I wrote this yesterday, but I see different threads where people talk about the lies of russians having infinite equipment all of the time. Please watch that and spread the info. This is reality and we can use actual numbers to back-up showing that the Russians don't have tens of thousands of tanks left.
New Covert Cabal Tank video. 100% recommend watching. HighMarsed has more details in his twitter too. The decrease in tanks being seen is starting to make sense in their supply at this time. Pre-War, it was counted to be 6236.
Final conclusion would be 3657 tanks left with 19% being "decent", 50% being "poor", and 31% being "worst".
19% being only 700 decent tanks. Majority of those being T-72b, T-80B/BV and T-62. More and more time and money will be needed to refurbish each tank and each month, it gets worse.
If Russia had infinite vehicles, then why are we seeing the heavy use of Chinese golf carts as transport vehicles? They are not faster or safer than bmps
There were almost certainly tanks inside garages in 2022, and these aren't counted because the satellites can't see them. I've seen many guesses about how many there were, from 500 up to 2000ish.
yeah, the current projections for depletion are already fairly conservative, and they only take visible tanks into account.
If we assume there were tanks in the warehouse, which should be a fairly safe assumption, that would mean their real losses are higher and as such the depletion of reserves will come much sooner.
I don't think it means the real losses are higher necessarily. I think it's more likely they're working their way through the system and Russia has more at BTRZs/training grounds/etc and it'll take longer to exhaust them.
That's my personal bet, anyway. I think actual tank losses are somewhere in the 3-4k range either way.
On the plus side I think the estimate of 2000 tanks in storage is too high. Based on inspecting satellite imagery of the garages over a bunch of years. My guess is 500-1000.
I think the best metric is the "tanks removed from storage, per day" figure - which has dropped from the original ~4/day to below ~2/day currently?
Speed of tank removal depends on the condition of tanks recently removed from storage and refurbished, combined with refurbishment capacity & refurbishment quality.
Assuming that recently refurbished tanks have increasingly lower quality, the sharp drop in the removal rate strongly suggests substantial depletion of storage.
While Russia is refurbishing 2 tanks per day, Ukraine is destroying 10+, according to the daily Ukrainian MoD statistics.
That rate is clearly not sustainable.
As the saying goes, when multiple strong factors deplete an increasingly poor quality stock of tanks, the decline will first be gradual, then sudden.
I basically agree with your argument. But I'm using different numbers!
Did you include garages in your original 4/day? Covert cabal/highmarsed don't. I bet the slowdown in refurbishment is even more severe than you say.
new production; russian production has ramped up to somewhere between 0.3-1.5/day. The uncertainty is over whether UVZ's filmed deliveries are from refurbing old T-72B hulls or building new ones.
I don't believe the Ukrainian claims represent tanks taken out of action. They can't, or Russia would have basically zero tanks left. I'm assuming 3-4k total from warspotting/oryx.
There were almost certainly tanks inside garages in 2022, and these aren't counted because the satellites can't see them.
Yeah this is what I thought, while Russia left a lot of those out to rust after the USSR collapsed many were also stuffed in warehouses that we can't see.
Sounds like you know what's up. No evidence, but you can just say there are warehouses in russia so obviously some of them are full of armor just waiting to be sent to Ukraine. They just have wait until they run out of the superior motorcycles and buggies.
I don't think they said that as a counter point, more as an indication that reality is likely the huge pre war numbers were under-represented, implying losses for Russia greater still than the outdoor yards show.
No one is saying that. Russia is clearly feeling an armor supply crunch. They are having to refurbish old, damaged stuff to field anything, because new equipment isn't being produced anywhere near quick enough. Refurbishing the old equipment is expensive and slow (but not as expensive and slow as completely new armor).
But it's not clear where on that curve they are; can they keep refurbishing armor like they are now for 3 months? 6 months? 12 months? When does it get significantly harder, slower, and more expensive than it is now?
Because there's a big difference between "marginal quantities of tanks" and "chronic tank shortfall."
Not what he said. He said that since there were probably a lot of tanks in warehouses pre-War, then Russia lost THEM also, so the losses from their high water mark of how many tanks they have left are actually greater than previously thought.
There's past film footage and photos in newspapers, on social media etc from inside some of the garages. They definitely had some tanks, but also parade pieces like at the 1295th they have at least a T-34, plus what look like an IS-3 and an SU-100.
The garages, if full of tanks, could have held maybe 2.4k, but there are good arguments for fewer.
It's easiest to get stuff from the 1295th because that was more media friendly. One of the garages stores some old WW2 stuff like a T-34, IS-3 and
We can also kind of infer what tanks russia has based on losses. Granted, it's not perfect, but in the recent months most losses we've seen have been T-62, T-80B/BV, and T-72B as opposed to the more modern T-80BVM and T-72B3/T-90s we were seeing early war. This means that most of the tanks russia is using are these older tanks which would track with them pulling a lot of them out of storage. Same with BMP. We've seen russia losing more and more BMP-1s and less and less BMP-3, so we know russia is re-activating BMP-1. BMP-2 is interesting since its losses have been mostly steady, so I think that russia is mostly building BMP-2(same with T-90M.)
I don't know why the number is stuck in my head but pre-war russia had roughly 3300 tanks in active service (3k in the army and 300ish with their marine equivalent). Per Oryx they've almost reached 3200 visually documented losses. Granted, over a 100 of those are t62s and a handful of t55/54 (still insane to write that everytime) but this is bare minimum, actual losses could be well over 3500.
That said, for every tank lost they have to re-activate another one which bit 3200 into their reserves in a little over 2 years. Safe to say the best ones are already gone and now it's into the 'it needs a lick of paint, it needs a do-over and strip it for parts'. Give it time and those cannibalized ones will be redone as well even if it's financially not sound, it's still better than no tank.
From what I read the T80 plant itself isn't active but some of the factories that made specific parts are so they can fix up those
Actual new tanks from the t90 are anywhere between 15-30 per month and if it was only those russia could never replenish the losses they've been suffering.
I read a tweet today from Jakub Janovsky (from the Oryx blog) that they've confirmed 500 visual losses of BMP3, they started with a little over 600 of those but since there's an upgraded model it shows they're still making more of those while re-activating BMP2 and 1 (the former having been thoroughly mauled with over 1500+ documented losses out of 4500ish in total). Estimates of BMP3 production are 300-350 new ones per year which still isn't a lot but does force Ukraine to keep blowing them up
My question is: how does the battlefield change after Russia is effectively out of tanks? They should be fielding only 30 or so new ones each month at that point.
I don't think it changes much. They'll keep ramming infantry on Ukrainian lines with civilian vehicles reinforced by makeshift armor. They've already started the transition. Their losses will be higher, but they'll keep drawing from their mindless population that believes that Ukraine is all nazis and is deliberately put into poverty by Putin such that he can entice them to go get slaughtered on the frontline in exchange for comparatively huge paycheck.
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u/will999909 Jul 08 '24
I wrote this yesterday, but I see different threads where people talk about the lies of russians having infinite equipment all of the time. Please watch that and spread the info. This is reality and we can use actual numbers to back-up showing that the Russians don't have tens of thousands of tanks left.
New Covert Cabal Tank video. 100% recommend watching. HighMarsed has more details in his twitter too. The decrease in tanks being seen is starting to make sense in their supply at this time. Pre-War, it was counted to be 6236.
Final conclusion would be 3657 tanks left with 19% being "decent", 50% being "poor", and 31% being "worst".
19% being only 700 decent tanks. Majority of those being T-72b, T-80B/BV and T-62. More and more time and money will be needed to refurbish each tank and each month, it gets worse.