Thread by @verekerrichard1

1) Russia's IFV/APC losses normally run at about 2 for every 1 tank that Russia loses. However, that has changed over the last five months, and it's now almost 4 to 1. I don't know why this is, but here are some observations and thoughts. 🧵

2) First I should say the above graph uses the midpoint of each 3-month period, i.e. Feb is, Jan, Feb, & Mar, Mar is Feb, Mar and Apr. The exception is in Oct 2024, which is just the first 16 days of October, so not a big sample, but as it's flowing the trend I've added it.

3) The data is from Visually Confirmed losses on the @WarSpotting website. Plotting all the Russian losses on one graph, and not using a 3-month average, gives this. Showing a decline in tanks (yellow) from about Feb, but it does jump about a bit.

@WarSpotting 1) I don't know the reason, but some possibilities that come to mind:

a) Just random variation.
b) Different location/ground conditions/time of year.
c) Change in Ukrinin tactics/prioritisation.
d) Change in Russian Tactics usage.
e) shortage of Russian tanks.

5) It's been going on for 5 months so I don't think it's random but can not rule that out.
We did not observe this last year or the year before so I don't think it's a seasonal/ground conditions thing.
It might be due to the location of the fighting, but apart from Kirsk, The front lines have not moved that much, and only a modest proportion of the losses are coming from Kirsk.
Ukraine is now using more FPV drones so maybe that's it? but they do seem able to take out tanks almost as easily as IFVs so I don't know, have there been any other significant changes in Ukrian tactics?
Perhaps Russia is now choosing to do things differently, I have not heard/seen much that has changed, but I'm nowhere near the fitting and there is only so much you can asses from a distance.
So, could Russia be running low on tanks?

@WarSpotting 6) There has been speculation that Russia would run out of tanks since the beginning, and it's been wrong, so don't get excited by such reports. We can, however, use the same @WarSpotting data and plot other types of graphs to look for trends.

7) One observation from the graph above is that very few of the Russian lost tanks are new build types, (T-90M or T90S) most of the tanks they use have come from storage, with or without modernisation.
Another graph below, of all Russian types, showed that while for the first 2 years of the war, types rose and fell as a proportion of total tanks, but, for the last 5 months the numbers have been overall reasonably steady. Now don't read too much into this, but it could indicate that the proportions of each type of tank arriving at the front line correspond to the proportions already at the front line. Or, that not many new tanks are getting to the front line.

8) In contrast to the tanks, if we look at IFV/APCs we see that almost a 1/3 of Russian losses are of types still in production (blue) and the proportion is still rising slowly. Russia presumably has a healthy supply of newly built IFV/APCs, and for the moment is still able to back that up with stuff from storage.

9) If we look at Russia's IFV and APC losses in more detail we still see different types gradually becoming more or less common. Presumably, this is an indication that there is more or less of one time at the front line, but not definitely.

10) Sadly, this is not nessassraly as good for Ukrain as it might sound at first, This war, I think, has shown that tanks are more vulnerable than assumed, and on a cost-benefit basis, IFVs and APCs are probably more useful places to put resources to build or restore. Indeed Russia may have come to the same conclusion and therefore be prioritieing IFV/APCs.

I hope I have put both sufficient caveats and reasoning in this. I don't know what is happening, but hope that some think this might be informative, to people who are trying to understand whats happening.

Ends