Before starting a newer count I decided to review the current one, because I was unsure about some BTR identifications. I decided to try Yandex. Alas, idk why I didn't use it before, there's so much newer footage there.
For example, the 4990th. Before the war there were over 600 MT-LBs, and we didn't get newer footage from that one in all these two years on Google Earth. But take a look at Yandex, just 91 MT-LBs remained there a while ago, three of them visibly broken hulls.
Another base we didn't got newer footage, the 230th. Here a lot of stuff is gone too.
All in all, of the total amount of MT-LBs we found during our updated count, these new Yandex images show that half of them are gone from storage already. Unfortunately, there's not much newer footage to significantly update our numbers of other AFV types.
Only a single base remains with a considerable amount of MT-LBs: the 7020th in the Far East, with 342 MT-LBs stored there as of May 2023. In every other base they're counted by the dozens, except at the 187th as of May 2022 where the number actually increased to 115.
I estimate the current number of MT-LBs in storage in 400-500, including 100 broken hulls. Consider that they started the war with 2,4k in storage and according to TMB2021 another 3k in active service.
Here are the prewar numbers in case someone didn't see this tweet.
Since some people are wondering how many of the "poor" and "worse" tanks can ever be brought back to service, let me explain it once more: ALL OF THEM. It's just a matter of money and time, and how willing the Kremlin is to waste its assets.
Take for example the 2456th tank storage base. The main facility is the one already known, but to the right there's the old scrapyard. Right when the war started they were scrapping T-62s and 64s there, but they stopped for obvious reasons:
We included this tanks in our count, as explained by @CovertCabal in his video about the 2456th, because the ones remaning weren't yet scrapped, tho they're in a terrible state.
Thanks to the kind benefactor we observe that in 3-4 months things have changed a lot for the Russian tank reserve:
- Overall tanks have dropped from 3,106 to 2,478.
- More specifically, T-72As, which previously stand almost the same as prewar, have dropped from 900 to just 461.
Even at bases which previously hadn't seen abrely any tank drawdown like the 2544th, which also has T-62s, T-72As are being pulled out like crazy.
No surprise, considering other recent developments linked to this one, which are what allowed us to suspect in the first place T-72As were fastly being removed from storage bases:
Only question now is how many T-90As they had in the first place, how many T-90Ms are actually made from scratch and how long the tank stockpiles will last, considering they already going for T-72As.
To clarify: this doesn't mean Russia doesn't produce T-90Ms from scratch. In fact T-90A refurbs are probably but a tiny share of the total producion. Among other things, because barely 200 T-90As were produced.
1/ Sort 🧵about the 6018th: while there's still no new decent footage of this major storage base, a closer look at a recent update on Copernicus (Sentinel-2) appears to show a lot of naked ground on the spot where there used to be a lot of the remaining (poorly conserved) armor.
2/ After mostly emptying out the 6018th earlier in the war, in recent times they've come back to pick up the remains.
3/ I previously speculated that these base probably has seen, at the vary least, most or all of their remaining rusty T-80s and better preserved BMP-1/2/3s taken in recent months. We'll just have to wait until better proof of it.
It would appear whatever stock of T-72Bs held UVZ at their own facilities, is now exhausted, as the Russians have restarted to take T-72Bs stored at the 1311th base to be refurbished at that factory. The stock probably won't last long, I estimate they pull ~20 per month.
Also, unless I'm seriously mistaken with the count/IDs, there are no more T-80BVs at the 1311th. By now it's likely there are no stored T-80s left at all (possibly the ones remaining at the 22nd are all T-80UDs).
Would need a recent image of the 6018th to prove it, but unfortunately that base gets no coverage at all as of lately. This would also point to Omsktransmash being able to quickly work through its backlog of T-80s, similar to what I already analyzed in previous BTRZ threads.