1/ Final thread on stored Russian engineering vehicles. This times we'll take a look at a miscellaneous mix of engineering vehicles, such as minelayers, mine clearing vehicles, trench diggers... and see whether they're being used or not.
2/ As with the other two engineering threads, this won't be an in-depth analysis, just a overall glance at their storage stocks. Re: ARV and pontoon threads:
4/ So, first of all, as you can guess, engineering vehicles are meant for construction work or for the transportation of combat engineers on the battlefield. For example, breaching vehicles such as UR-77s are intended to overcome enemy defense lines.
6/ But are they really used? Those numbers look smaller considering the overall 18,250 pieces of equipment lost by Russia, specially in a positional war such as this one.
7/ So far it doesn't look like they're really used, as with the coming of new technologies such as remove mining, many of these sytems aren't needed anymore.
8/ So let's take a look at a bunch of storage bases (not all of them, by a long shot) to get a clearer picture. We'll start by the 7021th:
9/ Before the war there were 44 UR-77s here. They haven't been moved in all this time.
10/ Another site that stored UR-77s was a base called Alkino-2. Once again, not pulled out from storage:
11/ This place also holds other engineering vehicles:
12/ Including some GMZ-3 right next to the UR-77s. Some of these were taken:
13/ Another post, another base: the 230th in Sakhalin island.
14/ There were also many apparently GMZ-3s here, most of them removed by now from this base:
15/ I mentioned Novaya Stanitsa a while ago when it was updated with new public footage, and how barely any equipment remained there, but that the engineering equipment hadn't been moved, including 2 BAT-2s.
17/ There's also the depot near Syzrandkaya. Once again nothing had been touched here, tho the last available footage is from winter 2022:
18/ Then the 96th at Mashkovo. Among other things, some IMR-2s, again not pulled out:
19/ The 2066th (like several other bases here, also mentioned in the pontoon thread), among other stuff, also had at least 10 GMZ-3s, of which only 1 was pulled out:
20/ Like I said, among other stuff:
21/ And finally, let's take a look at another base: a depot near Sosnovets. Updated for the last time in late 2022, the Russians had also not taken anything from here by then:
22/ This is just a quick glance at some bases. The conclusion is that, for the most part, they haven't really touched that equipment. They have mostly used civilian equipment to dig trenches.
24/ Either because they're not as useful as one would expect, or because they were left rotting in storage for decades and most are broken now. Only small quantities are pulled out from storage here and there.
25/ I'm aware this thread feels lackluster, but that's because 1) these types of systems are stored in small quantities in who knows how many storage facilities (for example, there are cranes everywhere), 2) I'm a bit out of my depth here, I lack knowledge to ID many systems
26/ and 3) writing up these last two engineering equipment threads has been a drawl, I just didn't really enjoyed it (and this is probably part of my recent demotivation).
27/ So I really hope this thread has been useful anyway to some of you. Next week there should be some actual content worth posting... See you then!
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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.