Thread by @verekerrichard1

1) The Economist magazine has published an article about Russia running low on military equipment, To my surprise they mention me as an open-source analysis. So I thought I would do a thread about it. economist.com/europe/2024/07…

2) The main thrust of the article is that Russian stocks of stored equipment are deep, but not bottomless. And I would agree with that sentiment. I will go further and say that some of the best equipment is near the end of stored equipment.

3) I should say that I mostly look at data that others have gathered, especially when it comes to assessing Russian stored equipment. @Jonpy99 @HighMarsed @CovertCabal are all practically prolific and worth following.

@Jonpy99 @HighMarsed @CovertCabal 4) First I am going to look at IFV/APC and here I can recommend a 'Google sheet' made available by @Jonpy99 who has done the counting. It shows that overall Russia has removed more (6756) than it has left in working condition (5781) docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

5) Being a bit over halfway may not seem that good. But if you look at the numbers, some equipment is almost all gone, MT-LBs in particular. These have been heavily used, on the front line. Equipment like BRDM-2 and BTR-60 & 70s still have lost left, but little of this old stuff is used on the front line.

6) The most important of the IFV/APCs are the BMPs. which you will see sit in the middle of the pack when it comes to how much has been taken from storage. But if we look at what @Jonpy99 has counted in more detail, we see of the remaining 1382 useable BMPs, most, (about 893) are the oldest BMP-1 and (about 650) are specialist artillery support vehicles. It is hard to be totally confident with satellite photos but perhaps only a few doses are BMP-2s or later.

7) This time I'm using data from @WarSpotting and I've created a chart of the % of each type of BMP lost each month. The BMP-3 is still in production about 140 made last year. the BMP-2s have been the most numerous, at least if you take losses as a proxy for use. Don't worry too much about July 2024, we don't have a full month's worth of data, but for almost a year the share of BMP-2s has been increasing, perhaps that's because they have been prioritising getting them out of storage, if they are now gone, that matters. It's also possible that Russia has been importing BMP-2s but I won't go down that rabbit hole now.

@Jonpy99 @HighMarsed @CovertCabal @WarSpotting 8) Next, I will look at tanks. @CovertCabal produced a youtube video recently based on a hout by him and @HighMarsed I recommend this.

9) That couting effort produced these numbers. Showing that over half the total remains. but most of the best tanks are gone. All of the T-90s 3/4 of the T-80s and over half of the modernist T-72s. They used a slightly different way to grade the condition of the tanks, but again most of the tanks in decent condition have gone and most that remain are poor or worse.

10) Now we will come to artillery. This table is 6 months old but shows what has been taken. 5525 towed guns and 1489 SPGs. so a lot more towed. overall it's less than half but look at the pattern some types have hardly been touched M-46 130mm, while others like the 2A36 its over 3/4 gone. It's also harder to asses the conditions of guns from satellite photos.

In the Economist article, it quotes my theory that perhaps some of the Twed guns have been removed to move their barrels to working SPGs. which I say based on the loss patterns, here again from @WarSpotting showing many more SPG losses than Twoed Guns. This is only a theory I, its possible that SPGs are easier to spot, hit, and photograph because they are generally bigger than towed guns. the visually confirmed losses may not match the proportions on the battlefield. Throughout the war, the losses of Artilly reported by the AFU have been much higher than the confirmed losses. and the difference is much more stark than with Tanks and IFVs. But as the proportions of losses are not changing much, it would suggest that barrel swapping might be happening, at least with some types.

12) The article also mentioned ammunition, and I think this is most likely the overall limiting factor on Artillery, not Barrels. And I partly say that looking at the loss patterns again. Russia brought some calibers back into service like the 240mm 2S4 and the 152mm Gianstant, when they still had a lot of standard 152mm guns left. I think this was to use up that ammunition, and I think there recent decline is indicative of that ammunition now coming to an end.

13) Russia started with about 14-18 million artillery shells in storage. they were firing constantly over 20,000 a day and at times 60,000 a day, which uses up a lot. Especially when you add maybe a million shells lost in ammunition explosions. The article states Russia can now make about 2 million a year, which would be 5,500 a day, close to the 5,000 Russian fires on a typical day.

@Jonpy99 @HighMarsed @CovertCabal @WarSpotting 14) Russia imported a lot of shells from North Korea that were in very bad shape late last year. Firing pore-quality shells uses up the barrel life, with a low probability of a hit, So I think that Russia would only have used them if there principle limiting factor was Barrels.

15) Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), are another type of artillery, and Jompy has done a count of those in storage. Showing 3/4 and 2/3 of the main 2 types have gone. so quite high amounts, it's possible that MLRS will become another pinch point if the quoted numbers of new rockets made are accurate. but not yet.

16) When counting equipment from satellite photos it requires there to be photographs, and with some of the bases, the photographs are quite old. generally, this will mean more equipment has been taken than realised in the overall numbers. It's also possible that some of the equipment left is in better or worse condition than it seems from the photos.

@Jonpy99 @HighMarsed @CovertCabal @WarSpotting 17) Counting equipment from satellite photos is hard and I want to again thank those who do this. I also want to thank @warspotting and their team, for the work they do counting destroyed equipment.

18) There have been people claiming Russia is about to Run out of equipment since day two of the war, and they were Wrong. However, I come back to the point from the start. Russia's store of equipment is deep but not bottomless, We don't truly know how close to the end we are, but for some significant types at least it might be close.

19) To finish off, I want to restate that the way to fight Russia is not to try to fight them to the end of an attritional war, where Russia pulls every last thing from storage and imports what it can. Instead, the West should give a surge of equipment, and ammunition now in one big wave, to let Ukraine win a decisive victory.

A victory for themselves, and a victory for Liberalism, Democracy and Freedom, that ring around the world for all to hear.