- Coverage of the war in Ukraine has often focused on the new, high-tech weapons being used there.
In Ukraine, a handful of newer weapons — such as US-made HIMARS rockets and Turkish-made TB2 attack drones — have dominated the headlines, but it's the older weapons, mainly Soviet-era designs, that are still doing the bulk of the fighting.
"A lot of the most important weapon systems are not new things," Rob Lee, a US expert on the Russian military, said of the war in Ukraine at a recent conference hosted by the New America think tank.
For example, when Russia invaded in Ukraine, its air force was widely expected to play a decisive role, especially given the inferiority in numbers and quality of Ukrainian aircraft.
Instead, Moscow's airpower has almost been a minor factor in the conflict, with Russian pilots reluctant to operate in Ukrainian airspace following heavy losses early in the conflict.
One reason for this has been Ukraine's Soviet-era air-defense systems, such as the S-300 and Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missiles.
"I think arguably the most important development is that Ukraine's air defense has held out and they continue to prevent the Russian Air Force from interdicting things beyond Ukrainian frontlines," Lee said. "Russia can't hit HIMARS. They can't really target Ukraine command-and-control very effectively. They can't stop them from resupplying."
"The most important reason is probably things like the Buk-M1 or S-300 systems. These are Soviet systems. They're not new. They're not fancy. They're not sexy, but they play such an important role," Lee added. "They've allowed more modern systems like HIMARS to play a very important role."
Coverage of the war often credits Western weapons sent to Ukraine as turning the tide on the ground and allowing a Ukrainian counteroffensive to roll back Russian gains.
But those Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles and HIMARS rockets were still in US and British warehouses when Russia invaded in February 2022. Ukraine wouldn't receive them for weeks or months, as the US and other nations hesitated to send big weapons, such as artillery.
The weapons that Ukraine used to halt the Russian advance were mainly older designs: T-72 and T-64 tanks (which date back to the 1960s and 1970s), MiG-29 fighters, and Soviet-era multiple rocket launchers and machine guns.
The equipment has been updated with new electronics, munitions, and other upgrades. For example, Ukraine extended the range and modernized the electronics of the Soviet Kh-35 anti-ship missile to produce the indigenous R-360 Neptune, which sank the cruiser Moskva — flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet — in April 2022.
In the military sense, the strangest aspect of the Russo-Ukraine War is that both armies have essentially similar arsenals and tactics that date to when Russia and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union.
For Ukraine, this has an unexpected benefit: All those captured Soviet tanks and artillery can be easily reused by Ukrainian crews accustomed to using those models.
This is changing, however. Ukraine is fielding more and more Western weapons as its older Soviet equipment is destroyed or replaced. While newer and more technically advanced, this polyglot array of arms from more than 30 countries will pose logistics and integration difficulties and require Ukrainian forces to adopt a more Western style of high-tech warfare.
Russia faces are more challenging outlook. Moscow has deployed some new weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and the T-90 tank (one of which Ukraine just captured intact), but with Western sanctions depriving it of electronics and other imported components, Russia will have increasing difficulty manufacturing advanced weapons.
It's a sign of desperation that after losing more than 1,000 tanks in the war, Russia is using T-62 tanks that were obsolete nearly a half-century ago. They're better than no tanks at all, and they show that old weapons may be phased out, but they don't die.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.