“I don’t know what the hell this ‘logistics’ is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it.” — Admiral E. J. King
Ukraine will win the war by October this year, Russia will run out of tanks long before it runs out of ammo supply
Russia’s losses are unsustainable a shortage of tanks will prevent any major offensive in the near future
Russia’s attrition rates among its serviceable tank fleet provides a good example of Russia’s supply and re-supply issues
There is a growing consensus among experts such as Marcus Keupp, Petraeus, Kofman, the Rohan consulting group and Ben Hodges that Russia’s supply chain of big platform weapons will break long before Russia runs out of artillery shells.
Russia’s big platforms, such as modern tanks, but also radar systems and anti aircraft batteries, have unsustainable attrition rates. Especially, Russia’s tank attrition rates are truly enormous. On average, Russia has lost 4–6 tanks per day since the war began.
Russian logistics are already faltering, and its army has culminated
The offensive capacity of Russia is almost fully degraded. All they can do is dig themselves in and hope that WW1 tactics still work today. Russia has been fielding T64s and even T55s lately. What comes next? T34s and horses? So far, Soviet materiel has been fighting Soviet materiel. Western Western tanks and Western armored vehicles will fundamentally tip the scale in Ukraine’s favor, and this will increase Russia’s own attrition rates even further.
In general, the US always knew it would not beat the USSR in quantity. So, the West had beat Russian gear in quality and precision instead
The reality of the situation is that the USSR, and especially Russia, realised that NATO would never strike first and possibly never get involved at all considering the nukes.
The tanks the Soviets designed, as such, are built more for the oppression of a population than actual warfare. Ever since the first uprisings in the Warsaw Pact, the Russians' first answer to civil disobedience is "tanks."
Their small size and poorly thought out autoloaders are key in this as it allowed them to navigate European city streets more easily while the jack-in-the-box feature wasn’t an issue as protesters generally don’t have the tools needed to make the weasel go “pop.” Ukraine, on the other hand, has these tools, and that had a devastating effect on Russia’s tank fleet.
"But their size makes them harder to hit. It’s the defense onion!"
Wrong. The central element of the layered defense doctrine in tank design is to protect the core, that’s the "don't get killed" part. Everything else is there for this function. The carousel autoloader makes every element between "don't get spotted" and "don't get killed" pointless as the moment you're spotted, you're dead.
The T-90 shares its Soviet sibling’s tendency to toss the turret
Leopard 2 has better ammo storage to negate that issue. It surely doesn’t help that the soviets made the T-72. Everyone else designed their new tanks to make them perfect T-72 killers. That’s the main design goal. Then, the soviets made a bunch of mediocre modernization efforts because the late USSR was floundering.
This was also an industrial quantity thing, which was a lesson learned by the Russians from WW2, which was changing their doctrine slightly
The Soviets had a lot of very elaborate war plans against NATO and there was always a sense of possibility of NATO first strike including during that one training exercise which caused nuclear bombers to take off with their payloads because it was believed it’s a real plan until the exercise was called off-
Russia also claimed their tank crews received "specialized training" for the T-90M (which is more or less an upgraded T-72 in disguise)
That basically means some oligarch needed another excuse to grift and pocket government money. I highly doubt these soldiers received any of that training given how incompetent Russia acted around Vulhdear. These failures are, of course, having a detrimental effect.
Russia’s tank shortage is worse than some observers previously thought.
Especially the Kremlin’s stocks of its most numerous tank, the Cold War-vintage T-72, are running out fast. This shortfall of T72s also explains why Russia is taking obsolete T80Bs, T62s, and even T55s out of storage. The exact number of Russian tanks is hard to assess.
There is a lot of open source data, and those can help us to make very well-educated guesses. This also includes the work of Oryx and the visually confirmed losses of Russian vehicles. The number is approaching the mark of 2000 confirmed Russian tank losses.
According to these open data sources, the assessment of T-72 stocks has changed—for the worse
In mid February, the consensus had assumed that Russia went to war with nearly 2000 of the 50 ton, T-72s manned with 3 crew members and armed with a 125-millimeter smoothbore main gun. In the first year of the war, Ukraine destroyed or captured 1200 T-72s.
That’s just the confirmed number. The real number is very likely even higher. The number could be between 20 percent and 50 percent higher. But we will go with 20 percent and assume that Russia has actually written off 1500 T72s.
The earlier count of tanks assumed that Russia had 6,9000 old T72s in storage, around one-third that could be recovered with maintenance work
The tanks were exposed to the elements for decades. Corrosion due to exposure to rain, snow, and the yearly cycles of hot and cold have made a lot of tanks unrepairable. As it turned out, though, this count was way off. The Russsians likely had only 1500 and not 6900 old T72s in storage. According to these open source (OSINT) researches, many of them are “probably not in good shape.
The method behind the count worked like this
Oleg started with the number of T-72 hulls that the Soviet industry produced in a 23-year production run between 1968 and 1991—which amounts to 18,000 tanks. Then he started subtracting tanks. The Soviets and Russians either lost in combat or exported to foreign customers. That’s how he had arrived at a much lower number of T72 reserves.
The big variable is that the production number might not include the first model of T72s “Ural”
It’s unclear how many Urals the Uralvagonzavod factory in Sverdlovsk Oblast may have produced and stored. Perhaps hundreds. Perhaps a couple thousand. The conclusion of his count is that Russia has potentially lost two-thirds of the T72s that are in active service or in recoverable storage. That explains why the Kremlin is pulling T62 and T55 tanks out of storage. These tanks are even much older than the T72 or the T80B.
All that is to say, the Russians are running out of tanks. And quickly
Russian industry can only produce a handful of new tanks every month — far too few to make good monthly losses in the triple digits. That results in at least one “new” T72 model. The T72B3 (2022) is a 1980s vintage T72B with enhancements. These include Sosna-U day and night digital gunner’s sight. New reactive armor, a rear looking video camera, and a fresh barrel for its 125 millimeter main gun. That may sound great, but it doesn’t significantly improve the T72s' performance. Especially, these improvements don’t remedy the tank’s biggest weakness: Its ammunition storage.
The T72s main gun ammo is a carousel that is situated underneath the turret
A direct hit can set off the ammo, resulting in a catastrophic explosion that destroys the tank, kills the three-man crew, and often sends the turret flying high into the air. We saw a lot of videos like that already, and the chance of survival for the crew is zero when this happens. The CSIS report also shows that Russia lacks components to implement them into these tanks. The main issue is that the French made optics for these Sosna U sights.
The down-rated T-72 has an outdated 1PN96MT-02 analog thermal sight that’s comparable to the sights NATO armies installed on their own tanks back in the 1970s. This emergency T-72B1 Obr. 2022 is no real match for a modern Leopard 2A6 tank.
The T-62s were an obvious stopgap
These decision makers and their hapless crews bought time for Uralvagonzavod to identify old T-72s that the firm could recondition, slightly upgrade, and send to Ukraine to begin refilling Russia’s depleted tank battalions.
The Russian military basically stopped to build new T-72 hulls for its own armed forces since the fall of the Soviet Union. From 2013, some 1100 T-72B3/B3Ms were converted from existing T-72B hulls. So, the Russian T-72 stockpile remained unchanged since 1991
Exports, storage, and bad maintenance also play a role here
According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s International Arms Transfer Database (which is, frankly speaking, not 100% accurate), some 7400 T-72s were exported by the USSR from 1970 to 1991. Data by V. Feskov from 2013 assessed that a total of 5144 T-72s were fielded by the USSR as of the late 1980s in the CFE area (exluding Siberia, Central Asia, Turkestan and Transbaikal, and the Far East MDs)
Post-USSR Central Asian republics (Turkestan+Central Asian MD) obtained some 1800–2000 T-72s
Transbaikal fielded around 1400 T72s, and the Fast Eastern MD was equipped with T80s. Adding all of these numbers up: 7400+5144+1800+1400 gives us 15700 tanks. The T-72s were introduced in 1970, which was 20 years before the end of the Soviet Army. It is possible that some 2000 early T-72 Urals were retired from service by then.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it had some 8300 T-72 tanks
Roughly 1800 were acquired by Central Asian countries, and around 800 were acquired by Trancaucasus countries, around 1160, acquired by Belarus and roughly 600 by Ukraine Let’s jump to the present now.
The Russian Federation also exported some 500 T-72s (excluding those newly built for India) from 1991-2021.
That leaves us with a remaining number of 3440 tanks. Which is pretty close to the estimated number of tanks that Russia had before the war. Among those tanks are some that were in active service in 1961. The most interesting aspect is that the caclulated amount of T72s (around 1500) in storage is much lower than it was previously assumed. The original idea was that there are 7000 (!) left in storage. Many of them are probably in abysmal shape.
Russia has lost over r1000 T72s, which is half maybe even 3/5 of their active T72 fleet
The Oryx numbers are likely 40 to 50 percent below the actual number that was lost. That means Russia likely has lost in between 1400 and 1500 T72s in this war so far. These losses are impossible to recover from their reserves, even with the earlier T-72 Ural types. On top of that, we have the losses in Chechnya that haven’t been included. Russia lost at least 170 T-72s in Chechnya and a couple more in Syria.
Open source intelligence (OSINT) also found data on exported T72s, which can be made part of this caculation
I think we can use this number of tanks here as our blindspot as the method used to count these tanks isn’t fully accurate.
Iran: 422 T72M1 (1991 onwards)
Laos 30 xT-72B (2018)
Nicaragua : 50 xT-72B (2016)
Serbia: 30 x T-72 (2016)
Venezuela: 92 x T-72M1 (2011–13)
Yemen 39 x T-72 (2000)
= 663 tanks.
Summary and conclusion
Russia’s only major tank plant UralVagonZavod hasn’t been properly modernized because of financial mismanagement and significant debts
Currently, this factory refurbishes 8 old tanks a month. There are three other repair plants. They are adding another 15 to 17 or so every month. Russia plans to bring two more plants online, but I first want to see that. Russia wants to be able to resurrect 90 tanks each month.
Russia isn’t even anywhere close to this target, and the time to get there is running out
Russia faces severe labor shortages. Its defense sector suffers from shortages of Western spare parts and machine parts. Russia produces roughly 20 tanks per month fresh from the factory. Even their own production projections of 120 tanks per month would fail to match an estimated loss of 150 tanks per month.
At Vuhledar, the Russian army lost its last chance of a significant military victory
However, that didn’t stop Russia from attacking again and again at other fronts to increase its attrition rates even further. Putin remains under the delusion that annexing a region is the same as conquering it. His soldiers pay a high price for these mistakes made by their commanders.
Russia remains one of the biggest suppliers of vehicles, like tanks, to the Ukrainian army because Russia simply abandoned a lot of their stuff.
Of course, not all of these captured or abandoned vehicles are usable. But it helps the Ukrainians with mechanical parts at least. The game changer is the modern NATO gear, though. Western weaponry isn’t about quantity but about precision. Additionally, Ukraine has received refurbished P91s from Poland, modernized T55s from Slovenia, etc. Also, the Czechoslovak Group has repaired and refurbished hundreds of captured Russian tanks, which are now being brought back into service as well.
Stoltenberg: Ukraine received 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks, and a large amount of ammunition
Ukraine has the quantity, but most of all, Ukraine beats Russia in quality
I will be honest, war is difficult to forecast. I tend to agree that there is a good chance that Russia’s supply lines will collapse by October. And that they will run out of tanks that they can field by then. But we just don’t know for sure. A lot will depend on how successful the counteroffensive is. I would give it a 75 percent chance that this war will be over by October.
“We are still failing, the US and its allies to provide clarity on the outcome that we want.” Ben Hodges
This goal must be to restore Ukraine in its 1992 borders
Whether this assessment becomes a reality depends upon how much ground Ukraine can take until September. Should Ukraine be able to sever the landbridge and manage to destroy the Kerch bridge. Then, the war could be over very quickly. Putin’s regime will likely not survive should Ukraine be able to lay siege to Crimea. Time will have to tell the tale.
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