This Is The Country With The Most Tanks

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 26, 1:25PM EDT

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This Is The Country With The Most Tanks — © Joe Raedle / Getty Images News via Getty Images

It has been said that Winston Churchill invented the tank. Although not true, he was a major supporter of the development of early tanks used in war. He pushed the development of tanks that could successfully be used with infantry as a means to attack enemies over harsh terrain and in particular Germans in WWI.

Battle tanks play a major role in WWII. These included what were then the most advanced tanks manufactured in large numbers–the German Panther, Soviet T-44, and American M26 Pershing, The battles that determined the war in North Africa from 1940 to 1943 were among the largest tank battles in history. The Second Battle of El Alamein (October 23 to November 11, 1942) involved over 1,000 tanks. Perhaps the largest tank battle in history happened as Germany attempted to conquer the Soviet Union. The Battle of Brody (June 23 to 30, 1941) involved a total of 4,000 tanks, of which as many as 1,000 were destroyed.

More recently, among the largest tank battles occurred in The Six-Day War (June 5 to 10 June 1967) between Israel and several Arab nations. Israel’s tank tactics were significant reasons for its victory. Israel had only 800 tanks to the Arabs’ 2,500.

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Tanks, and the ability to attack them, have been a major part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been famous for its tank tactics. So far, these have not been on display in Ukraine. Using weapons provided by the U.S. and other NATO nations, the Ukrainian military has destroyed as many as 200 Russian tanks and other armored vehicles. Most of the Russian tanks are T-72s which were first developed in the 1970s.

The ease with which Ukraine’s armed forces have destroyed Russian tanks has brought into question how effective the thousands of tanks operated by well over a dozen countries would do in similar wars.

According to Global Firepower, 63 countries have over 200 tanks each. This list is led by Russia with 12,420, followed by the U.S. with 6,612, North Korea at 5,895, and China at 5,250. Ukraine ranks 13th with 2,596.’

Interestingly, the country with the largest military is not among those with the most tanks. 24/7 Wall St. research shows that India has the largest army with 3,045,000 members and a budget of $72.9 billion.

Click here to read These Are The Countries With The Largest Militaries

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.