1/ Future abandoned Russian storage bases, consolidation of facilities and obsolete equipment to be scrapped 🧵
2/ Before continuing, this a follow up to my most recent thread:
3/ So, in the previous thread I talked about how many stored armored vehicles that might look decent-ish were probably total write offs. This time I wanna delve a bit more into related stuff.
4/ For many years since the Soviet Union fell, Russia has been slowly consolidating their untold number of military facilities, including storage ones, and scrapping surplus and mostly obsolete equipment. This is no surprise to anybody.
5/ The start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the increasing losses in combat put a stop to this. For example, @CovertCabal mentioned how they stopped scrapping T-64s at the 103rd tank storage base after the war started.
6/ There are many more examples like this, but this thread is not about the past, but rather whether they'll restart the process once the war is over. And I think they will.
7/ Russia has realized the importance of keeping a large stock of heavy equipment, but the fact is that much of it is entirely useless in modern warfare and so decrepit that is not even worth refurbishing, which will probably forced them to scrap it. Makes more sense economically
8/ I believe they'll probably scrap a lot of the remaining cannibalized BMP-1s, and also a shitton of older BTRs, BRDM-2s, MT-LBus and BTR-50s. Like these, because what's the point about them anyway?
9/ At all bases, even now, huges piles of junk keep appearing due to all the cannibalized and scrapped hulls. They're most likely sold to locals, and officers in charge also get a cut from the prices of scrap metal.
10/ And I mentioned this many times, but where did all the nakes, broken hulls went? It's not like they're of any use for the process of refurbishment. For example, these tank hulls at the 2544th.
11/ Things like BRDM-2s, which are for the most part probably empty husks sitting at storage bases, are probably on the way to the torch once things settle down a bit and everything can be properly reorganized and invetoried.
12/ Those in good enough shape are om their way to BTRZs or already showing up in the frontlines.
13/ And the same happens with everything else. Probably they'll keep a number of useful base platforms for advanced systems like BTR-60/70s or MT-LBus, but everything else has no use anymore, and it's been proven.
14/ The fact that they're launching attacks with trucks and civilian cars is enough proof, I'd say.
15/ And that leads me to the other point of this thread: consolidation of storage bases. Like I said, it was already happening before the war. The guys from @tochnyi explain in pretty well in their article: tochnyi.info/2024/09/logist…
16/ But we've also seen more on the stuff during the war, like the consolidation of different tank types at each base: T-62s at the 769th, T-72s at the 1311th...
17/ And also other stuff like BRDM-2s and BMP-1s at the 349th, among other things.
18/ Look at our spreadsheet, look at how many storage facilities they got, and so many of them pretty small in size. This isn't rational or economically wise. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
19/ At places like the 22nd, which will probably be depleted of tanks (and possibly also everything else) in 2025, they already abandoning sections of the base because that much space isn't required anymore with so fewer equipment in storage:
20/ I'm not gonna list here all bases I think will be abandoned one way or another, tho I'll say I think they're gonna be a lot. Just saying that many major bases like the 22nd itself, the 6018th or Lesnoi Gorodok are probably doomed, and so are most of the smaller ones.
21/ In fact, and this is just a personal theory of mine, I believe at a lot of the less critical and smaller storage bases the equipment is as stored as it is for sale. Let me explain: why does Russia need so many dozens of thousands of trucks, cars and whatnot?
22/ I already talked about this but, to put it simple, Russia neither requires nor can afford the upkeep of such a large vehicle fleet. The Soviet legacy which is too large for their needs.
23/ Thanks to @AndyAmmerland I found videos about Russian urbex guys that get into these storage bases and basically find everything wrecked.
24/ And in many cases the stuff is for sale for local scrap metal dealers, guys looking to repair those trucks and use or just collectors.
21/ As usual I left something unwritten and had to get back to reshape the thread. Again, this is just a small thread about how I think things are looking within the Russian storage system and how they'll look in the long run. Next thread will be about more tangible stuff.
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