Russia has depleted its tank stocks: the industry is not covering combat losses
Russia has depleted its tank stocks: the industry is not covering combat losses
And somehow it won't effect the war at all
Russia has been on the brink of collapse for 20 years now.
Ping me when something actually happens that isn't just propaganda.
It's ok, they'll just buy them from the US. That's what allies do.
I really hope Russia is collapsing soon so Ukraians can have actual peace.
And the world. Fuckers have infected everything
Agreed. I want the killing to stop and Russia to stop it's conquest.
Not if Trump has anything to do about it.
He will restart lend lease to Russia.
Elsewhere on Lemmy today;
Germany warns Russia may be preparing attack on NATO
Both of these cannot be true.
They can be true. They might be low on current stockpile, but what is building up is production capacity. Preparing to attack doesn't mean immediately attacking, what most have concern is that once Russia's war against Ukraine cools down, Russia will spend the next 4-10 years building up towards potentially attacking NATO nations.
Yes, years down the line doesn't sound as alarming to the layman, but it is critical for that eventuality to be recognized and prepared for, nations and industry move slowly, and they need to prepare to fight another long drawn out war.
The idea is that after some kind of cease fire, russia will churn out stuff for 3-4-5 years (so mebbe 1.000 tanks?) and then not go full frontal against NATO but say take a bite out of Lithuania, just to see what the response will be.
Like they have been doing since forever (Chechnya, Moldavia, Georgia, Ukraine and so on).
Both things can be true because Germany is talking about risks in the upcoming 5 to 10 years, while this issue is relevant today.
There are ways Russia can attack that doesn’t include massive tank charges
We have to keep in mind that Europe needs to justify austerity for the citizens and rearmament for their militaries. I have no evidence of this, but I think it's an entierly sensible read that the warning from Germany is an overstatement with that intent in mind.
I guess you need to pretend there's a threat NOW in order to divert funds towards defense now.
If the threat is in more like 10 years, why don't we start investing next year instead? etc.
Yes, because it will impact social programs. That hardship needs to be justified.
They absolutely can.
Russia has thousands of men willing to fight in horrendous conditions.
A few thousand soldiers that are very well equipped might lose to 10x as many badly equipped enemies.
I think they would lose, but they might not think so.
Russia has thousands of men willing to fight in horrendous conditions.
They've got hundreds of thousands of conscripts who are largely dug in along an enormous front, along the four eastern most seized Oblasts in Ukraine.
Any attack they would make into a NATO state would be an artillery bombardment intended to deny Ukrainians resupply, not a ground invasion to secure territory. Particularly not when they have poor control over their own borders and a nasty instance of counter-insurgence popping up in and around their major cities.
If you know anything about current Russian government, you'd know that one necessarily follows the other. The more desperate Russia gets, the less reserves they have, the more bold and aggressive they're getting. There is a combination of factors leading into it, both psychological and material.
Everything written about this conflict (by anyone) is propaganda. The enemy is a powerful and maximally oppressive force we all need to fear, but is also so weak it's losing equipment fast and its final defeat is only a matter of time.
Have you never worked in an organization?
You can have as many preparation meetings as you want and still be on your ass when the day of judgement comes.
"No plan survives first contact" - Helmuth
Russia wouldn't exactly not try, but they have a very 19th century realpolitik take everything and exploit the fuck out of it approach. I would have said that's silly. now, not so sure it isn't working
They can flood the Baltics with drones and cause plenty of chaos and destruction.
Russia is still ramping up military production on a wartime economy, to be used after the Ukrainians stop fighting back. Also their production focuses on their modern options for land and air. I don't know what their naval production is doing.
Who said the attack would be with conventional armed forces?
German security officials believe the Kremlin is laying the groundwork for a potential large-scale conventional war with NATO by the end of the decade, according to multiple reports cited by European Pravda and Bild.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/germany-warns-russia-may-be-preparing-attack-on-nato/
Is the same war time propaganda we've been served up for decades. Iraq/Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Kosovo, Vietnam, Korea...
The news coverage is totally divorced from what is happening on the ground. There's even a term for it.
Russia can't even take over Ukraine, let alone half of NATO to even make it into Germany. I personally think this is just fearmongering on the side of our elected officials so the military industrial complex can make a few more bucks with money from the state.
This your first round in front of the firehose of lies?
Best guess: Russia is a paper bear that need to keep growling before the bookworms eat it
Not with tanks. Probably with hypersonic nukes instead.
Tanks have not been very useful relative to their expense in the age of drones.
And yet, moving the front is almost impossible without them. All vehicles struggle with drones but at least tanks won't go down from machine gun fire, and without vehicles were pretty much back to WW1 tactics, fighting over inches.
and without vehicles were pretty much back to WW1 tactics, fighting over inches.
Which is kind of what the war in Ukraine has become.
Maybe one day we'll learn as a species that there is no good way to fight a war and we should just avoid it altogether.
Most of us are just fighting over what the ruling class wants us to fight over, anyways.
Kinda what happened to battleships in the era of aircraft carriers and submarines?
It's seriously astonishing that they managed to wear though the entire massive Soviet stockpile.
Covert Cobal has great tank and apv counting vids, documenting the ever worsening condition of the vehicles remaining. https://youtube.com/@covertcabal
Yes. Back when analysts used to talk about a war with Russia pre-2022, something you heard pretty often was "they're not as advanced, but they have so much stockpiled armour".
This is like America running out of guns or Canada running out of syrup.
I think not even the CIA predicted the effectiveness of drones and javelins against old armor. Without modern defenses, they are just sitting (or slowly moving) ducks. Add to this the corruption in the military, causing lack of maintenance and missing parts, plus the gaps in skills and training of their soldiers.
We are maybe 1-2 years away from the Russian military collapsing, if it weren’t for the orange clown.
The stockpile was built in the 50s, 60s and 70a though. The vast bulk of it is 50-70 years old. Post soviet Russia didn't have the money, and prior to that the stockpile was good.
Prior to Ukraine the stockpile was good. Then it started disappearing.
I don't know what to think anymore. I feel like every week for the last 4 years it's been "China's economy is going collapse any day now" and "Russia is losing so many people and resources in this war. They might as well give all of Russia to Ukraine"
I don't take any news written in English with any seriousness for these two countries.
Also, pretty sure modern warfare has learned heavily that tanks are completely obsolete against drones. Or even less modern warfare tells us how useless they are in cities against gorilla fighters.
Russia has been coasting on old Soviet stock for a while. Most of their modern t-90s and t-14s have been exploded. They've been sending mothballs tanks and apcs to the front for years now. Last year a good deal of frontline troops were using unarmored Chinese golf carts to move around. They never had the manufacturing capability to keep modernized armor at the front, and it is costing russian lives
Russia has spent up enough of of their mainline modern vehicles like T-90Ms to a point where the refurbishments have long ago stopped keeping up. Similarly IFVs are lost, especially many of their airborne models which were misused early in the war.
The war has become much more static, with Russian vehicle losses slowing them down. The final assault on Avdiivka for example was completely brutal, lasting a month and consisting of a lot of unsupported infantry charges over an open field. The Russians did eventually win, taking the fortified position they were assaulting, but the tactics used and amount of losses to do them are not something that would have happened if they'd had the vehicles to spare.
The shear scale of the war has had Russia brute force it from being a maneuver fight to an attrition fight, and Russia appears to be banking on having the higher population to win. How that will resolve is up in the air, Ukraine wants to turn it back into a maneuver war I think and I don't know if they can. The propaganda from the war by both sides can make it difficult to get a clear up to date picture.
Also, pretty sure modern warfare has learned heavily that tanks are completely obsolete against drones. Or even less modern warfare tells us how useless they are in cities against [guerrilla] fighters.
Tanks are one tool in the box, and like any other tool they are adapting to drones. Drones are not a silver bullet, and they especially are not as useful in supporting or spearheading fast moving offensives, which is still an important role tanks will fill. Active protection systems, electronic warfare (both jamming and signal detection to track down enemy drone operators), and tank based drones are all in play to figure out how to best do things now.
As for cities, tanks have always had trouble in cities. This isn't a revelation of this war. Militaries tend to be skiddish of putting tanks in city fights unless they really have to. Russia particularly still has memories of Chechnya in this regard.
I don’t take any news written in English with any seriousness for these two countries.
Thank you. I'm glad other people are starting to realize that all of our information is fed through an English-speaking filter first.
If we want to see more than what English-speakers have deemed palatable for us, we need to learn different languages.
it's sad how we can't overcome propaganda and at least make an attempt to understand the truth, but it really puts into perspective why I should not respect the vast majority of my peers in the modern day.
Too many people are overtaken by hysteria.
I don’t take any news written in English with any seriousness for these two countries.
Where do you get trusted news then for these two countries?
Russian? Lol
Because fog of war and propaganda is very strong from all sides.
Not to mention that all of these things can be true as they don't negate each other.
Unfortunately I think this also has to do with the changing tech around war. Drones are the new hotness and it is a very good counter to tanks warfare.
Drones don't hold ground, soldiers do. Soldiers that have tanks are going to be more effective than those without them.
I'm sorry but have you seen what a drone with a grenade does to a tank with an open hatch?
Yeah dead soldiers inside of tank that got 1 shot by a micro drone with a grenade the moment they opened their hatch don't hold ground either.
Also, if you've seen them in Gaza they are next to useless in rubble that heavy with dudes popping out of tunnels that disable them without ever being seen.
Historically even, tanks are awful against gorilla fighters. Which is what a lot Ukraine combat has become. Them not using tanks is not surprising.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Even without drones, they are awful I'm so much of modern warfare. If you've watched any footage out of Gaza you'll see a dude pop up out of tunnel and just completely disable a tank without them ever seeing him. Tanks are quickly going the way of the cannon. In much the same way.
So let's have a ceasefire eh? /s
Finally the reality is catching up with russia.
Slava Ukraine!
Yeah, the fact that Putin is not really pushing for a ceasefire means that they are not as out-of-stock as the headline suggests...
They are already using way less tanks & armored vehicles today. They will never really "run out" but just have a smaller stockpile to draw from, which seems to be the case.
Also, who knows what kind of information putin gets, look at donald and the information he gets and he's not even killing everyone not doing their job correctly.
Change comes gradually and then suddenly. Lots of signs point to a collapse (stockpiles, economy, the blocked frontlines, ..., and donkeys), some people have put it to around mid 2025-end 2025 for quite some time now.
Interesting times.
According to the researchers, even though there are still about 4,700 tanks in storage, most of them will be difficult to restore due to their poor technical condition.
This is Russia though - "poor technical condition" is "ready for service."
Covert Cobal has been classifying in mainly 4 categories. Abysmal is the lowest one, and are often missing such minor accessories as the turet, tracks, engines, and wheels. Not to mention having sat outdoors for upwards of 50 years. Those conditions are mostly what they're down to. It might allow for slightly higher throughout on production to start on these rusted husks rather than from raw steel, but it'd definitely be harder and more expensive to make these usable than to build a new tank from scratch.
Devils advocate, but given the way they’ve been building metal sheds around the prior tanks and almost completely negating the main gun, a missing turret might just be a weatherproofing issue for the Orks Russians.
It’s not like a main gun helps you survive a mobility kill from the umpteenth TM-62 in the dirt that got replanted after the last assault failed.
Man, imagine if we had tanks when we were still hunter-gatherers and wild animals were a legitimate danger.
Nah, adjust for Russian standards in what "poor technical condition" even means. It's not going to Ukraine if it can't drive off the base.
Nah. In those photos, where there's one or two tanks left but all the others have gone... those are immovable tanks. Couldn't even get them to the service bay. Why else would that one tank have been left behind?
Even without assuming they'll use low quality examples, the article also says
According to researchers, only about 1,200 tanks can still be relatively easily restored after major repairs.
It sure sounds like the title is BS.
That is not really out of line with the title, especially if you line it up with the rest of the article. 1200 tanks that need major repairs does not mean a potential 1200 combat-ready vehicles. It means that you can, if you are really good, salvage 60% of that by cannibalizing the rest.
They drew down 350 tanks last year. Oryx confirmed 3800+ tank losses over the past 3 years, Ukraine claims 10000+. This means that they have enough tanks to last them another 6-8 months if we're being incredibly generous, if they could do 2 years of work in an instant. This is practically an empty stock.
And that doesn't count that these are the last vehicles for a reason. They are not 1200 T-72s that can be restored to full working order, it's mostly going to be very badly damaged and worn T-55s or even T-34s, compared to which an RPG-7 is space-age technology.
the industry is not covering combat losses
Since it's not clear from the headline, that's the restoration industry. We're not even talking about the production of new tanks (which was never that impressive at any point in the full-scale war).
Amazing.
SLAVA UKRAINI!
Edit It looks like Ukraine has began serious production of truck mounted mobile 155mm artillery systems, something the US doesn't take seriously here because it can lean on an assumed air superiority to deliver overwhelming force, something Ukraine can't do . This coupled with a depletion of Russian tanks might actually be decisive here since the more Ukraine can field mobile, extreme lethality cannon artillery the more necessary it becomes for Russia to have main battle tanks with significant armor and extreme survivability under the hellish conditions of metal shards hurtling at terrible speeds in all directions from exploding ordnance....
The problem with artillery smaller than this is that it doesn't actually pose an existential threat to very highly armored/entrenched targets and the range is that much more limited. Again, if the U.S. had taken arming Ukraine seriously, they would have made sure that the Ukranian military had a very deep and resilient supply of mobile artillery pieces that could serve in place of the role U.S. airpower plays (or U.S. forces assume air power will play at least). As long as Ukranian infantry has access to effective, shoulder launched anti-tank weapons this could tip the balance of the war significantly.
155mm, and the U.S. has about 1500 of its M109 self propelled guns in service.
for some reason I originally had it in my head the Paladin wasn't as large as an artillery piece, idk why, I guess because it is tracked and it was developed so many decades before this current wave of self propelled guns were developed.
Still, my point stands though, if the U.S. was serious about arming Ukraine from the beginning, they would have focused on supplying Ukraine with self propelled guns and lots of artillery. It feels like the effort to help Ukraine defend itself was more an effort to help stall the war and keep Russia from decisively winning for as long as possible...
where's that super next-next-gen Russian Armata thing? is that a ghost tank?
It never really existed in production, of course. It is like the early builds of the AK-12 where one offs were made and shown off as if they were going into full scale production soon.
The more real BMPT was at least fielded in double digit numbers, although conceptually it seems more suited to being a terror weapon supporting a shock & awe type advance rather than something used in a prolonged war.
definitely sounds ridiculous -- but -- maybe i listen to a lot of knowledge fight -- could be a psy-op? can you prove to me that beans growing with corn is not a psy-op?
i don't mean this in a dickish way, but I do love that concept of "just say something incorrect or incomplete" about war and someone will be happy to bring clarification
It's so stealthy it has never been seen in combat /s
'Cuz it'z painted purple. Purple is sneaky!
And yet somehow they will attack nato until 2030, according to the news...
Is it that hard to understand? They are barely producing enough to keep up the war in Ukraine, but much compared to some European countries. When the war "ends" end they continue with their war economy for a few years, they are still producing a lot more than the European countries. Russia can continue with their strategy, but some Nato states need to change theirs.
Just like they would never attack Ukraine...
You don't understand the Russian psyche.
They believe they won't be attacking alone, they think the US will at least help, this is their last chance to finally repay Europe for the centuries of humiliation caused by checks notes leaving them to wallow in their own filth.
decommissioned = destroyed? Funny way of describing it.
No but non-functional can be considered destroyed in this context...
Even in modern war, a significant amount of armor is lost not from literally being blown up, but from breaking, getting stuck, being abandoned after a flank cuts off retreat in a vehicle etc...
Mourn the loss of historical vehicles, but blame the people who threw them to be destroyed.
Here's to hoping 🍻
Yet we must triple up military budget in case they decide to invade whole europe on empty tanks...
I think at this point the unspoken truth is that we must have a military that needs to be a deterrent to the US as well.
US has thousand military facilities all over europe, you could simply lower the gap by kicking them out. Making such claim a year ago would have get you labeled as a russian troll.
Everyone upvoting your comment should take half of the money in his wallet and donate them to the government because that's how you match US trillion dollar budget.
Yes because Russia will build more tanks and other equipment in the next decade. Not a problem if Europe builds up too. But that will be a problem if Europe does nothing.
If Russia were an immediate threat, Europe would have no choice but to give Trump whatever he wants so the US will protect Europe. But with Russian forces being decimated by this war, Europe has the opportunity to build it's own arms industry to be able to produce it's own weapons to be able to counter Russia in a decade's time.
Europe does nothing.
European countries combined are already spending more money on war than russia. European countries have a big arms industry already and they export weapons all over the world, including to countries ruled by dictatorships like saudi arabia. They even sold weapons to russia in the past years that are being used in the ukraine war.
I'm going to go with what European military leaders are saying, out loud and in public. God knows what those leaders really know and talk about.
I'm guessing you're European? Well, you've had 80 years of mostly peace and prosperity. Timed to get armed, personally. (Yes my fellow Americans, Europeans can acquire guns without too much hassle. Yes, real guns. Gun ownership just isn't a major part of their culture like it is over here, and their culture isn't as diseased as ours regarding weapons.)
If you're allergic to guns, consider these two scenarios:
In which case do you expect the invader to suffer the most? Which case do you consider more likely?
I’m guessing you’re European? Well, you’ve had 80 years of mostly peace and prosperity.
I'm guessing you are american because you sound like you don't know much history
European leaders are already talking about using the new army to invade the Middle East.
You are ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that a rising sense of militarism quickly feeds into a decay of your society, if you make an incredible amount of guns somebody is going to use them, that is how these things work.
I am not saying Europe shouldn't absolutely take being able to militarily counter Russia seriously, as they should any regional threat, but what is needed isn't necessarily to reshape Europe into a hypermilitarized environment, especially in the area of police and the militarization of police, what Europe needs is to make sure it has effective counters to a mass, mechanized land war. What conservative war hawks in Europe will advocate for is a militarization of police and of society, that is not what is needed. You need the right military assets to make a ground war incredibly costly for the Russians.
One of the most effective counters, and a decisive element of the war in Ukranian has been HIMARs, long range missiles launched from trucks and armor capable of striking mobile Russian SAM assets and other high value targets from extremely far away. These make maneuvering a large concentrated armored force much much much more costly and dangerous for an invader.
...but ultimately this all devolves into a sense of militarism that undermines the original reason for making all the guns in the first place, it is just a matter of how far you can push it in your society before that cancer becomes terminal... see the U.S. as a prime example....
Just leave Lemmy already, you are cancer
Your comment is the most stupid here