Ukraine - Russia Conflict
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That many of them at once, for repairs you say? Funny then that there is no traffic in the other direction, i.e. the vehicles supposedly going for repair.
And yet a month earlier they denied it was still in service and so did either you, jetray or vstol jockey.
Yep. Full mobilisation for an invasion of choice is not something that's done, in these times anyway. Korea and Vietnam were defences. Russia is talking about a full scale mobilisation just to take over a country.
Institute for the Study of War
Russian forces are in the midst of a theater-wide operational pause in Ukraine. This operational pause has been largely characterized by Russian troops regrouping to rest, refit, and reconstitute; heavy artillery fire in critical areas to set conditions
Lol, why will they keep a two-way route open at the same time. Even one of the trains stop when they need to pass by each other.
Lol. So? It's a big war, they are using everything they have that's old and can be used up.
The Russians are planning to destroy Ukraine's power infrastructure...
Why are there no photos or videos of vhicles leaving Ukraine for Russia?
Or it was never withdrawn from service and they lied. And I thought it wasn't a 'big war' but only a 'special military operation'.
It's 5 months in LOL.
One way ticket
Pavel Luzin on why the Russian military potential is irreplaceable after four months of warLosses of quantifiable Russian weapons after four months of war against Ukraine are at levels that modern Russia has never experienced. Only according to sources open and confirmed by photographs, Russia has lost over 2,000 tanks and armored combat vehicles, several dozen aircraft and helicopters, and many other equipment. In addition, since the beginning of its aggression, Russia has used up over 2,500 different cruise and operational-tactical ballistic missiles.
Against this background, Moscow is revising its military spending towards a sharp increase. Since May 2022, the Ministry of Finance has almost completely closed the data on the current expenditures of the federal budget, but the picture under the article "National Defense" can still be assessed. So, in January-April, about 1.6 trillion rubles were spent on this item out of the planned 3.85 trillion. At the same time, the entire federal budget for 2022 is about 26 trillion rubles. For comparison, in 2021, the “National Defense” was spentalmost 3.6 trillion (the entire budget was 24.8 trillion), but spending overcame the bar of 1.5 trillion only in June. If the pace of expenditures gained in March-April continues - at 500 billion per month instead of the average 300 billion per month - then by the end of the year the item "National Defense" may well reach the level of 5-5.5 trillion, or 19% -21 % of the federal budget.
However, even if this happens, the Russian armed forces will no longer be able to restore their potential in the foreseeable future - this will not allow the military industry to do this.
armored vehicles
Russia received from the USSR a stock of many thousands of tanks of various models (T-64, T-72, T-80, etc.) and tens of thousands of armored combat vehicles of various types. In the post-Soviet decades, Russia carried out its developments in this area and even launched the production of some models, such as T-90 tanks, BMD-4 airborne combat vehicles , etc. , but its fleet of armored vehicles was updated mainly due to the repair and modernization of those same Soviet stocks. For example, T-72 tanks were modernized through the replacement of engines, the installation of Thales infrared sights and other equipment and communication systems.
The bulk of the modernized and new armored vehicles were received by the Russian Armed Forces during the implementation of the state armaments program for 2011-2020, which continued with the state program for 2018-2027. (the intersection of SAP-2020 and SAP-2027 is due to Russian bureaucratic logic). Every year, Russian industry supplied an average of about 650 tanks and armored vehicles. Of these, the tanks themselves were: no more than 160-170 units of T-72B3 / B3M per year in 2011-2020. from the enterprises of Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) in Nizhny Tagil and Omsk (in 2021, the supply of these tanks was reduced to 34 units) and no more than 45-50 units of T-80BVM in 2017-2021gg. from a factory in Omsk. This is approximately 1900-2000 modernized tanks out of approximately 3300 units that were in the army before the attack on Ukraine (not counting those tanks that remained in storage). The rest was accounted for by armored fighting vehicles. And if we take into account that on the eve of the war there were at least 16,000 armored combat vehicles of various types in the Armed Forces, then the share of those that have been produced or modernized since the beginning of the 2010s was slightly more than a quarter of the entire fleet.
In addition, in war conditions, the natural life cycle of existing armored vehicles is reduced, even if it does not receive damage in battles. Thus, the resource of the V-84 and V-92 engines and their modifications installed on the T-72B3 and T-72B3M does not exceed 1000 hours before overhaul. Given this and the inevitable breakdowns of other equipment, it can be safely assumed that most of the Russian tanks participating in the current war will need serious refurbishment by the end of 2022, requiring factory rather than field conditions. This assumption is also confirmed on the basis of data from the much less intense Chechen campaign of 1994-1996. Then in the battles, Russian troops lost 65 tanks, and the total lossesamounted to about 200 tanks - the lion's share of all the tanks involved in that campaign. That is, technical malfunctions can have a greater impact on the reduction of military potential than combat losses. And it takes resources to repair and / or upgrade broken tanks and return them to service.
However, these resources are limited not only by the embargo on the supply of components and industrial equipment, since since the early 2010s. even in the production of tank engines, it is imported . The human resource is also limited. For example, evidence that UVZ today works in three shifts (around the clock) to restore armored vehicles only means that employees are sent there from the unloaded production of certain railway cars. In the same way, a year before the war, a workshop for the production of tanks worked in three shifts.
The problem with such an emergency organization of production at a state enterprise is that it increases costs, leads to an increase in the economic inefficiency of the plant and a decrease in the quality of products. All these conclusions are also valid for the production, modernization and repair of armored combat vehicles.
It is also worth recalling here that UVZ was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2016 , and the only manufacturer of tracked armored combat vehicles, Kurganmashzavod, was supposed to go bankrupt at the end of 2017. The debts of these two companies were repaid by the government, and they themselves became part of the state corporation Rostec, but there was no significant improvement in their economic efficiency. Under such conditions, a sharp increase in government spending on the repair of damaged or out-of-service armored vehicles, as well as on the modernization and combat readiness of equipment removed from long-term storage, will lead to cost inflation in these companies. The repair or modernization of each next tank or armored fighting vehicle will cost more and more, and the speed and quality of this work will decrease.
After four months of war, restoring Russia's armored potential to the level of early 2022 will take at least four years, even with conservative estimates of combat losses. With the continuation of the war, by the end of the year it will already be 7-10 years of operation of factories (and this is without taking into account the effect of the embargo on the supply of industrial equipment and components, which can be estimated later). That is, Russia will face the problem of a shortage of armored vehicles in the troops, which are organizationally and numerically sharpened precisely for the presence of thousands of tanks and many thousands of armored fighting vehicles of existing models. In other words, in order for the Russian army to get by with fewer of them, it must be organized and trained differently, and the technical and technological quality of the existing armored vehicles must be much higher.do not have to .
Aviation
By the time the current stage of aggression against Ukraine began, Russia had 900-1000 different fighters, fighter-bombers, front-line bombers and attack aircraft. Of these, during the 2010s. More than 130 Su-30M2/SM fighters, 97 Su-35 fighters and 124 Su-34 fighter-bombers were delivered - more than 350 aircraft in total. That is, at the peak of its financial and industrial capabilities, Russia produced an average of 30-35 strike aircraft per year.
Russia also had 400 attack helicopters at its disposal, of which during the 2010s. More than 130 Ka-52s, more than 100 Mi-28s and more than 60 Mi-35s (a modification of the Mi-24 helicopter) were produced - a total of about 300 units. That is, production possibilities during the 2010s. were at an average of 25-30 new attack helicopters per year. Here it is worth considering that the Russian armed forces received up to 200 units of new and modernized aircraft of all types per year. That is, in quantitative terms, the modernization and repair of aircraft and helicopters play a decisive role for Russia.
Plans for 2021−2027 assumed the delivery of about 150 new aircraft of all types, including 76 fighters of the 5th generation Su-57 and at least 20 Su-34 fighter-bombers. There are serious problems with these plans, as Riddle wrote about earlier, but the sanctions imposed since the beginning of the war against Russia make their implementation even more difficult.
It turns out that Moscow will have to choose. Either it needs to revise its plans and try to make up for the quantitative losses of aviation equipment through additional production in the coming years of aircraft and helicopters supplied in the 2010s. Or it would be better for it to keep its stake on the course taken earlier, even in the conditions of a technological embargo, and not to pursue quantity. However, with each subsequent month of the war, the first option seems more and more likely. True, the ability to produce aircraft and helicopters at the same rate to replace those that are shot down / knocked out or out of order for technical reasons also raises questions. But with any choice and under the most favorable circumstances for Moscow, the potential of Russian military aviation will remain below the level of February 2022 at least until 2025.
precision weapons
It is difficult to calculate the number of cruise and operational-tactical ballistic missiles of all types that Russia had on the eve of the attack on Ukraine. However, today, after the use of more than 2500 such missiles, the consensus is the estimatethat Moscow is facing a growing shortage. In addition, on the eve of the war, she had several hundred Kh-555 and Kh-22 cruise missiles, which were produced back in the USSR, and are not produced today. Tochka-U operational-tactical missiles, which Russian troops also used, are not currently being produced, despite the fact that by the beginning of the 2020s. managed to rearm with more advanced and long-range operational-tactical ballistic missiles Iskander-M. In addition to the Iskander-M, Russia has in production Caliber sea-based cruise missiles of various modifications and their land-based version 9M729, due to the appearance and deployment of which the INF Treaty collapsed in 2019. Russia also produces P-800 Oniks anti-ship supersonic missiles, which are used against targets on Ukrainian soil, and Kh-101 aircraft missiles (replacing Kh-555), Kh-32 (replacing Kh-22) and Kh-59. There are also Kh-35 anti-ship missiles, which exist in sea, land and aviation versions and inthe latest modifications have a range of up to 260 km.
In previous years, Russian industry annually produced up to 55 P-800 Oniks missiles and up to 50 Iskander-M ballistic missiles . The production of the rest of the rockets mentioned depends on the engines. The fact is that in Soviet times there was a family of R95-300 turbojet engines for cruise missiles. These engines were produced by Ukrainian enterprises, so after the collapse of the USSR, Russia began to create replacements for them. True, even on the early versions of the Caliber missiles (until 2014), the same engines were probably installed - they were removed from decommissioned Soviet missiles.
From the 1990s to the mid-2010s Russia has been able to develop three turbojet engines for its cruise missiles: the R125-300, a simplified version of the R95-300 with reduced thrust, and two variants of the turbofan engine-50. And if the R125-300, in terms of its characteristics, is just right for the Kh-35, then two versions of the turbofan engine-50 give missiles a range of up to 1000 km and 2500 km (or even more). The first of them is installed on most Caliber missiles, as well as on 9M729 and Kh-59. The second one is installed on Caliber-NK naval missiles and Kh-101 aviation missiles, while mass production of this version was launched only in 2014-2015. It is also worth considering that labor productivity at the enterprises of the United Engine Corporation is from 6 to 11 times lower than that of American companies.Williams International and General Electric , involved in the production of engines for cruise missiles. As a result, the annual production of the TRDD-50 engine can be estimated at 45-50 units for each of its two versions. That is, the total annual production of Caliber, Kh-101, 9M729 and Kh-59 cruise missiles is unlikely to exceed 100 missiles.
As for the Kh-32 anti-ship aeroballistic missile, created to replace the Kh-22, its mass production did not start until 2019, when the production of liquid-propellant rocket engines began for it. Taking into account the amount of the contract, 5.26 billion rubles (approximately $84 million), the characteristics of the Kh-32 rocket and the cost of rocket engines with parameters close to those of this rocket’s engine, we can conclude that we are talking about the production of no more than 20 engines per year. year.
Thus, in total, Russia can produce no more than 225 cruise and operational-tactical ballistic missiles per year (excluding Kh-35 missiles). At the current rate of production, it will take at least 10 years to replenish what it has spent.
Why would there be photos of operational units moved out of the front for repairs? Which idiot will want to publicise the route they are taking? You will only see units going in, unless it's a retreat.
Nothing the army uses is "withdrawn from service". Even in an Indo-Pak war we will use our old T-55s and Vickers. As long as it's usable, it's put to use. Which is why you also see even bolt action rifles in the field.
This article is extremely misleading. During the boom years, the Russians mainly concentrated on strategic weapons, like SSBNs, new ICBMs, hypersonics etc, ie very expensive stuff. Most of the conventional capabilities like fighter jets came after the 2014 sanctions, although R&D was carried out during the boom years. In fact most of the military build up has happened only in the last few years.
It's ridiculous to think that the Russian tank industry can't keep up with production needs. They can upgrade well over 1000 tanks a year, some say over 2000 tanks, ie 200 a month. These are upgrades, not full production. And they have been regularly delivering T-90s to export customers ever since the sanctions hit in 2014, Algeria, Vietnam, Uganda etc... Replacing lost tanks will take time, but not many years. At best the inability to bridge the gap is relevant to the possibility of an active NATO participation within the next few months, which is obviously doubtful.
The T-72B3M is the main standard for the upgradation of thousands of T-72s, which they are very likely to go for. The T-72B3M upgrade costs $250,000. For 7000 tanks, that's $1.7B. It will obviously be cheaper than that due to scale, the $250k price is only for 150 tanks. Perhaps even includes some R&D cost. So how soon can they upgrade all 7000? It's unclear, but it will easily replace all their Ukrainian loses at a very cheap cost very quickly. Loses only count when there are no replacements.
The precision weapons section is a waste of time.
Surely that would also only tell the enemy their routes, same as in the other direction.
Using T-62s is like if the US used M48s or something, i.e. pathetic.
It's become obvious to me over the last week that Ukrainians aren't even including estimated losses for Russians at huge ammo dump explosions.