An analyst looked at satellite imagery, did the math, and came to an unexpected conclusion. Twenty-eight months of intense fighting in Ukraine have radically reshaped the Russian army’s armored corps.
According to @highmarsed, the Army has lost so many hot tanks that the only way to recover its frontline force of 3,000 tanks is to remove more 1960s-era T-62s from long-term storage.
“In my opinion, we will most likely see more T-62s in the long term and they will probably be one of the main tank types of the Russian army,” @highmarsed wrote after comparing T-62 stocks to older ones. tank stocks. T-55 and T-72, T-80 and T-90 more recent.
The T-62s, weighing 41 tons and seating four people, have the merit of being plentiful and, compared to newer tanks, quite simple, making them cheaper to store and renew after decades of open storage. . The 103rd Armor Repair Plant in Siberia, as well as other factories, “appear to have developed significant capacity to refurbish this type,” noted @highmarsed.
This evolution – from the modern T-72, T-80 and T-90 (with their thicker armor, 125-millimeter main guns and immediate autoloaders for their three-person crews) to the old T-62 (with its thinner armor, 115-millimeter (115-millimeter) armor of larger weapons and a human magazine) – is a sign of concern for the Russian military as its attacks in Ukraine slow and turn bloody.
The numbers show how they were handed over to the Russians there. In February 2022, the Russian military entered the war in Ukraine with approximately 2,100 state-of-the-art T-72s, 500 fashionable T-80s, and 400 T-90s.
But Ukrainian mines, drones, artillery and anti-tank missiles have taken their toll. Analysts have counted 3,000 Russian tanks destroyed, abandoned and captured. The older T-55s and T-62s that the Russians began to isolate from the masses of outdoor parking soon after the war were expanded.
No one outside the Kremlin knows for sure how many new tanks Russian factories build each year, but informed estimates range between 500 and 600. That’s too few new tanks to upgrade all the lost tanks, so the rest come from old arsenals of the Kremlin. Cold war.
These reserves were gigantic in 2022. They included 6,200 reservoirs, according to the @highmarsed satellite image study. The dominant ones were 1,800 T-62s, 2,000 older T-72s, and 1,400 early model T-80s.
Just over two years later, the Russians recovered about 700 T-62s, 500 T-72s, and 1,100 T-80s for restoration. The fact that about a thousand T-72 Ural and T-72As from the early 1970s is a far cry from the rebel autoloaders of those tanks.
Reserves of the new T-80 and T-72 are running out, but there are still 1,100 T-62s waiting to be recovered and a momentary chance to enter the war. As production of new tanks continues to lag due to lack of money, manpower and spare parts, those 1960s-era T-62s will play a vital role in the Russian military starting in the mid-2020s.
They are not wonderful tanks, and they are particularly inferior to Ukraine’s maximum T-64s and vulnerable to its mines, drones, artillery, and missiles. Analyst Andrew Perpetua described the T-62s as “vaguely useful. “But only according to the “standards of the 1980s”.
But Russia can get old and vaguely useful tanks as long as its losses in Ukraine far outweigh the manufacture of new tanks.
Sources:
1. @highmarsed: https://x. com/HighMarsed/status/1811015708173652046
2. Orix: https://www. oryxspioenkop. com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment. html
3. Andrés Perpetua: https://x. com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1593313095123869699
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