According to Forbes, in the monthlong territorial war between Armenia and Azerbaijan back in 2020, Azerbaijan deployed at least a company with a dozen T-55 tanks, apparently near the disputed district of Aghdam—and apparently as howitzers and newer T-72s handled direct assaults on Armenian positions.
“Those 70-year-old T-54 and T-55 tanks that the Russian army is pulling out of long-term storage, possibly in order to recondition them for front-line use in Ukraine, wouldn’t last long in a direct fight with the Ukrainian army’s own tanks.
But tank-on-tank combat might not be what the Russians have in mind for the 40-ton T-54/55s with their four crew, up to 800-horsepower engines and 100-millimeter rifled main guns.
There’s ample precedent for tanks-as-artillery in the Ukraine war and other conflicts. The Ukrainian army has compensated for a dearth of howitzers by drilling indirect-fire techniques into the three-person crews of its locally-made T-64 tanks. The Russian army lately has done the same—even with its best T-90s.
It’s important to remember that a tank in essence is a big gun on a rotating mount wrapped in armor and traveling on a tracked chassis. In the T-54/55’s case, the gun is a D-10T, a derivative of the D-10 anti-tank gun that entered service with the Soviet army in 1944,” Forbes said.
