Thread by @verekerrichard1

Something is changing the pattern of Russian battlefield losses. Russia has been losing Tanks and IFVs each month since the start of the war. It has lost more IFVs than tanks each month of the war, an average 1.87 IFVs (red line) for each tank. but each month the ratio (blue line) has been reasonably close to the average, peeking at 2.17 in May 22, and a minimum 1.47 in Mar 23. However, this month March 2024, it's much higher 3.87. and even higher than that 6.80 if you just look at the most recent 10 days.

I don't know the reason, maybe it is related to tactics or Vehicle availability, or perhaps the election in Russia is a factor, but it is happening and seems to be accelerating throughout the month.

For my regular followers, sorry, to keep banging on about this, I know I have done a few tweets about it, but each time I check the numbers, the ratio has increased further.

For this tweet, I am including APC, IFVs and vehicles that are something between the two together as IFVs for simplicity.

I will put 4 more graphs/charts in a thread below with more info.

This is a graph of all Russia's lost equipment each month as a % of that month's total losses. There has been a gradual reduction in everything that is not a Tank or IFV, but that is very gradual, in comparison to the change in the last month in tanks compared to IFVs.

Here is the data table for all of Russia's losses each month. it is built from the data on the website which is similar to the ORYX list, in some ways. But, I use this site, mostly because when a photo/video emerges, the @WarSpotting team do their best to work out when the photo was taken, and then allocate it to that date, making it easier to look for trends and changes over time.Warspotting.net

Plotting all of Russia's IFV and APC losses on one graph, with each type as a % of that month's total losses, we get this graph, there have been some notable changes over time, the rise of the BMP-1 and decline in air-mobile IFV like the BMD-2. However, there has been no significant change and almost no change at all comparing March 24 with Feb 24, or even Jan 24. suggesting that this is not about one or 2 large batches of one type of IFV arriving at the front.

Comparing all Russian tank losses by type each month of the war, we get this graph. There is some change here a decline in the % of T-80s, with other types, T-90 and T-72s, becoming relatively more common. but the decline is not that big, compared to other month-on-month changes, and is not big enough on its own to account for the change in the overall IFV to Tank ratio.

Thread End, but keen to hear ideas or thoughts as to what is driving this change.

I like WarSpotting, because it attempts to work out the date of each photo or video recording a loss and allocating the loss to that month. but other people also track Russian losses. Thanks to @MKot316 who has added up the losses on those websites we get this table, it does look like the same trend, from Oryx and Andrew P, but not quite so pronounced.