1/ On sheds, scrapyards and parking lots: short thread on some caveats about Russian military storage bases.
2/ I mentioned a while ago that I was planning a thread on these topics, and finally it's here. This is mostly about explaining some interesting subjects about Russian stored equipment and how it can help unsolve part of the mistery of how much more potential equipment remains there.
3/ First I want to talk about scrapyards. On the thumbnail is the most famous one, the local scrapyards of the 1295th base at Arseniev, of which I have talked several times and that's a great example of this particular subject.
4/ Practically all storage bases have a local scrapyard where they destroyed mothballed equipment that was not classified as fit anymore for various reasons: it could be too obsolete, it could exceed CFE numbers, it simply was beyond their capacity to mantain such number of equipment (even with the typically atrocious post Soviet storage standards)...
5/ Since the war started, scrapyards, which previously held junk for years without it being moved, suddenly started emptying in many places. I want to show some exampled of this: first, I'm linking again my previous post of the 1295th:
6/ In the most recent footage they haven't removed more equipment from the scrapyed; instead, they have moved junk from the active part of the base to said scrapyard.
7/ The 2546th/103rd: prewar and during the war.
8/ The 2544th: prewar vs during the war.
9/ At some other bases the number of scrapped hulls has increased tho. The 94th arsenal it's one such case, due to the cannibalization of artillery: prewar vs during the war.
10/ In most recent footage which I can't share the number of broken hulls has dramatically increased at many bases tho, as I said yesterday.
11/ This isn't conclusive at all, but I find very interesting that early during the many several of the biggest storage bases saw an unprecedented drop in the number of stored scrap, and at many other broken hulls were rearranged in rows. I can't assure it, but I guess part of it was used to provide spare parts for damage equipment in Ukraine, even if it was just hull parts.
12/ Now that we have talked about scrapyards, it's time to talk about the next subject: sheds.
13/ Many have tried to speculate how much equipment could be stored inside these, specially before the invasion broke out. Both @HighMarsed and the @InstitutAR did good analysis on this.
15/ It's indeed almost certain that the most modern and best preserved stored equipment would've been stored inside garages. However, I doubt that most sheds actually were used to stored equipment. Most likely, a biggest share of them were used for critical facilities such as repair workshops, spare parts storage and such.
16/ @Ath3neN0ctu4 recently found many interesting pics of storage bases, including multiple ones inside hangars that point out exactly to this:
17/
18/ But that's not the only point about hangars that supports this theory. Another intersting thing is that they have kept demolishing them at an steady rate for years, even after 2022.
19/ Some satellite footage of this attached as examples: first, a comparison of the 230th:
20/ The 111th:
21/ The 349th:
22/ And many other bases have rundown sheds that clearly would be better maintained if they were use for something important. Just some pics here because I really have no need of going crazy reviewing base by base and looking at every shed:
23/ To sum this up, hangars probably didn't hold as much equipment prewar as many estimated, and they probably aren't even that useful when the Russian military is actively demolishing many of them, and has been doing this for well over a decade due to a lack of funds and use.
24/ Finally, the last, but not least important topic I want to talk about today: how the way stored equipment is lined up can tell us a lot about their state and usefulness.
25/ You see, I'm running out of time, so I'll finish this last part of the thread later today. Hope you have enjoyed it so far.
26/ I forgot to mention it when explaining storage bases scrapyards, but neither me nor @HighMarsed include the junk in those in our count, not even while classifiying it as broken equipment. I do however count broken equipment found in active parts of storage bases.
27/ Back to work. As I was saying, the way equipment is lined up in rows can tell us a lot about their readiness. "Good" equipment is usually pretty well lined up, while "bad" equipment is left as it was parked a long time ago. Compare the armored vehicles at the 3018th/6018th before the war:
27/ Indeed, the first picture shows the local junkyard, while the second one is the main section of the part that held active armor.
28/ Some more pics: the 22nd.
29/ The 769th/227th:
30/ Finally, as to not make this thread an eternal lecture, the 744th:
31/ In cases were all equipment was pretty ordered, it was pretty quickly removed. A great example of this is the former Ukrainian military depot at the outskirts of Sevastopol:
32/ I could keep talking in even more detail of these topics, but I think by now you all have get the gist of it. So that's it for today, hope you liked it! I'll try to get some actual count numbers posted here preeeeetty soonoooon, at long last.
33/ In case I wasn't clear enough, well lined armor was probably parked there on their own, while chaotic rows most likely had armor towed there, not powered on their own engines.
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.