1/ @aXielMeMer9432 and @waffentraeger just found a lot of updated images boht on Google and Livingatlas. Among these, there are several major storage bases, and as usual, the pattern is them becoming depleted. Let's see a few of them.
2/ Before going deeper, I want to make clear I haven't yet counted any equipment left at these. Still, just a look at them shows that they're not much left.
3/ First of all, the 6018th Central Tank Reserve Base. This one was included in @Vishun_military's recent report, but now it's available for all to see that last September most remaining useful equipment was gone.
4/ Mostly the scrapyard remains filled, but little else remains.
5/ The 943rd is another paradigmatic case of study. @waffentraeger analysed it months ago, but now he have more recent footage from last July.
6/ This base is all but abandoned, mostly destroyed hulls remain. Besides that, a few 2S5s, tanks, BMPs and D-30s. Maybe up to 30 pieces of equipment in total. Risk of Ukrainian strikes, this base is located in Crimea) probably was a deciding factor.
7/ Another base, featured in one of @CovertCabal's latest videos, is the 904th, near the Ukrainian border in Bryansk. Mostly empty now, and the remaining equipment dispersed due to the risk of Ukrainian strikes.
8/ Two more interesting bits of data: 1) we noticed equipment being withdrawn from all bases, even trucks:
9/
10/ and 2) MT-LBus also being removed from bases where they sat unmoved for years and in small quantities:
11/ And ocassinally also old BTRs:
12/ Also increased moutains of cannibalized hulls and spares parts everywhere, which fits with decreasing amounts of mothballed and unusable vehicles. But that's all for now. Hope it was interesting!
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1/ It's time to take a look at Russian tank productions and refurbishment rates! Long time delayed, I know, but finally here! This first part of the thread will be about T-54/55s, T-62s, T-64s and T-80s. T-72 and T-90s and specifics on the industry will come in the second part.
2/ Here’s the previous threads, first about APCs, where I also explained the fundamentals and methodology:
There's one fundamental reason for everything that we're seeing lately, and it's been in the making for 2 years already: Zelensky & co refusing to understand that this is a war of survival and not enacting a proper mobilization. Corruption, incompetence, political interests...
Call it whatever you want, but at some point it's not even Syrskiy's fault anymore. YOU CAN'T HOLD GROUND WITHOUT INFANTRY. Everything and everywhere is atrociously undermanned.
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.