 1973 Yom Kapore War. Just as Egyptian and Syrian infantry teams with wireg guided saga missiles devastated unsupported Israeli tanks in 1973, small hidden teams of Ukrainian light infantry armed with modern anti-tank missiles and drones picked apart Russian columns that had no business advancing the way they did. The columns were forced onto roads because the surrounding terrain had become muddy and difficult to traverse. And this was dramatically illustrated by images of the infamous 35mm long convoy north of Kev. They bunched up into traffic jams. And then because Russia didn't actually prepare for a drawn out war, they ran out of fuel. It was a lesson in hubris brought by the image of a 35 m long convoy of surrounded tanks.
52:28 The third layer is the weapons. If you followed the early war, the tanks were stopped by the American Javelin and the British end-law, shoulder fired missiles that became viral symbols of Ukrainian resistance. Ukraine also fielded its own laserg guided stagna P. But by 2025, some Ukrainian and independent assessments of drones credited them with roughly 65% of Russian tank losses. And that word drones is where the entire story hinges. According to Ukraine's own National Security and Defense Council, the country's defense industry reached the capacity to produce more than 8 million FPV drones a year by 2026 across more than 160 companies ranging from large factories to garage startups. While this is a Ukrainian source,
53:14 whatever the precise production figure, the order of magnitude means the front line is now saturated permanently with cheap flying bombs hunting anything that moves. And the implication for tanks is brutal. A tank no longer has to worry only about the ambushed team it might stumble into. It has to worry about the sky constantly for every meter of every advance across the entire 1,100 km of the front line. Russia and Ukraine both tried to fight back against the drones, of course, which resulted in some hilarious designs. The first counter measure was electronic warfare jammers that sever the radio link between the FPV drone and its pilot, sending it tumbling harmlessly to the ground. For a while, that worked until the drone makers started using fiber optics. Instead of a radio signal, these drones
54:00 trailed an impossibly thin cable behind them, unspooling as they fly, which physically connected the drone to its pilot. Russia reportedly fielded these first in the spring of 2024 and Ukraine rapidly matched them. The cable soon littered the battlefield, becoming tangled in vegetation, infrastructure, and even bird nests. But despite that, the resulting fiber optics industry exploded, where reportedly China increased the prices between 250 and 400% in 2026. With electronic defenses failing, Russia turned to physical armor. It started in 2022 with what soldiers mockingly call cope cages, simple metal slat structures welded over the turret to catch grenades dropped by small drones. In early April 2024,
54:46 turtle tanks emerged on the battlefield of the Russo Ukrainian war. Entire vehicles encased in welded sheet metal shells so that the tank disappeared inside a crude metal box with just a gun poking out. In 2024, the Russians added hundreds of thick metal spines to these shells, betting that that the resulting porcupine tanks would snag and detonate drones before they reached the hole. And by 2025, the spines had evolved into thousands of fine metal hairs made from unwound aluminum cable draped over the vehicle like a shaggy coat. Some observers described them as hedgehogs, and they were among the most heavily protected seen during the war, capable of eating a dozen FPV drones before finally being knocked out. But they were still being knocked out. So, what's the plan? What does Russia actually intend
55:33 to do with this enormous horde of armor it can't deploy? The honest answer is that nobody outside the Kremlin knows for certain. The most likely explanation is that Russia is playing a long game. The thinking goes that Russian commanders are betting that some new counter drone technology will emerge. A breakthrough in jamming, in interceptors, in directed energy, something that reopens the battlefield to fast mobile mechanized warfare. And in the meantime, they're preserving and rebuilding their armored core, keeping it intact and ready for that future moment when tanks can rule again. The darker, more immediate possibility is simpler. It suggests that Russian commanders under pressure to deliver results may simply get desperate enough to throw the tanks back into the fire regardless of the consequences. And in
56:20 that scenario, the vast rebuilt fleet is simply a reserve of expendable steel fed into the battlefield to buy ground at a terrible rate of exchange. Remember, after 2022, Russia's advancement stalled to the point where between 2023 and 2025, it occupied only about 1.23% 23% of Ukraine's territory. And there is one final twist. The rebuilt fleet, for all its impressive size, is fundamentally a one-time boost. Russia dipped into the vast Soviet stockpile, and that stockpile is now nearly empty. A June 2026 satellite analysis by open-source analyst John Py revealed that while Russia started with a pre-war stockpile of 7,342 tanks, only 2,88 remain in storage. And
57:05 of those, just 851 are viable for restoration. The remaining 1,237 tanks are effectively dead infventory. So Russia has drained something like 72% of its entire Cold War tank reserve. At this point, if losses continue at roughly 90 tanks per month, it will take another 9 months or so before the stock is fully out. The US Navy has ruled the world's oceans for decades. Few would dispute that it remains by far the most capable naval force on the planet in terms of global bluewater power projection. Its ability to deploy extensive strike groups in the Middle East, Caribbean, and Indo-Pacific simultaneously at present speaks for itself. But let's be frank, in recent years, its groundbreaking new ship
57:51 building projects haven't always turned out as intended, to put it mildly. In particular, the literal combat ship or LCS, constellation class frigot, and Zumwald's class destroyer were all heralded as next generation systems when they were conceived. But these high-profile programs ended up being scrapped with only a few of the intended number of ships built. However, it wasn't all in vain, at least in the case of one of them, the stealthy, high-tech Zumwaltclass destroyer. One of the Navy's biggest mistakes has found a new use case. Potentially transforming a glaring white elephant into the deadliest warship in the US fleet, a carrier of hypersonic missiles. Now, here's how these new missiles give the Zumalt class a new lease on life and how
58:37 that could add a special new arrow to the Navy's quiver. Hypersonic missiles. The move is innovative, topical, and exactly what the doctor ordered. As seasoned analyst and former congressional staffer Brandon J. Wut wrote not too long ago, "The Zumalt class destroyer failure can be summed up in two words, total disaster." Of course, it wasn't supposed to be like that. The Zumalt class, named after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the chief of naval operations from 1970 to 1974, was supposed to decisively address an emerging threat profile for the foreseeable future. It was 1991. The Cold War had abruptly ended following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Navy reassessed its priorities. Rather than facing off against a peer
59:24 superpower, it would now most likely be facing off against disperse regional and literal rather than bluewater threats. So, the emphasis shifted from bluewater anti-ubmarine warfare to power projection in coastal and nearshore environments. The Arley Burke class destroyer program would fill the role of a fleet defender optimized for open ocean survival against peer adversaries that it did and still does admirably. But to counter the new class of literal threats, the Navy needed a different kind of platform. One that could deliver high volume precision fires against inland targets and asymmetric threats like fast attack craft, mines, and short-range anti-hship missiles. The original concept was called the DD21 land attack destroyer that evolved into
1:00:10 the DDX program in the early 2000s. DDX then spawned the Zumalt class destroyer, a multi-m missission platform emphasizing stealth automation and high energy power systems. In February 2008, the initial $ 1.4 billion contract to begin construction of the lead ship, the USS Zumwalt, also known as DDG1000, was approved. The original plan was for a total of 32 ships to be built. Two more were eventually built. The USS Michael Monsour or DDG 1001 and the USS Lynden B. Johnson or DDG 1002. But all three ultimately entered service more than a decade after the Navy had officially pulled the plug of the remaining 29. Looking at the ship now
1:00:55 and reading up on its key features, it's hard to understand why. In many ways, it's as revolutionary as intended. One of the key requirements was a low radar cross-section or RCS. If you're going to be swatting aside a myriad of asymmetric threats from the sea, air, and land while hammering land targets, you need to be as invisible as possible for as long as possible. The Zwalt class achieves that despite being larger than any destroyer or cruiser in the Navy's inventory. It has a length of 610 ft, a beam of 80.7 ft, a draft of 27.6 ft, and displaces around 15,656 tons. By comparison, the Tyiconderoga class cruiser has a length of 567 ft, a beam of 55 ft, a draft of 34 ft, and a
1:01:43 displacement of around 9,600 tons. The current Ali Burke class destroyer model, the Flight 3, has a length of 509.5 ft, a beam of 66 feet, a draft of 31 ft, and a slightly larger displacement of 9,700 tons. As you can see, while having a substantially larger length in beam
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