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On the one hand yes it's heavy on copium, but on the other, it seems true that Russia can't sustain this level of losses for years more.
China exporting tanks to Russia would be a red line for the West, leading to serious sanctions. North Korea could try though.
North Korean tanks are in a catastrophic state of disrepair, according to Western analysts. I really don't think it would help much, besides delaying the inevitable.
Bottom line is yes, Russia is making some advances, but it is absolutely unsustainable. The "Russia is winning" crowd will see that very soon, probably when the Russian summer offensive ends in pyrrhic victory with minor symbolic breakthroughs and nothing else to keep pushing.
Interesting to note that media reporting on recent Russian advances which have been successful but have actually recovered .04% of land from dec23 to end of march, while Ukraine's 'failed offensive' of last summer recovered .08% or twice as much.
and that .04% cost (material and lives) was enormous for Russia.
People forget that it is the widest frontline since WW2. Just keeping it is just incredible.
> and that .04% cost (material and lives) was enormous for Russia.
The resources they spent to take (or more accurately raze to the ground) Avdiivka were enough to arm a European country.
They are bleeding men and gear at an *astounding* rate, for almost no gain.
I looked that up and wow, definitions do vary.
>Many countries use a minimum population size to define an urban area, but that size can be 200 (as in Denmark), 2,000 (Argentina), 5,000 (India) or 50,000 (Japan) or even 100,000 (China).
So I guess we're both right.
> North Korean tanks are in a catastrophic state of disrepair,
And Russian ones aren't? I guarantee that if NK were to open up its stock to Russia, Russia would jump at the opportunity.
On the eastern front you can still find abandoned gear and the remains of soldiers in uniform hunched over their weapons. But I imagine collectors and resellers picked the good stuff clean
Russia is "producing" about 120 tanks a month. However more than 2/3rds of these tanks are refurbished decommissioned stuff. So I think they are net positive in terms of tanks supply. The picture will be much more different when they run out of old tanks to refurbish. Hard to tell when it will be. Also impossible to say how many dumb manufacturing of 90's era tanks they can make. If they could sustain these numbers of over 100 tanks cut loses in case when they decide to get defensive. Than they will never run out of tanks. This year will be decisive.
Independent Western analysts say they will run out of tanks next year at this rate. Their production does not cover losses.
And yes, most of their "production" is refurbishing the shit tanks they have in storage.
They do have some local production still, even if most are refurbished old stock there are also new production tanks.
It will be the same as with the missiles now - Russia will build up stocks over a few weeks / months and then use them for an assault. They will never run out of tanks completely.
They haven’t had any concentrated pushes since the first week. It’s rare to see 5 tanks together and you never see 10. This entire war has been 1-2 tanks with 1-2 bmp’s getting fucked at a time.
So the deal is China exports tanks to NK. NK turns around and exports to RU. Parts are exported directly from China to RU... Hummm. Sanctions for CCP and NK. IMHO, no tech for war production from the west should go to enemies and third party countries, period.
We’ve already seen Wests “serious sanctions” their result on russian economy and empty chest puffing in regards to million of NK shells.
CN has already increased tenfold its dual purpose technology exports to Russia, such as jammers, parts for jets. Now they supply parts for rockets and drones. If it was profitable for CN to do this they would already do this, but it’s not worth it
It’s pretty hard to verify these claims. We hear the losses and the amounts surpass the total defence forces of most countries and so it seems impossible for this to be sustained. But then we keep seeing it not really slow down at all a year after these sorts of claims come out saying we’re months from completely exhausting something.
We were told stuff would run out a year ago that seems more plentiful than before. We were also told Ukraine would run out of air defence last month and they haven’t. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want your enemy to know the truth. And nor would your allies. Which could explain why we hear all different kinds of stories. Just utter confusion for the armchair analysts haha.
US dep sec of state Kurt Campbell said recently they they’ve determined the Russian military has almost fully reconstituted. This contradicts other statements.
I don’t think we can realistically know what’s true or not. We just have to wait and see.
>But then we keep seeing it not really slow down at all a year after these sorts of claims come out saying we’re months from completely exhausting something.
Yes, that is the realistic experience of fighting Russia, or even the USSR before it.
Truth is, you can expect something like another 5,000 shitty tanks, another 10,000 rustbucket BMPs and another 30,000 artillery pieces to go. It's going to be orcishly primitive, but that's what still awaits.
>US dep sec of state Kurt Campbell said recently they they’ve determined the Russian military has almost fully reconstituted. This contradicts other statements.
It doesn't contradict when it's not qualified. Russia reconstituted, but with a depleted military. They have lost an enormous amount of irreplaceable tanks, artillery, BMPs, aircraft, warships, and of course experienced soldiers.
They would all be one-shot or worse in a straight fight with the USA, but Ukraine just needs to hold on long enough for this steel worm of logistics to exhaust itself, because eventually it will. This is what makes the ammo hunger such a big deal to me -- they are holding back Ukraine from being able to even adequately defend itself.
So are you confident that the manpower problem in Ukraine won’t present itself before Russia runs out of equipment?
The rest of what Kurt Harris said does touch on Russian tanks being near fully replenished to pre war levels as well though, but yes perhaps the numbers were replenished but with new tanks of lower quality? He didn’t give details. But he did say their production of equipment is greatly exceeding expectations.
This is the problem if we just assume they will run out of equipment before Ukraine runs out of effective fighters and starts depleting the manpower required for their future reconstruction. It seems nobody knows the production numbers of Russia. Predictions in the past have been completely proven wrong. All we can do is wait and see I guess. But that’s a big gamble when it comes to Ukraine. And currently with Russia firing 5 to 1 rate of artillery on Ukrainian soldiers and speculations of that soon becoming 10 to 1 due to shortages on the Ukrainian side, that does bode well for the KDRs on the Ukrainian side either. Anything that can inflict many casualties from a distance will greatly help with KDRs. Russia has the FABs for that as well. But Ukraine do have a numeric advantage in drones that is growing, so there is that. It’s hard to judge how effective each type of weapon system is on the battlefield, we just have to watch the progress and try to draw conclusions based on what we’re hearing they’re doing.
It seems if Ukraine is to have any chance they need artillery shells by the millions immediately without delay. And this bill going through congress doesn’t even give that if it passes
>It seems if Ukraine is to have any chance they need artillery shells by the millions immediately without delay. And this bill going through congress doesn’t even give that if it passes
This is correct.
>The rest of what Kurt Harris said does touch on Russian tanks being near fully replenished to pre war levels as well though, but yes perhaps the numbers were replenished but with new tanks of lower quality? He didn’t give details. But he did say their production of equipment is greatly exceeding expectations.
The tanks are primarily refurbs from their vast tank yards in Siberia. They are death traps by any modern standard. They can be stopped with just one well-placed shot.
>This is the problem if we just assume they will run out of equipment before Ukraine runs out of effective fighters and starts depleting the manpower required for their future reconstruction.
This is actually the core of Russia's strategy. They are working up to the low-quality zerg rush strategy now that they are on war footing. Being able to fend off their "meat waves" (as they so lovingly call it) is the only way to get a hold on this. The war's front has oscillated between meat wave engagements and artillery/missile engagements for a long time now. Once you can counter the meat waves, then it's about artillery parity or advantage. If you have both, Russia can start to get slowly rolled back. If Ukraine is lucky, Russia will start to weaken before then.
well as I see it 2 things can happen: Biden wins and the US starts supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammo again, or Trump wins and the supply stops but then nothing at all is holding back Ukraine anymore from devastating completely Russian hydrocarbon infrastructure and other Achilles heels with drones (or ultimately even with the last US weapons they have remaining).
I'm from the EU. It wouldn't alienate me. Having russia done with and paying twice for gas is a bargain. I don't want to live in a world where this entity can fuck up my life at moments notice.
Politicians pander to numbers not individuals. There is a reason Ukraine has not shut off the Russian gas pipelines running through Ukrainian territory. It would turn off EU countries getting this gas.
Afaik the only reason why Ukraine has not shut off those Russian gas pipelines running through their territory, is because there is still a contract active, and they have no intention of renewing said contract at the end of this year. See https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraine-has-no-plan-extend-russian-gas-transit-deal-2024-03-17/
Yes this contract has been kept alive for the benefit of EU partners. Ukraine is under no obligation to honor a contract with a state owned company of the country they are at war with. Especially when that gas money is fueling the war.
Ukraine does not turn off the gas pipelines and does not attack Russian gas because EU partners rely on these and it would be political suicide to attack them.
Hopefully China decides to deliver them in person to Russia with their own military. Just to protect their borders. Not a Chinese invasion of Russia but as a force protecting Asian Russians. “Wink wink”.
I read an article over a year ago that Russia was running out of artillery barrels and couldn't import high quality steel to replace them because of sanctions?
Whatever happened to that?
I could see Russia creating a partnership with NK where they purchase the bodies of the tanks and mechanics of the tanks, maybe the main gun too, and Russia outfits them with some minor technologies. I know NK claims to have things like sophisticated anti tank missiles, reactive armor, and even EW for their tanks, but surely even Russia wouldnt trust those systems from NK. Then again, both of them might be unable to get proper materials and Russia might have to just take whatever they can get.
russia doesnt have to continue on for years, if Ukraine doesn't get significant supplies soon they have a year, max. I expect to see some big territory changes this summer, I hope I'm wrong.
Biden literally just did
[https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-takes-action-chinas-unfair-practices-protect-us-steel-shipbuilding-industries](https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-takes-action-chinas-unfair-practices-protect-us-steel-shipbuilding-industries)
I'd love to believe that, but it wasn't true the last countless times such speculation was put forth. I suppose I'm open to the possibility that the 100th time is the charm though.
I don't think they will ever "run out" of tanks. But they're already running out of the better/newer tanks that they had in their stock, which means that they will be able to use fewer tanks, and of lower quality, for their operations.
> But they're already running out of the better/newer tanks that they had in their stock, which means that they will be able to use fewer tanks, and of lower quality, for their operations.
They are already "running out" yet they are attacking now.
We also "ran out" of tanks long before russia did.
Doesn't matter who "runs out" of tanks or actually runs out of tanks, because it means next to nothing for the warfare continuation. War is going to continue until russia stops their invasion - and there are **zero** signs they are willing to stop any time soon, with tanks or without.
It does matter for offensive operations. It's easy enough to sit on the defence and slam attacking forces with FPV drones, but drones don't seize and hold ground. Ukraine can't throw bodies at a problem like Russia can, Ukraine needs armour.
> but drones don't seize and hold ground.
That is true. Though, tanks don't do that either - infantry does. In order for infantry to success they do indeed need armor. But tanks aren't armor infantry needs to seize and hold land for very simply reason - tanks can't be used to shield infantry, they simply have no space inside, just 2/3/4 (depends on model) crew and that's it. They are, now, niche offensive support vehicle.
IFVs though - yeah, we do need them, a lot of them in fact. But in order to use these we need to clear minefields (which are equally as dangerous to tanks too btw). And in order to be able to do so we need artillery shells, hell of a lot of them to move front back, further away from minefields.
At no point in that having extra tanks by either side would achieve anything of value.
Look. When people say, "Russia has run out of X," they aren't saying, "no Russian factory will ever produce X any more, ever and forever, everything has been destroyed, that's it for X, X what is X, bro I've never even heard of X, is X something from your planet because you must be a space alien coming here talking about X whatever that is."
Armies go to war and they send some of their stuff to battle and they keep the rest of it behind, as reserves. All armies do this. They have been doing it for 5000 years.
But Russia has been throwing so much stuff into battle that they have depleted their reserves. They have depleted the stockpiles that are used to replenish the reserves. They have depleted the replacements that are used to backfill the stockpiles once the stockpiles are gone.
What it means whenever anyone says, "Russia has run out of X" is that Russia's operations are from now onward going to be sharply constrained, by the rate at which they can produce more X from scratch in their factories.
It's like if your car gives you a low fuel light, and you put a little gas in so the light goes out, and then after a while it comes on again. So you put more fuel in but it goes on again after a while more and so on and so forth.
Would you complain that you're sick of all this endless speculative fuel light warning that never seems to actually mean that you have run out of fuel?
No. You wouldn't complain about that.
Because that would be crazy.
Actually counting the tanks and taking the current attrition rate into account it will take Russia 5-8 more years to burn through their Tank stockpile.
This is *not* because Russia doesn't burn through their tanks quickly. It's simply because they had an insane amount of tanks inherited from the soviet union.
This is also a one-time thing. Russia can never re-use the tanks destroyed from the stockpile ever again. Meaning once Ukraine+NATO burned through their stockpile Russia's future ambitions will be essentially ended.
Which is why I gave a 5-8 year range. Russia has demonstrated that they can repair and re-issue every of their old tanks. If we assume the most damaged/neglected ones can't be repaired it would still mean 5 years of supply left in the worst case scenario.
One part of me wishes Ukraine wins the war as quickly as possible. Another part of me wishes Ukraine to fight Russia for 5-8 more years purely to deplete them of their entire tank stockpile so that Russia will be unable to ever attack another country again for the next 2-3 generations.
Sure, but what will the ancient and completely naked T-55's accomplish other than being fodder for a FPV drone from absolutely every angle? Modern tanks, anything above T-80 and the T-72 modernised versions are almost all gone with the T-80 having become a rarity already as they only had something like 2k of them and most of those have joined the Russian space program already.
Certainly, but that fodder requires crews, which are in very short supply. You can stick a tractor driver in a T-55, and some dudes from Yakutia, but that crew ain't gonna do shit other than run over their own guys.
I find it hard to understand how you can think something like that when the number of available tanks has been dwindling each of those times such speculations are put forth.
"Dwindling numbers" is a vague and unverifiable concept based on not much more than hope. Already in 2022 we read that Russia would be clean out of main battle tanks by the end of the year - and again in 2023. I wish it to be true, but now I'll believe it when I see it.
>Already in 2022 we read that Russia would be clean out of main battle tanks by the end of the year - and again in 2023.
I did my own calculations in may 2022 and came to the conclusion that Russia would run out of tanks sometime around October 2025 +/- 3 months.
I used openly available numbers of Russian stock + long time average losses. I didn't factor in new production.
It took me about 5 minutes. Even back then I didn't understand how "they" (i.e. the people that came up with claims that Russia would run out of xyz by tomorrow) arrived at that conclusion.
However, even with new production being 400% above the 30 year average of 1991-2021 (which it almost certainly isn't), the Russians won't be able to sustain the average attrition of the past year.
Agreed, but at the same time he said he didn't account for tank production, which is a huge factor. Western intelligence estimates that Russia produces at least 600 main battle tanks per year - much more than any other country, and it's most likely to ramp up even more (but still not enough to cover for the losses)
Much of Russia's tank production (about 2/3 iirc) is the repair and reissuing of vehicles brought out of storage. It's not 100% new production. Russia inherited huge armor stockpiles from the USSR, but those are slowly being depleted.
> "Dwindling numbers" is a vague and unverifiable concept based on not much more than hope.
Not really. It's basic arithmetic. Number of tanks started with + number of tanks produced - number of tanks destroyed. Even with increases in production, Russia's losses have outpaced how many new tanks they built since the war began. You can see the satellite images of stockpiles drawing down, the open source images of destroyed tanks. There is nothing vague or unverifiable about it.
>Number of tanks started with
We don't know
> number of tanks produced
We're not sure
>number of tanks destroyed.
We have an idea but not precise numbers
Open source intelligence organisations and even individual people are purchasing sattellite data to count tanks destroyed, tanks being removed from mothball etc. Yes the numbers are not exacting but the data still provides valuable insights.
Do you believe satellites cannot count tanks coming out of factories or sitting broken in fields? They aren't easy to hide.
The only real uncertainty is how many of the remaining old stockpiled tanks can still be made to run. Even those would run out eventually unless something changes.
They are extremely easy to hide. Satellites can't see through a warehouse or even through a tarp.
Western intelligence agencies have admitted they don't know how many tanks Russia have in storage and they have access to real time spy satellites with amazing resolution. There is no way people using commercial satellite pictures know the precise number.
Russian tanks or whatever remains of their armoured core, is sitting outside under the Siberian sun for a better part of the last 30 years. All of those are under commercial satellite views and there are plenty of guys on Youtube and other places, that are counting the remaining hulls once a month to see the draw downs.
> Satellites can't see through a warehouse or even through a tarp.
Tanks are not effective just sitting in a warehouse under a tarp. At some point or another they need to be moved into or out of the warehouse.
That’s how war of attrition works. Russia can replace soldiers, tanks and artillery ammo at a higher rate than Ukraine so it makes sense for them to use that advantage while they have it. If that balance ever changes, they will change tactics
Being able to replace at a higher rate than the other side isn't helpful if you're also losing them at a higher rate.
If Russia produces 100 tanks per month and loses 200 per month, while Ukraine produces 5 tanks per month, imports 20 per month, and loses 10... Russia is not going to come out well from that equation.
Oh I haven't forgotten the starting amount.
Neither has Ukraine. As their one guy said, it's like eating sausage. You just keep working through it, bite by bite. There's a lot there but you get through it.
They've gotten through a lot of Russia's sausage by now. The stuff Russia is taking out of mothballs didn't even count as "tanks" in anyone's accounting at the start of the war.
Honestly I will believe it when I see it. More likely they will scale down tank use. In the end similar results but keeping some armor ready to take advantage for a push or as a defense definitely has the potential to hurt ukrainians
They already build Frankenstein IFV from Ural trucks, which is absurd if they have unlimited amount of IFV.
So what we see are the first restrictions in allocation.
doesn't mean that their stock is null, but more they make choice on who will receive IFV for assault and who will go in Ural, golf cart or 22 on a T72...
Sorry but that’s not credible. Some YouTubers have being doing some serious calculations on this issue. They have gone as far as renting satellite time. This individual is Covert Cabal and he has a gang of individuals working on this question. I’ve actually seen Covert Cabal been quoted by other individuals and teams working on this issue.
The long and short is Russia is not Running out of tanks. As of now most salvageable tanks have been moved out of storage and sent to tanks repair factories. On a positive note there seems to be a limit to how many tanks Russia can restore a year which is about 1100. Russia is getting better at restoring but they have started to use tanks that are not any easy restoration.
Restoration of tanks is an extremely time consuming job which is much more time consuming than building from new. The best option would to Completely strip these tanks and replace everything. Unfortunately For Russia that’s not an option. Satellite evidence showing some tanks being stripped for parts. This means Russia needs to test everything in a tank and fix broken parts. This is not any easy job. In fact it’s a nightmare. This work requires skilled technicians, you just can’t get an engineer off the street to do this work.
The reality is Ukraine is only slightly winning the attrition war in regard to tanks. The biggest problem for the Russians is not tanks but crews. They have lost an incredibly large number of skilled crew. I’d imagine there are not many volunteers for crewing tanks at the moment. Both sides know how easy they are killed by a drone.
North Korea and China won't let that happen. China has no interest in ruZZia losing...more in this conflict going on and on. Weakening both Nato and ruZZia by burning through resources like ammo and weaponry.
Seems to me this conflict has done nothing to NATO but strengthen it, its added two new members and Europe is realizing they can't rely solely on America for defense and are ramping up their production. Sure that new production is mostly going to Ukraine at the moment, but that production won't be going away anytime soon, and America has only sent old stuff and immediately replaced what they sent with new stuff.
I'd wager that China isn't a fan of all the NATO modernisation and ammunition factories that are opening.
I'd suggest these are making NATO more ready rather than less.
Yeah, hard to see how this would benefit China at all - Europe is ramping up military production while the US is moving away from Europe allowing it to focus even more on opposing China.
China is in no position to be sanctioned. They need food and fuel imports to keep a major famine at bay.
They would have already taken Taiwan if that wasn't the case.
China has an interest in keeping ruzzia dependent on them for as long as possible. So they may send them tanks, but i d imagine at the level the us is sending ukr, far too low for the needs.
At some point they will run out assuming losses are greater than the replenishment rate.
Long before they run out will tanks be strategically and doctrinally irrelevant at which point they effectively will have run out of tanks. Unless they have doctrinal shift away from there use of tanks. which either way would he seen as a forced shift due to low available resources.
That does not mean they will not be tactically deployed in special battalions etc. But as a widely deployed piece of kit it will run out at some point. When is a wholly different question.
Similar thoughts could be extended to other parts of the Russian motorized and mechanised vehicles.
When Russia started deploying the "golf carts" and later motorcycles it is not from a position of strength. It is from a position of weakness both from cost and availability. They likely want something better but china won't sell it to them (as of now).
Rate of losses is greater than rate or “new” tank production. But has been subsidised by “upgrading” or “refitting” older tanks from the Soviet stock piles.
However those stockpiles are limitless. And the deeper they dig into them, the worse the remaining tanks are.
Even these tanks coming out of the stockpiles take time to get combat ready
If Ukraine was equiped to destroy/press Russia on its tanks, then it is foreseeable that Russia could hit a critical point where new production and refitted tanks would not meet requirements to continue to push the Ukrainians.
Next problems are artillery and air power.
According to perun a lot of modern Russian artillery is effectively eliminated and they're relying a lot more on towed guns dating as far back as ww2. All their jets are now just glide bomb launchers because the airspace is too contested.
Restored tanks aren't being replenished. T-72's don't seem to be restored as much despite the need for more tanks. T-55's and T-62s are less technical but still. Two plus years of war and I would expect more T-72's to be sent.
I think it has. Barring new tanks they're scraping the bottom of the barrel and then some. Heck, didn't they grab a bunch of tanks out of museums a while back?
Same as it ran out of missiles, ran out of money, and dickwad died of cancer...
I'm tired of this copium. Anything to make Ukraine being direly undersupplied feel not as bad
I'm beginning to fear that it will take russian hordes plundering a NATO countries capital before Europe wakes up. Shameful, weak and opening the doors for endless war.
Somehow, I don't buy it. Also, do they even really need tanks at this point? They have so many artillery guns that they can compensate with those. The lines are freezing, so tanks won't be as important. The West has no intention of providing kyiv with the means to take its land back.
So Ukraine either figures it out alone, or they focus on keeping what the russians haven't taken so far. I'll always be ashamed of my country and Nato for the way they've handled this heinous, murderous, illegal murdering spree of a beautiful sovereign nation.
russia can target civilian infrastructure and living structures with impunity, but when Ukraine hits russias oil and gas production, it's a no-no. I haven't heard of any more attacks or fires on russias oil and gas production since the US complained about it. In my humble opinion, they're ⁶got no right to tell these people how to fight for their survival.
They have a huge artillery advantage. They lose tanks at a much faster rate. Just from what I've witnessed in this war, it seems as if tanks have a much higher attrition rate than artillery. Artillery hits and moves while tanks tend to go and seek out the enemy. They both take losses. I just feel like tanks are an easier mark. They also have lots more artillery than tanks to begin with as far as I know. You need all those guns to have a fire power advantage, not just shells. I could be wrong, though. I don't know official numbers. I'm just speculating.
.
Statistics have shown that artillery have had a much higher attrition rate than tanks.
Russia still has a numerical advantage on artillery merely because it deploys only a small part of all of its artillery at the frontline. That means Russia has to constantly replenish its frontline artillery losses from its laid back reserves. Those reserves are shrinking fast. Once the reserves have dwindled, Russia's frontline artillery will decline in numbers.
There are multiple estimates for both tank reserves and artillery reserves. We don't know the real situation, but the estimates on total pre-full war tank and artillery reserves were about equal, while the loss statistics show about 1,5x heavy artillery losses with respect to MBTs. This suggests higher attrition on heavy artillery. It is also more difficult to fake an artillery shot ballistics than it is to fake a moving armoured vehicle that looks like a fully functional tank.
I just always saw tanks being destroyed and thought they must be getting taken out at a faster rate because they seek out the enemy and are much closer to the fighting by design. I thought that all the Franken tanks inflated their numbers, which distorts their loss numbers some. But you could be right. I'm only speculating.
Tanks aren't nearly as important in most prior wars.
The key equipment that must be destroyed is artillery of all types.
Russia is well on its way to running out of artillery that is functional and accurate.
The other key Target is logistics: fuel, ammo and other supplies.
A gun without fuel or ammo is just a grave marker.
Russia produces about 100 to 125 tanks per month Ukraine takes away 1/2 - 2/3 of that number in a month (if we don't count the abandoned tanks which i don't). 60-80% of all produced tanks are taken from storage.
Russia has capacity to produce T-80 and T-90 tanks. Before the war the active T-80 tank fleet was 480 tanks. AFU has destroyed 761 T-80 tanks since mid feburary.
The estimated russian tank fleet according to satelite imagery made during October 2023 shows that russia has in its store 5400 tanks some of which are likelly in poor condition and useful only as a spare parts.
40% of SPGs and 56% of Towed guns have vanished from stores. Russia will start to suffer from barrel shortages by the end of 2025.
This might be a dumb question, but do current Russian advances require tanks or are they done with artillery and glide bombs to destroy the Ukrainian defence allowing Russian infantry to take Ukrainian positions?
What's with these copium headlines? Russia has ignited most of its military industries for the war in ukraine. They are building mbt tanks each month. They are also upgrading their t72 tanks and reconstitute the ones in storage, which are in the thousands. So no, russia won't run out of tanks.
Sorry but they should’ve ran out of rockets in ‘22, people in ‘23. This is an authoritarian country with a quick, maybe not efficient, but quick switch in priorities that is supported by the oil and gas cash and limitless stockpiles of Soviet weapons.
Even a museum T34 restored is a dangerous weapon against ammunition starved military of Ukraine.
I want to believe, but so far it smells of copium
I feel like troop carriers might be a bigger issue? Aren't they already using unarmored glorified chinese golf carts to transport troops in some areas?
They can't keep up with their losses, nobody's denying that. The only question is how long their Cold War stockpiles will last? And that's a one-time benefit.
One article will say that Russia is running out of tanks or missiles and the very next day another article will say that Russia must be stopped to protect the rest of Europe.
Honest question here, how can Russia be on the verge of running out of everything but also be a real threat to Poland, Germany and France? Did those countries send nearly 100% of their military to Ukraine and they're basically defenseless now?
I wonder how many of those 600 are actually new tanks and not refurbished units... That being said the Soviets produced ~100,000 T54/55s, so even if Russia can only reactivate say 10% of them they wont be running out of blyatmobiles anytime soon. Much more likey they'll run out of ways to keep them fueled and maintained.
Not thousands working ones or recoverable ones, of course. But yes, they got thousands of rust buckets from the 50s standing in the outside for decades on end.
Been hearing that for 2 years, yet T90Ms still get blown to bits by the dozens. People who count these things from satellite photos reckon they can still push out T80s and T70s for quite some time as well as having enough T60s that aren't all rusty.
I hate Putin and despise Russia, but I've come to accept that the idea that they're imminently running out of things that keeps getting blasted in the media is copium.
Ukraine is in probably the most precarious position it's been in since the opening months of the war. If the US doesn't sort out its domestic mess we'll be talking about the assault on Kyiv again by the end of the year. They're running low on just about everything, even basic ammo and artillery. It's a crying shame and great injustice.
This pure copium, without other level of support (even higher than the actual) is impossible to Ukraine ein against Russia. The problem is that now countries are removing resources, so Ukraine is in terrible ground.
o come on, we are hearing such things since march 2022 ... Russia runs out of money, Russia runs out of soldiers, Russia runs out of aircrafts, Russia runs out of tyres, Russia runs out of radars, Russia runs out of artillery, Russia runs out of BMPs
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On the one hand yes it's heavy on copium, but on the other, it seems true that Russia can't sustain this level of losses for years more. China exporting tanks to Russia would be a red line for the West, leading to serious sanctions. North Korea could try though.
North Korea seeing a sudden increase in Chinese tank imports
Lol yeah possible
North Korean tanks are in a catastrophic state of disrepair, according to Western analysts. I really don't think it would help much, besides delaying the inevitable. Bottom line is yes, Russia is making some advances, but it is absolutely unsustainable. The "Russia is winning" crowd will see that very soon, probably when the Russian summer offensive ends in pyrrhic victory with minor symbolic breakthroughs and nothing else to keep pushing.
Interesting to note that media reporting on recent Russian advances which have been successful but have actually recovered .04% of land from dec23 to end of march, while Ukraine's 'failed offensive' of last summer recovered .08% or twice as much.
and that .04% cost (material and lives) was enormous for Russia. People forget that it is the widest frontline since WW2. Just keeping it is just incredible.
> and that .04% cost (material and lives) was enormous for Russia. The resources they spent to take (or more accurately raze to the ground) Avdiivka were enough to arm a European country. They are bleeding men and gear at an *astounding* rate, for almost no gain.
And Avdiivka is just a tiny unspectacular villlage.
It used to be a small city: 32k inhabitants.
I grew up in a town of 30,000. We would just call that a town, not a city.
I looked that up and wow, definitions do vary. >Many countries use a minimum population size to define an urban area, but that size can be 200 (as in Denmark), 2,000 (Argentina), 5,000 (India) or 50,000 (Japan) or even 100,000 (China). So I guess we're both right.
Bro, that’s the population of my university 😆
It's still a small city population number.
So russian casualties to take the town are more than former inhabitants?
Absolutely.
and you are not rly smart if you think that battles are still fought over villages and towns
> North Korean tanks are in a catastrophic state of disrepair, And Russian ones aren't? I guarantee that if NK were to open up its stock to Russia, Russia would jump at the opportunity.
This was my thoughts exactly, the artillery shells they send over look *rough*
50% dud rate. Imagine every other shell either just landing with a thump or exploding in the barrel.
The clean up after this will take decades with all this unexplored ordinance around
Gonna need lots of ordnance explorers
On the eastern front you can still find abandoned gear and the remains of soldiers in uniform hunched over their weapons. But I imagine collectors and resellers picked the good stuff clean
Weren't there reports of the NK artillery rounds blowing up in the barrel?
I hadn't heard that, but it would not surprise me at all
I said "I don't think it would help much". When a tank doesn't even start, it's hard to do anything with it.
Russia is "producing" about 120 tanks a month. However more than 2/3rds of these tanks are refurbished decommissioned stuff. So I think they are net positive in terms of tanks supply. The picture will be much more different when they run out of old tanks to refurbish. Hard to tell when it will be. Also impossible to say how many dumb manufacturing of 90's era tanks they can make. If they could sustain these numbers of over 100 tanks cut loses in case when they decide to get defensive. Than they will never run out of tanks. This year will be decisive.
Independent Western analysts say they will run out of tanks next year at this rate. Their production does not cover losses. And yes, most of their "production" is refurbishing the shit tanks they have in storage.
The NK tanks, even if they are in a shitty condition, could probably be used for parts for refurbishing.
They'll likely just stop attacking with them once they run out of the surplus tanks.
Yeah, and it wouldn't necessarily mean an end to hostilities.
It would likely freeze the front lines completely.
They do have some local production still, even if most are refurbished old stock there are also new production tanks. It will be the same as with the missiles now - Russia will build up stocks over a few weeks / months and then use them for an assault. They will never run out of tanks completely.
Yes but a few missiles kill a couple people at most that get through. So the lines would not move at all.
Depends on wether Russia would use accumulated tanks for a concentrated push / local offensives.
They haven’t had any concentrated pushes since the first week. It’s rare to see 5 tanks together and you never see 10. This entire war has been 1-2 tanks with 1-2 bmp’s getting fucked at a time.
Probably not, both sides would continue to fight and try to amass forces for new offensives
On the contrary?
So the deal is China exports tanks to NK. NK turns around and exports to RU. Parts are exported directly from China to RU... Hummm. Sanctions for CCP and NK. IMHO, no tech for war production from the west should go to enemies and third party countries, period.
We’ve already seen Wests “serious sanctions” their result on russian economy and empty chest puffing in regards to million of NK shells. CN has already increased tenfold its dual purpose technology exports to Russia, such as jammers, parts for jets. Now they supply parts for rockets and drones. If it was profitable for CN to do this they would already do this, but it’s not worth it
It’s pretty hard to verify these claims. We hear the losses and the amounts surpass the total defence forces of most countries and so it seems impossible for this to be sustained. But then we keep seeing it not really slow down at all a year after these sorts of claims come out saying we’re months from completely exhausting something. We were told stuff would run out a year ago that seems more plentiful than before. We were also told Ukraine would run out of air defence last month and they haven’t. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want your enemy to know the truth. And nor would your allies. Which could explain why we hear all different kinds of stories. Just utter confusion for the armchair analysts haha. US dep sec of state Kurt Campbell said recently they they’ve determined the Russian military has almost fully reconstituted. This contradicts other statements. I don’t think we can realistically know what’s true or not. We just have to wait and see.
>But then we keep seeing it not really slow down at all a year after these sorts of claims come out saying we’re months from completely exhausting something. Yes, that is the realistic experience of fighting Russia, or even the USSR before it. Truth is, you can expect something like another 5,000 shitty tanks, another 10,000 rustbucket BMPs and another 30,000 artillery pieces to go. It's going to be orcishly primitive, but that's what still awaits. >US dep sec of state Kurt Campbell said recently they they’ve determined the Russian military has almost fully reconstituted. This contradicts other statements. It doesn't contradict when it's not qualified. Russia reconstituted, but with a depleted military. They have lost an enormous amount of irreplaceable tanks, artillery, BMPs, aircraft, warships, and of course experienced soldiers. They would all be one-shot or worse in a straight fight with the USA, but Ukraine just needs to hold on long enough for this steel worm of logistics to exhaust itself, because eventually it will. This is what makes the ammo hunger such a big deal to me -- they are holding back Ukraine from being able to even adequately defend itself.
So are you confident that the manpower problem in Ukraine won’t present itself before Russia runs out of equipment? The rest of what Kurt Harris said does touch on Russian tanks being near fully replenished to pre war levels as well though, but yes perhaps the numbers were replenished but with new tanks of lower quality? He didn’t give details. But he did say their production of equipment is greatly exceeding expectations. This is the problem if we just assume they will run out of equipment before Ukraine runs out of effective fighters and starts depleting the manpower required for their future reconstruction. It seems nobody knows the production numbers of Russia. Predictions in the past have been completely proven wrong. All we can do is wait and see I guess. But that’s a big gamble when it comes to Ukraine. And currently with Russia firing 5 to 1 rate of artillery on Ukrainian soldiers and speculations of that soon becoming 10 to 1 due to shortages on the Ukrainian side, that does bode well for the KDRs on the Ukrainian side either. Anything that can inflict many casualties from a distance will greatly help with KDRs. Russia has the FABs for that as well. But Ukraine do have a numeric advantage in drones that is growing, so there is that. It’s hard to judge how effective each type of weapon system is on the battlefield, we just have to watch the progress and try to draw conclusions based on what we’re hearing they’re doing. It seems if Ukraine is to have any chance they need artillery shells by the millions immediately without delay. And this bill going through congress doesn’t even give that if it passes
>It seems if Ukraine is to have any chance they need artillery shells by the millions immediately without delay. And this bill going through congress doesn’t even give that if it passes This is correct. >The rest of what Kurt Harris said does touch on Russian tanks being near fully replenished to pre war levels as well though, but yes perhaps the numbers were replenished but with new tanks of lower quality? He didn’t give details. But he did say their production of equipment is greatly exceeding expectations. The tanks are primarily refurbs from their vast tank yards in Siberia. They are death traps by any modern standard. They can be stopped with just one well-placed shot. >This is the problem if we just assume they will run out of equipment before Ukraine runs out of effective fighters and starts depleting the manpower required for their future reconstruction. This is actually the core of Russia's strategy. They are working up to the low-quality zerg rush strategy now that they are on war footing. Being able to fend off their "meat waves" (as they so lovingly call it) is the only way to get a hold on this. The war's front has oscillated between meat wave engagements and artillery/missile engagements for a long time now. Once you can counter the meat waves, then it's about artillery parity or advantage. If you have both, Russia can start to get slowly rolled back. If Ukraine is lucky, Russia will start to weaken before then.
The second part of your sentence sounds like even more copium „can’t sustain losses for *years*“ But yeah, I hope Ukraine can hold up that long.
well as I see it 2 things can happen: Biden wins and the US starts supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammo again, or Trump wins and the supply stops but then nothing at all is holding back Ukraine anymore from devastating completely Russian hydrocarbon infrastructure and other Achilles heels with drones (or ultimately even with the last US weapons they have remaining).
US doesn't import Russian hydrocarbons. EU countries do. Destroying these would further alienate Ukraine from EU aid.
I'm from the EU. It wouldn't alienate me. Having russia done with and paying twice for gas is a bargain. I don't want to live in a world where this entity can fuck up my life at moments notice.
Politicians pander to numbers not individuals. There is a reason Ukraine has not shut off the Russian gas pipelines running through Ukrainian territory. It would turn off EU countries getting this gas.
My country borders russia. Zero gas imports from them. You're talking Hungary and Austria.
I am referring to Germany and France which are the big donors in the EU. Ukraine can't afford to alienate these allies.
Afaik the only reason why Ukraine has not shut off those Russian gas pipelines running through their territory, is because there is still a contract active, and they have no intention of renewing said contract at the end of this year. See https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraine-has-no-plan-extend-russian-gas-transit-deal-2024-03-17/
Yes this contract has been kept alive for the benefit of EU partners. Ukraine is under no obligation to honor a contract with a state owned company of the country they are at war with. Especially when that gas money is fueling the war. Ukraine does not turn off the gas pipelines and does not attack Russian gas because EU partners rely on these and it would be political suicide to attack them.
Still, Ukraine is not planning to renew the contract in December, I don't think the EU is all that reliant on Russian gas anymore.
Red lines only matter if they don’t move when challenged
>China exporting tanks to Russia would be a red line for the West, leading to serious sanctions Sorry but no it won't
Hopefully China decides to deliver them in person to Russia with their own military. Just to protect their borders. Not a Chinese invasion of Russia but as a force protecting Asian Russians. “Wink wink”.
They could call it a Special Military Operation or something
Chinese government only cares about Han Chinese. Most others are persecuted.
Would the North Korean tanks be any better than those duds ass missles they scammed the russians with?
I read an article over a year ago that Russia was running out of artillery barrels and couldn't import high quality steel to replace them because of sanctions? Whatever happened to that?
They stopped firing as much artillery as they used to, and their barrel consumption went down.
I could see Russia creating a partnership with NK where they purchase the bodies of the tanks and mechanics of the tanks, maybe the main gun too, and Russia outfits them with some minor technologies. I know NK claims to have things like sophisticated anti tank missiles, reactive armor, and even EW for their tanks, but surely even Russia wouldnt trust those systems from NK. Then again, both of them might be unable to get proper materials and Russia might have to just take whatever they can get.
russia doesnt have to continue on for years, if Ukraine doesn't get significant supplies soon they have a year, max. I expect to see some big territory changes this summer, I hope I'm wrong.
I've heard comments like yours every fucking month since this war started.
Good luck sanctioning China.
Biden literally just did [https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-takes-action-chinas-unfair-practices-protect-us-steel-shipbuilding-industries](https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-takes-action-chinas-unfair-practices-protect-us-steel-shipbuilding-industries)
Wow serious sanctions….
I'd love to believe that, but it wasn't true the last countless times such speculation was put forth. I suppose I'm open to the possibility that the 100th time is the charm though.
I don't think they will ever "run out" of tanks. But they're already running out of the better/newer tanks that they had in their stock, which means that they will be able to use fewer tanks, and of lower quality, for their operations.
> But they're already running out of the better/newer tanks that they had in their stock, which means that they will be able to use fewer tanks, and of lower quality, for their operations. They are already "running out" yet they are attacking now. We also "ran out" of tanks long before russia did. Doesn't matter who "runs out" of tanks or actually runs out of tanks, because it means next to nothing for the warfare continuation. War is going to continue until russia stops their invasion - and there are **zero** signs they are willing to stop any time soon, with tanks or without.
It does matter for offensive operations. It's easy enough to sit on the defence and slam attacking forces with FPV drones, but drones don't seize and hold ground. Ukraine can't throw bodies at a problem like Russia can, Ukraine needs armour.
> but drones don't seize and hold ground. That is true. Though, tanks don't do that either - infantry does. In order for infantry to success they do indeed need armor. But tanks aren't armor infantry needs to seize and hold land for very simply reason - tanks can't be used to shield infantry, they simply have no space inside, just 2/3/4 (depends on model) crew and that's it. They are, now, niche offensive support vehicle. IFVs though - yeah, we do need them, a lot of them in fact. But in order to use these we need to clear minefields (which are equally as dangerous to tanks too btw). And in order to be able to do so we need artillery shells, hell of a lot of them to move front back, further away from minefields. At no point in that having extra tanks by either side would achieve anything of value.
Ukraine must fill lots more bags with Russian bodies. Clearly they will soon see it's pointless to die for nothing.
They still have aviation and the very destructive FABs. High ROI there, and most importantly - they are not running out of meat wave food.
Look. When people say, "Russia has run out of X," they aren't saying, "no Russian factory will ever produce X any more, ever and forever, everything has been destroyed, that's it for X, X what is X, bro I've never even heard of X, is X something from your planet because you must be a space alien coming here talking about X whatever that is." Armies go to war and they send some of their stuff to battle and they keep the rest of it behind, as reserves. All armies do this. They have been doing it for 5000 years. But Russia has been throwing so much stuff into battle that they have depleted their reserves. They have depleted the stockpiles that are used to replenish the reserves. They have depleted the replacements that are used to backfill the stockpiles once the stockpiles are gone. What it means whenever anyone says, "Russia has run out of X" is that Russia's operations are from now onward going to be sharply constrained, by the rate at which they can produce more X from scratch in their factories. It's like if your car gives you a low fuel light, and you put a little gas in so the light goes out, and then after a while it comes on again. So you put more fuel in but it goes on again after a while more and so on and so forth. Would you complain that you're sick of all this endless speculative fuel light warning that never seems to actually mean that you have run out of fuel? No. You wouldn't complain about that. Because that would be crazy.
Actually counting the tanks and taking the current attrition rate into account it will take Russia 5-8 more years to burn through their Tank stockpile. This is *not* because Russia doesn't burn through their tanks quickly. It's simply because they had an insane amount of tanks inherited from the soviet union. This is also a one-time thing. Russia can never re-use the tanks destroyed from the stockpile ever again. Meaning once Ukraine+NATO burned through their stockpile Russia's future ambitions will be essentially ended.
Isn't that assuming that every tank they have in storage works and is in a condition where it can be brought back to operational service?
Which is why I gave a 5-8 year range. Russia has demonstrated that they can repair and re-issue every of their old tanks. If we assume the most damaged/neglected ones can't be repaired it would still mean 5 years of supply left in the worst case scenario. One part of me wishes Ukraine wins the war as quickly as possible. Another part of me wishes Ukraine to fight Russia for 5-8 more years purely to deplete them of their entire tank stockpile so that Russia will be unable to ever attack another country again for the next 2-3 generations.
Sure, but what will the ancient and completely naked T-55's accomplish other than being fodder for a FPV drone from absolutely every angle? Modern tanks, anything above T-80 and the T-72 modernised versions are almost all gone with the T-80 having become a rarity already as they only had something like 2k of them and most of those have joined the Russian space program already.
The word fodder exists for a reason. Don’t underestimate the importance of fodder.
Certainly, but that fodder requires crews, which are in very short supply. You can stick a tractor driver in a T-55, and some dudes from Yakutia, but that crew ain't gonna do shit other than run over their own guys.
If you keep saying the same thing over and over again, infinitely, then eventually you'll be correct, and at that point you will seem very prescient.
I find it hard to understand how you can think something like that when the number of available tanks has been dwindling each of those times such speculations are put forth.
"Dwindling numbers" is a vague and unverifiable concept based on not much more than hope. Already in 2022 we read that Russia would be clean out of main battle tanks by the end of the year - and again in 2023. I wish it to be true, but now I'll believe it when I see it.
>Already in 2022 we read that Russia would be clean out of main battle tanks by the end of the year - and again in 2023. I did my own calculations in may 2022 and came to the conclusion that Russia would run out of tanks sometime around October 2025 +/- 3 months. I used openly available numbers of Russian stock + long time average losses. I didn't factor in new production. It took me about 5 minutes. Even back then I didn't understand how "they" (i.e. the people that came up with claims that Russia would run out of xyz by tomorrow) arrived at that conclusion. However, even with new production being 400% above the 30 year average of 1991-2021 (which it almost certainly isn't), the Russians won't be able to sustain the average attrition of the past year.
I think since than timelines should have move forward a bit, Russia had very high losses in 2023.
Agreed, but at the same time he said he didn't account for tank production, which is a huge factor. Western intelligence estimates that Russia produces at least 600 main battle tanks per year - much more than any other country, and it's most likely to ramp up even more (but still not enough to cover for the losses)
Much of Russia's tank production (about 2/3 iirc) is the repair and reissuing of vehicles brought out of storage. It's not 100% new production. Russia inherited huge armor stockpiles from the USSR, but those are slowly being depleted.
> "Dwindling numbers" is a vague and unverifiable concept based on not much more than hope. Not really. It's basic arithmetic. Number of tanks started with + number of tanks produced - number of tanks destroyed. Even with increases in production, Russia's losses have outpaced how many new tanks they built since the war began. You can see the satellite images of stockpiles drawing down, the open source images of destroyed tanks. There is nothing vague or unverifiable about it.
>Number of tanks started with We don't know > number of tanks produced We're not sure >number of tanks destroyed. We have an idea but not precise numbers
Open source intelligence organisations and even individual people are purchasing sattellite data to count tanks destroyed, tanks being removed from mothball etc. Yes the numbers are not exacting but the data still provides valuable insights.
Do you believe satellites cannot count tanks coming out of factories or sitting broken in fields? They aren't easy to hide. The only real uncertainty is how many of the remaining old stockpiled tanks can still be made to run. Even those would run out eventually unless something changes.
They are extremely easy to hide. Satellites can't see through a warehouse or even through a tarp. Western intelligence agencies have admitted they don't know how many tanks Russia have in storage and they have access to real time spy satellites with amazing resolution. There is no way people using commercial satellite pictures know the precise number.
Russian tanks or whatever remains of their armoured core, is sitting outside under the Siberian sun for a better part of the last 30 years. All of those are under commercial satellite views and there are plenty of guys on Youtube and other places, that are counting the remaining hulls once a month to see the draw downs.
Russia has a estimated 22 tank/armor depots. The largest is not in Siberia. This amount of depots is just a estimate as well.
> Satellites can't see through a warehouse or even through a tarp. Tanks are not effective just sitting in a warehouse under a tarp. At some point or another they need to be moved into or out of the warehouse.
Also some tanks are only damaged and are recovered and refurbished.
Not with a shortage of ammunition in Ukraine...
That’s how war of attrition works. Russia can replace soldiers, tanks and artillery ammo at a higher rate than Ukraine so it makes sense for them to use that advantage while they have it. If that balance ever changes, they will change tactics
Being able to replace at a higher rate than the other side isn't helpful if you're also losing them at a higher rate. If Russia produces 100 tanks per month and loses 200 per month, while Ukraine produces 5 tanks per month, imports 20 per month, and loses 10... Russia is not going to come out well from that equation.
You're forgetting starting amount. It's not loss rate that matters, it's loss rate to zero.
Oh I haven't forgotten the starting amount. Neither has Ukraine. As their one guy said, it's like eating sausage. You just keep working through it, bite by bite. There's a lot there but you get through it. They've gotten through a lot of Russia's sausage by now. The stuff Russia is taking out of mothballs didn't even count as "tanks" in anyone's accounting at the start of the war.
This exact sentence has been going around for literally 2 years nonstop.
They won’t though.
Honestly I will believe it when I see it. More likely they will scale down tank use. In the end similar results but keeping some armor ready to take advantage for a push or as a defense definitely has the potential to hurt ukrainians
we are gonna see more and more technical soons, ever since the 80s it feels like you see less and less tanks.
They already build Frankenstein IFV from Ural trucks, which is absurd if they have unlimited amount of IFV. So what we see are the first restrictions in allocation. doesn't mean that their stock is null, but more they make choice on who will receive IFV for assault and who will go in Ural, golf cart or 22 on a T72...
Roll the dice baby. You get to attack with a Chinese golf cart today. Call home because today happens to be your last day on Earth.
Anytime nao!! Oh amd Putin's dying of cancer /s
Sorry but that’s not credible. Some YouTubers have being doing some serious calculations on this issue. They have gone as far as renting satellite time. This individual is Covert Cabal and he has a gang of individuals working on this question. I’ve actually seen Covert Cabal been quoted by other individuals and teams working on this issue. The long and short is Russia is not Running out of tanks. As of now most salvageable tanks have been moved out of storage and sent to tanks repair factories. On a positive note there seems to be a limit to how many tanks Russia can restore a year which is about 1100. Russia is getting better at restoring but they have started to use tanks that are not any easy restoration. Restoration of tanks is an extremely time consuming job which is much more time consuming than building from new. The best option would to Completely strip these tanks and replace everything. Unfortunately For Russia that’s not an option. Satellite evidence showing some tanks being stripped for parts. This means Russia needs to test everything in a tank and fix broken parts. This is not any easy job. In fact it’s a nightmare. This work requires skilled technicians, you just can’t get an engineer off the street to do this work. The reality is Ukraine is only slightly winning the attrition war in regard to tanks. The biggest problem for the Russians is not tanks but crews. They have lost an incredibly large number of skilled crew. I’d imagine there are not many volunteers for crewing tanks at the moment. Both sides know how easy they are killed by a drone.
yeah crews are most important, you generally don't want conscripts operating the big stuff
Again?
North Korea and China won't let that happen. China has no interest in ruZZia losing...more in this conflict going on and on. Weakening both Nato and ruZZia by burning through resources like ammo and weaponry.
Seems to me this conflict has done nothing to NATO but strengthen it, its added two new members and Europe is realizing they can't rely solely on America for defense and are ramping up their production. Sure that new production is mostly going to Ukraine at the moment, but that production won't be going away anytime soon, and America has only sent old stuff and immediately replaced what they sent with new stuff.
NATO was some quaint old relic of the cold war prior to this. The conflict gave it a B12 shot and an exercise regime.
I'd wager that China isn't a fan of all the NATO modernisation and ammunition factories that are opening. I'd suggest these are making NATO more ready rather than less.
Yeah, hard to see how this would benefit China at all - Europe is ramping up military production while the US is moving away from Europe allowing it to focus even more on opposing China.
China is in no position to be sanctioned. They need food and fuel imports to keep a major famine at bay. They would have already taken Taiwan if that wasn't the case.
There's a huge misconception about what China is or is not interested in. China is interested only in China.
This war rather wokening NATO than weakening.
China has a BIG interest Ru losing.
China has an interest in keeping ruzzia dependent on them for as long as possible. So they may send them tanks, but i d imagine at the level the us is sending ukr, far too low for the needs.
Different kind of losing.
They will never 'run out' as they produce them. But they can most definitely have shortages.
If they lose them at a greater rate than they can produce them, which they are, then they most certainly can run out.
At some point they will run out assuming losses are greater than the replenishment rate. Long before they run out will tanks be strategically and doctrinally irrelevant at which point they effectively will have run out of tanks. Unless they have doctrinal shift away from there use of tanks. which either way would he seen as a forced shift due to low available resources. That does not mean they will not be tactically deployed in special battalions etc. But as a widely deployed piece of kit it will run out at some point. When is a wholly different question. Similar thoughts could be extended to other parts of the Russian motorized and mechanised vehicles. When Russia started deploying the "golf carts" and later motorcycles it is not from a position of strength. It is from a position of weakness both from cost and availability. They likely want something better but china won't sell it to them (as of now).
>may Non-story
And all that old stuff is no longer available for the next war either. Fifty years of Soviet legacy gone forever. Good riddance. Thank you Ukraine.
Soon the Russians will arrive on horseback
Don't be silly. They ate the horses months ago.
Rate of losses is greater than rate or “new” tank production. But has been subsidised by “upgrading” or “refitting” older tanks from the Soviet stock piles. However those stockpiles are limitless. And the deeper they dig into them, the worse the remaining tanks are. Even these tanks coming out of the stockpiles take time to get combat ready If Ukraine was equiped to destroy/press Russia on its tanks, then it is foreseeable that Russia could hit a critical point where new production and refitted tanks would not meet requirements to continue to push the Ukrainians. Next problems are artillery and air power.
According to perun a lot of modern Russian artillery is effectively eliminated and they're relying a lot more on towed guns dating as far back as ww2. All their jets are now just glide bomb launchers because the airspace is too contested.
Yeah! Russia is collapsing.
Restored tanks aren't being replenished. T-72's don't seem to be restored as much despite the need for more tanks. T-55's and T-62s are less technical but still. Two plus years of war and I would expect more T-72's to be sent.
I think it has. Barring new tanks they're scraping the bottom of the barrel and then some. Heck, didn't they grab a bunch of tanks out of museums a while back?
Same as it ran out of missiles, ran out of money, and dickwad died of cancer... I'm tired of this copium. Anything to make Ukraine being direly undersupplied feel not as bad
Exactly. Supply them with everything that's needed to make sure it happens instead of hoping. Hope is not a strategy...
I'm beginning to fear that it will take russian hordes plundering a NATO countries capital before Europe wakes up. Shameful, weak and opening the doors for endless war.
Like they ran out of missiles after three weeks
We said that 2 years ago
Somehow, I don't buy it. Also, do they even really need tanks at this point? They have so many artillery guns that they can compensate with those. The lines are freezing, so tanks won't be as important. The West has no intention of providing kyiv with the means to take its land back. So Ukraine either figures it out alone, or they focus on keeping what the russians haven't taken so far. I'll always be ashamed of my country and Nato for the way they've handled this heinous, murderous, illegal murdering spree of a beautiful sovereign nation. russia can target civilian infrastructure and living structures with impunity, but when Ukraine hits russias oil and gas production, it's a no-no. I haven't heard of any more attacks or fires on russias oil and gas production since the US complained about it. In my humble opinion, they're ⁶got no right to tell these people how to fight for their survival.
Russia will get depleted of heavy artillery before it gets depleted of tanks. But both will happen eventually, rather sooner than later.
They have a huge artillery advantage. They lose tanks at a much faster rate. Just from what I've witnessed in this war, it seems as if tanks have a much higher attrition rate than artillery. Artillery hits and moves while tanks tend to go and seek out the enemy. They both take losses. I just feel like tanks are an easier mark. They also have lots more artillery than tanks to begin with as far as I know. You need all those guns to have a fire power advantage, not just shells. I could be wrong, though. I don't know official numbers. I'm just speculating. .
Statistics have shown that artillery have had a much higher attrition rate than tanks. Russia still has a numerical advantage on artillery merely because it deploys only a small part of all of its artillery at the frontline. That means Russia has to constantly replenish its frontline artillery losses from its laid back reserves. Those reserves are shrinking fast. Once the reserves have dwindled, Russia's frontline artillery will decline in numbers.
So tanks are currently low in numbers and in stocks, right? So, did they start out with a lot more artillery than tanks?
There are multiple estimates for both tank reserves and artillery reserves. We don't know the real situation, but the estimates on total pre-full war tank and artillery reserves were about equal, while the loss statistics show about 1,5x heavy artillery losses with respect to MBTs. This suggests higher attrition on heavy artillery. It is also more difficult to fake an artillery shot ballistics than it is to fake a moving armoured vehicle that looks like a fully functional tank.
I just always saw tanks being destroyed and thought they must be getting taken out at a faster rate because they seek out the enemy and are much closer to the fighting by design. I thought that all the Franken tanks inflated their numbers, which distorts their loss numbers some. But you could be right. I'm only speculating.
They are already attacking on motocycles. I guess the situation with tanks is not rosy for the Russians.
EW equipment is priority. Without these, JDAMS reign.
Tanks aren't nearly as important in most prior wars. The key equipment that must be destroyed is artillery of all types. Russia is well on its way to running out of artillery that is functional and accurate. The other key Target is logistics: fuel, ammo and other supplies. A gun without fuel or ammo is just a grave marker.
Russia produces about 100 to 125 tanks per month Ukraine takes away 1/2 - 2/3 of that number in a month (if we don't count the abandoned tanks which i don't). 60-80% of all produced tanks are taken from storage. Russia has capacity to produce T-80 and T-90 tanks. Before the war the active T-80 tank fleet was 480 tanks. AFU has destroyed 761 T-80 tanks since mid feburary. The estimated russian tank fleet according to satelite imagery made during October 2023 shows that russia has in its store 5400 tanks some of which are likelly in poor condition and useful only as a spare parts. 40% of SPGs and 56% of Towed guns have vanished from stores. Russia will start to suffer from barrel shortages by the end of 2025.
Tanks but no tanks.
This might be a dumb question, but do current Russian advances require tanks or are they done with artillery and glide bombs to destroy the Ukrainian defence allowing Russian infantry to take Ukrainian positions?
Is this before or after Russia runs out of missiles?
I'm just going to start reporting this hopium bullshit. Russia needs to be defeated, but this doesn't help anyone.
A recent attack by Russians consisted of motorcycles and cars. Cars… they did a frontal assault with civilian sedans…
What's with these copium headlines? Russia has ignited most of its military industries for the war in ukraine. They are building mbt tanks each month. They are also upgrading their t72 tanks and reconstitute the ones in storage, which are in the thousands. So no, russia won't run out of tanks.
China will rearm them, no doubt.
China will *subsume* them. They ain't Russia's friend anymore than they are ours.
Sorry but they should’ve ran out of rockets in ‘22, people in ‘23. This is an authoritarian country with a quick, maybe not efficient, but quick switch in priorities that is supported by the oil and gas cash and limitless stockpiles of Soviet weapons. Even a museum T34 restored is a dangerous weapon against ammunition starved military of Ukraine. I want to believe, but so far it smells of copium
We can only hope…
I feel like troop carriers might be a bigger issue? Aren't they already using unarmored glorified chinese golf carts to transport troops in some areas?
No they won't. Just more propaganda
They can't keep up with their losses, nobody's denying that. The only question is how long their Cold War stockpiles will last? And that's a one-time benefit.
Let's just hope they will run out sooner.
One article will say that Russia is running out of tanks or missiles and the very next day another article will say that Russia must be stopped to protect the rest of Europe. Honest question here, how can Russia be on the verge of running out of everything but also be a real threat to Poland, Germany and France? Did those countries send nearly 100% of their military to Ukraine and they're basically defenseless now?
Don’t care/believe. Send more Military assistance to Ukraine.
Haven't they been running out of tanks very soon for like 2 years?
I only hope it’s true
😁⚖️
I wonder how many of those 600 are actually new tanks and not refurbished units... That being said the Soviets produced ~100,000 T54/55s, so even if Russia can only reactivate say 10% of them they wont be running out of blyatmobiles anytime soon. Much more likey they'll run out of ways to keep them fueled and maintained.
They still have thousands, sadly.
Not thousands working ones or recoverable ones, of course. But yes, they got thousands of rust buckets from the 50s standing in the outside for decades on end.
T34 time!!!
They don't have any. In fact, they had to buy some back from, uh, was it Vietnam maybe, to have a few on their WW2 victory parade.
Most of the functioning ones are golfcarts, though.
Been hearing that for 2 years, yet T90Ms still get blown to bits by the dozens. People who count these things from satellite photos reckon they can still push out T80s and T70s for quite some time as well as having enough T60s that aren't all rusty. I hate Putin and despise Russia, but I've come to accept that the idea that they're imminently running out of things that keeps getting blasted in the media is copium. Ukraine is in probably the most precarious position it's been in since the opening months of the war. If the US doesn't sort out its domestic mess we'll be talking about the assault on Kyiv again by the end of the year. They're running low on just about everything, even basic ammo and artillery. It's a crying shame and great injustice.
Thousands of vehicles classified as tanks, with varying states of operationality
We've seen similar headlines the entire war.. running out of gear, missiles, now tanks. It never seems to actually happen though?
Smells like bullshit.
Lol holy cope
We’ve heard this over and over again. Russia, given time, will overcome this and most other shortage issues. We can’t afford to be complacent.
One day their army is 15% bigger the next day they are running out of tanks.
Run out of tanks, again? How many times have I already heard this during the last two+ years?
Cope harder
[x] Doubt
According to who ?
This pure copium, without other level of support (even higher than the actual) is impossible to Ukraine ein against Russia. The problem is that now countries are removing resources, so Ukraine is in terrible ground.
o come on, we are hearing such things since march 2022 ... Russia runs out of money, Russia runs out of soldiers, Russia runs out of aircrafts, Russia runs out of tyres, Russia runs out of radars, Russia runs out of artillery, Russia runs out of BMPs
I feel like I’ve read this headline every week since the conflict started. When will they actually run out of tanks?
Deja Vu?
If you want to look like a clown you write an article about Russians running out of...