Thread by @pati_marins64

🧵1/7
How Putin's premature ambitions just Sabotaged the RU Defense Modernization program:

Russian armed forces were in mid of a modernization program when Putin decided to invade Ukraine.
The problem was that Ukraine also had a modernization program runing fast since 2014.

2/7
The Program was focused on smaller and modern ground force, reducing the active tanks from 23.000 to less than 5.000;
The IFVs from 23.000 to 12.000 and the Airborne from 1500 to 1300 vehicles.
In 2020, RU had modernized les than 1/3 of its smaller forces. In 2022 maybe +15%

3/7

The investment in Navy, specially about New projects and restructuring were enough to keep the forces growing and more modern, in contrast with the land forces.
The shipyard capacity also grew considerably to attend this program.
I'd like to invite @CovertShores to comment.

4/7
The air force was another successful program with more than 70% of modernization lvl, retiring the Su24 and 2/3 of Mig29 fleet.
The attack Rotatory units were also reduced to near 400.
It was the concept of a superpower army: small and modern army, specially on ground forces.

5/7
The MLRS modernization didn't reach the expectations.
The Tornado program just advanced on BM21 with a good upgrade rate to Tornado G, and built two long range missiles, to be used by Smerch launchers.
The production of Iskander misiles and it's brigades were also increased

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The artilleries were the most critical russian equipment: Obsoletes and with a low range. From more than 6.000, the new inventory in 2020 had only 2000 in service.
Rocket launchers were reduced from 4.000 to less than 1.000. Nobody know how many were modernized until 2020

7/7
Opinion:
RU had probably the most important modernization program from its history and a war destroyed it
If less than 1/3 of the land forces were modernized, what's the sense of an invasion?
A wrong decision can destroy years of work.
Now they run to repair old units.

These numbers X loses, put the RU army at a fragile position regarding the land forces. Still able to fight, but I have a feeling about some panic there, specially because RU don't know how the new UKR weapon packet will behave on battlefield and their equipment repair rate.