1/ Prewar AFV and tank count of Russian BTRZs (BTRZ stands for Armor Repair Plant) in collaboration with
@HighMarsed
. Before diving into the count, BTRZs aren't actual storage facilities, but factories where equipment previously in storage is set to be refurbished for service.
1/ Thread on the status of stored BTRs in mid-2024 with the collaboration of
@CovertCabal
. Some trends starting to appear in storage bases regarding older BTRs, and they are very interesting.
1/ It's finally time to publish some actual figures from the updated AFV count made by
@HighMarsed
and myself. First thread is on MT-LBs, the humble workhorse of the Russian military, and how it's close to storage depletion.
1/ Thread about my estimations on what currently remains in Russian storage. Consider that even the most recent footage from
@Vishun_military
is already 2-4 months old, and almost everything else is far older.
1/ Some more updates on depleted Russian storage facilities thanks to
@waffentraeger
(this time with his consent, heh). First the 7027th base at Pospelicha. Not a single piece of equipment left there, just an active surveillance radar station from the 590th Anti-Aircraft Missile
2/ Like I said in the past, Russia has an immense number of stored trucks, probably in the 40-50k ballpark. However, most are junk, parked there for decades without proper maintenance.
11/ Another interesting base is the one located near Novaya Stanitsa. You can clearly see in these pics how the equipment sharply decreased by June 2023. I'm just gonna post an analysis on this base by another account as it already has the numbers:
1/ Russia has severely depleted one of their largest towed artillery storage bases. In updated images it is visible that they have removed about 60% of the stored guns and half of the remaining guns might be unusable. Data and IDs below.⬇️
I just finished counting
@Vishun_military
's footage of all major storage bases they bought to help them with AFVs. Without revealing anything, Russian storage situation is a lot more dire than I thought. Many bases are close to depletion and other still hold hundreds of armored
They keep removing scrapped equipment from their bases at the same time they also keep cannibalizing what little working equipment is left in storage. You'll know more about this next week.
5/ This doesn't mean that Russia will run out of trucks. No, if there's one kind of military vehicle easy and cheap to manufacture in huge numbers, those are trucks. And if the worst came to pass for them, civilian trucks still exists. In fact, civilian trucks are not sanctioned
1/ A couple days ago
@CovertCabal
released his MT-LB count video, done in collaboration with me. I was celebrating my birthday AFK this weekend, but now it's time to make a thread about it.
На видео КМЗ засветился корпус «Курганца» в процессе производства. Также можно наблюдать производство БМД-4М. «Курганец» несмотря на про��лемы (, ) в виде поплавков все же имеет шанс пойти в серию.
1/ Last thread about the mid-2024 AFV count update in collaboration with
@CovertCabal
. This one is about MT-LBus and also BRDM-2s, as those don't seem worthy of a thread for themselves.
6/ However, the huge attrition on their truck fleet has forced them to unmothball trucks, which is just another proof that the equipment situation for the Russia army is not, let's say, ideal. Let's look at some examples in the following tweets.
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:
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
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
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.
2/ Here you have the numbers at the remaining storage bases storing BMPs and BTRs which I haven't covered until now, with outdated dates in orange. First BMPs:
3/ And the numbers in storage. As you can see, almost a third of the prewar BTRs in storage are gone by now, and that's despite them not being the main focus of AFV reactivation:
Even more evidence of stored MT-LBs running out. I'm just reviewing all the minor storage bases
@waffentraeger
found. This is 82nd Seperate Repair and Restoration Bataillon. Comparison between 21.05.2022 and 25.10.2022:
Armored artillery support vehicles still being pulled out from storage facilities. See these PRPs and MT-LBus at the 40th Arsenal. Image discovered by
@waffentraeger
.
Another batch of 12+ T-62M Obr. 2022 MBTs from the 103rd BTRZ en route to the frontline. According to the car's plate number the video was shot in the Republic of Bashkortostan
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.
2/ I have added some ground footage of the 111th and 2456th below and I think it is save to say that likely many more of the remaining BMPs will never see combat, especially from the 769th, 111th and 2456th.
4/ Like I hinted the other day in the BMP thread, Russia has started to slowly demthball older BTRs in greater numbers than before, at the same time that stored BTR-80s are almost gone and those that remain are mostly broken hulls.
8/ Before showing the full effects of the rapid depletion of well-preserved stored BMPs, I'll nonetheless say that we have already seen Russian demothball or move around older pieces of equipment such as BTR-70s or BRDM-2s. More on this on future threads.
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
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.
I just finished counting
@Vishun_military
's footage of all major storage bases they bought to help them with AFVs. Without revealing anything, Russian storage situation is a lot more dire than I thought. Many bases are close to depletion and other still hold hundreds of armored
1/ Full count and identification of AFVs and other armored vehicles at Russian storage bases (pre-war), made together with
@Jonpy99
. We found almost 14000 vehicles across 39 bases. I have added all individual counts and additional info below.⬇️
5/ After having posted in recent threads the total numbers of MT-LBs, MT-LBus, BRDM-2s and BTR-50s counted by me and
@HighMarsed
, and also the number of BMPs and BTR-60/70/80s at the bases analyzed along with
@Vishun_military
, now it's time to look at the remaining armor left in
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
5/ So let's see this in depth. First of all, the 2544th (the one in the previous tweet). Russia already removed roughly 50 BTR-70s from this base in late 2022, but during the first half of 2024 they also pulled out another half hundred.
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.
6/ As you can see, BMPs are mostly stored at the usual tank and IFV bases, such as the ones I already covered with newer footage bought by Vishun, aka the 22nd, 1295th, 111th, 2544th, 769th and 3018th/6018th.
The fact that Russia keeps making new BMD-4s after it's been proved to be a terrible design for modern warfare, instead of scrapping the production line and retooling it to make even more BMP-3s is atrocious. Good for Ukraine, tho.
This article is AWESOME. So many good quality images from recent months. And so revealing too, in the last quarter of 2023 they took a lot of stuff from every major storage base.
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.
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.
1/ Prewar AFV and tank count of Russian BTRZs (BTRZ stands for Armor Repair Plant) in collaboration with
@HighMarsed
. Before diving into the count, BTRZs aren't actual storage facilities, but factories where equipment previously in storage is set to be refurbished for service.
1/ Thread about my estimations on what currently remains in Russian storage. Consider that even the most recent footage from
@Vishun_military
is already 2-4 months old, and almost everything else is far older.
Something weird which is one of the main reasons why I gonna do an engineering equipment count IS that I barely saw some dozens ARVs in storage, and they mostly are still there because their condition must be bad. I wonder where are they getting all those ARVs then.
10/ At the current rate of losses, I'd be thoroughly surprised if Russia still retain any BMP-2 in storage by this year's end. But we also have to account that not every hull will be worth restoring, some will inevitable be only good to cannibalize them.
3/ The 94th holds a lot of BMPs and other armored vehicles which are likely not regular BMPs but rather PRPs or other variants. Only few of them have been removed.
10/ By now 7 working BTR-80s and 33 broken ones remain, out of 429 when the invasion of Ukraine started. You can see that most of them are pretty rusty.
One more depleted storage base, and there are many more looking as empty as this one by now. In fact, even most active bases are empty by now, which wasn't the case for most of 2023.
6/ This is specially interesting because no other equipment stored at this base been touched in over a year. 197 BTR-70s, or 65% of the prewar amount here remain now.
9/ Another major base where BTRs dropped in these last 6 months is the 22nd. I've talked many times about this one, it mostly stored modern armor before the war started, like T-80U/UDs, BMP-3s and BTR-80s.
9/ And some actual BMPs are also stored in small numbers in bases that HighMarsed and I are unsure if are storage or active bases: the 245th, 187th, 5349th/104th, 7022th, 230th, 237th, 243th (bis) and 247th. These small bases have been almost entirely depleted by now.
I've decided that I'll do all the threads I noted on my recent "to-do list" tweet and the I'll call it. I just don't like this hobby as much as I did in the past. I'll keep the spreadsheet but that's it, I won't update after 2024.
@CovertCabal
37/ I'll soon get one final thread with my estimates on cannibalization and remaining equipment in Russian storage. Other than that, unfortunately Vishun couldn't get updated footage of the 349th and 2546th/103rd storage bases, that by the latest footage I counted still held over
11/ Now that that's explained, let's get into the actual analysis. First I'll start with the 394th. Based on ground footage from a decade ago, equipment stored here is pretty rundown, but the lack of good footage make it impossible to prove it:
6/ With all that said, numbers clearly dropped. There isn't that much on figures per se to say, as HighMarsed already did on his own a pretty good analysis on stored BMPs a few months ago and we barely found any new satellite footage this time around.
1/ Russia has removed 1081 BMPs from storage bases since 2021 and at least 765 of the remaining 3730 vehicles are visibly broken beyond repair (satelite imagery), but the real number is likely higher which I explain in this thread. All individual assesments are linked below⬇️
8/ Most of the other BMPs are stored in artillery depots, like the 94th arsenal. Probably all armor stored there are artillery support vehicles like PRP-3s in the case of BMP-based armored vehicles:
There are 356 BMP based vehicles at the 94th (June 2023) . The vehicles look a bit different from regular BMPs and Russia usually doesnt store IFVs at the artillery bases, which is why I think these are some kind of support vehicles, although I cant confidently ID them
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
13/ That's not to say that Russia will run of trucks. Again, that's just impossible, and then again most stored trucks will remain in their sites because they're most likely broken and repairing them is probably more expensive than just buying new ones.
I just reran my stored BMP numbers accounting for all BMPs at those two bases being broken and then also 344 BMP-based non-combat vehicles at the 94th arsenal. Based on these numbers, but early 2024 Russia had 1,200 BMPs (mainly BMP-1s abd BRM-1s) left in storage.