![]() Ukraine began 2022 with a few dozen AVLBs based on the Soviet T-55 tanks (the MT-55 and MTU-20) and T-72 (the MTU-72). Ukraine is also notorious for its extremely muddy Spring and Fall weather ( rasputitsa), and thus bridging over theoretically traversable shallow waters and mud can spare valuable heavy armored vehicles from bogging down, taking them out of the fight as surely (if not as permanently) as an anti-tank missile. Rivers, marshes and trench warfare have substantially shaped Russia’s invasion begun in 2022. And thanks to being, well, tanks, they were more likely than engineers riding soft-skin trucks to survive artillery fire directed at a fording point. While AVLB bridges can’t span larger rivers, they did, and still do enable tank and mechanized infantry to hop across smaller tributaries, or over broken spans of bridges in a matter of minutes, retaining the momentum of their advance, and potentially bypassing well-defended bridge crossings. Why the Leopard 2 Is Such a Badass Tank. ![]()
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