Russia dominated the list of largest tank operators several years ago—but its losses against Ukraine have slashed its stocks by thousands of vehicles.

The viability of the tank as a weapon on the modern battlefield has been hotly debated since the start of the 21st century. The 1991 Gulf War, in which US-led coalition aircraft demolished Iraqi armor on the ground inside Kuwait, showed that armored vehicles were intensely vulnerable to air attack. Three decades later, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in which Ukraine’s defenders have used missiles and drones against Russian armor to great effect, has led to further study of the vulnerabilities of tanks.

Despite these losses, tanks are generally not considered obsolete. Instead, the technology is advancing to keep pace with the development of defensive capabilities—both through simple innovations like “cope cages” and “dandelion” armor and through more robust measures like active protection systems. These show that the world powers are still heavily invested in the platform, with thousands of main battle tanks (MBTs) still in service. Heavily concentrated in Asia and North America, the countries with the top five largest combat tank fleets in the world today are China, Russia, North Korea, the United States, and India.

5. India

Total Hulls: Nearly 4,000

It is fitting that India—now the world’s largest country by population—should have one of the world’s largest tank fleets. The country’s powerful ground maneuver capability is designed specifically for land threats along its borders. Although its border with China along the Himalayas is difficult for tanks to traverse, its western border with Pakistan is mostly flat—and indeed tank warfare was crucial to the outcomes of its previous wars with Pakistan in 1947, 1965, and 1971.

India’s tank fleet is mostly composed of Russian-derived designs that were manufactured domestically under license. Models include the T-90S “Bhishma,” a derivative of the Russian T-90, and the T-72M1 “Ajeya,” a modernized variant of the older T-72. These tanks operate alongside a smaller tier of indigenous Arjun MBTs. India’s fleet is optimized for high-intensity conventional operations across desert terrain and high-altitude plateaus.

4. United States

Total Hulls: Over 4,500

Surprisingly, the United States, far and above the most powerful military in the world, does not have as many tanks as several of its counterparts. In fact, America’s tremendous advantages over its rivals lie primarily in sea and air power, not land strength. Even so, the US Army has one of the largest tank forces on the planet, and one to be reckoned with.

The US armored force is centered entirely on the M1 Abrams family, which is widely recognized as one of the most proven MBTs in military history. While the US intentionally sacrifices raw numerical mass relative to China or North Korea, its smaller tank fleet maintains superior quality; it has long since retired the M60 tanks that were the mainstay of its armored force before the adoption of the Abrams in the early 1980s.

Many of the US tanks are strategically pre-positioned, with the ability to stabilize NATO’s eastern flank. One point of vulnerability is that the US lacks the industrial capacity to expand the fleet rapidly if needed.

3. North Korea

Total Hulls: Nearly 5,000

North Korea has a massive numerical inventory of tanks. Quality is another question altogether.

The bulk of North Korea’s tank fleet consists of un-upgraded Soviet-era relics and indigenous iterations like the Chonma-ho and Pokpung-ho. North Korea has kept the fleet in reserve for decades, with the intent of using it as the “tip of a spear” in a kinetic assault against South Korean positions along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) cutting the peninsula in two.

Fifty years ago, this may have been a serious threat. Today, it is less so; the enormous tank fleet is intensely vulnerable to Western anti-armor precision munitions and FPV drones, and South Korea has taken note and prepared extensively for such an assault. Still, the sheer scale of the North Korean fleet remains dangerous.

2. Russia

Total Hulls: Around 5,000

Russia is historically the global leader in sheer tank volume. If this list had been compiled in 2021, Russia would have been the world’s leader several times over, with as many as 17,000 tanks in service and in storage.

After four and a half years of high-tempo warfare in Ukraine, this picture has changed somewhat. The intensive attrition on the battlefield in Ukraine has severely depleted Russia’s inventories, with many thousands of units lost; Ukraine’s ministry of defense has claimed upwards of 12,000 tank kills throughout the war, although this number is likely somewhat inflated; open-source intelligence analyst Oryx was only able to confirm around 4,400 of the losses.

While the exact number of tanks remaining in Russian service is a matter of debate, and the Kremlin has kept the true number closely guarded, several analysts have placed the number in the low-to-mid 5,000s—dropping Russia to the number two slot.

Relying heavily on surviving T-72 B2s, T-80 BVMs, and modern T-90Ms, Russia’s fleet is supplemented with Cold War-era T-62 and T-55 hulls. These older tanks are woefully inadequate, but restored to fill the gaps left behind by Ukraine attrition—and having ancient armor is better than having no armor. Despite staggering numbers of front-line losses, Russia’s tank fleet is far from exhausted, although the decreasing rate of losses suggests that the Kremlin has started to preserve the numbers of its remaining fleet.

1. China

Total Hulls: Over 5,800

With Russia’s armored fleet decimated in Ukraine, China’s has emerged as the world’s largest—perhaps inevitable for a country that was until recently the largest on Earth. While China’s main efforts at military modernization are sea and air oriented—building up an enormous carrier force for power projection into the Indo-Pacific, and perhaps specifically onto the shores of Taiwan—Beijing’s tank fleet is also modernized.

The backbone of China’s tank arsenal is the Type 99, first introduced in 2001. Supplementing these are older, upgraded Type 96 tanks, as well as a handful of other specialty tanks and legacy equipment. China’s tank numbers are the result of the country’s impressive industrial capacity featuring a rapid assembly line capacity; no country matches its ability to field armor at wartime scale.

About the Author: Harrison Kass

Harrison Kass is a writer and attorney focused on national security, technology, and political culture. His work has appeared in Tablet, City Journal, The Hill, The Spectator, and The Cipher Brief. He holds a JD from the University of Oregon and a master’s in Global & Joint Program Studies from NYU. More at harrisonkass.com.

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