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skeptical_lurker comments on Open thread, Dec. 1 - Dec. 7, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I don't think this helps all that much (tanks can travel over rough terrain) and has high economic costs. Better to mine the infrastructure, and detonate the mines when a train carrying enemy soldiers passes over it.
Modern tanks are pretty capable cross-country, but they have a long supply tail. An Abrams tank (which, to be fair, is more of a gas-guzzler than average owing to its high weight and its cool-but-questionably-practical turbine engine) gets about half a mile to the gallon and has a nominal range of a bit under 300 miles, which overstates its operational range because warfare tends to involve a lot of waiting and a lot of local maneuvering.
Strategically, you can only move armor as fast as the trucks or railroad cars carrying fuel, food, and ammunition, and that means that roads, rails, and bridges remain important. (A bit less so if you're somewhere like Iraq, though, where you've got lots of open, hard-surfaced desert to work with.)
Well, destruction of infrastructure is certainly some help, but I imagine that the supply train would be reasonably adapted to rough terrain as well. Even if you can slow the Russians down, this only really helps if reinforcements are on the way, which depends on whether NATO is willing to get involved.
Destroying bridges is certainly really useful though.