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Forbes: Russia is running out of modern tanks [1]

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Date: 2023-03-15

Forbes has a couple of recent stories out discussing the Russian tank situation. According to these articles, Russia is running far lower on modern T-72 tanks thank was previously thought, which explains why we are seeing increasing numbers of older tanks like the T-62 (a 1960’s design that last rolled off the assembly line in 1975) being pulled out of mothballs, refurbished and sent into Ukraine.

The Russian Army Is Running Out Of T-72 Tanks—And Quickly

Russia’s Best Tank Army Might Have No Choice But To Reequip With 60-Year-old T-62s

In the first article, the writer looks at information put forth by Twitter partizan_oleg, which the writer proclaims to be one of the better online sources for such things.

Partizan_oleg has apparently realized, after crunching numbers, that the numbers of T-72’s available in storage was greatly overestimated. Initially, it was assumed Russia had 2,000 active T-72’s at the start of the invasion and another 6,900 in storage, though also assuming 2/3rd of those are probably beyond usefulness.

Partizan_oleg then looked at production runs of T-72’s and subtracting things like known losses and sales over the years, and has concluded that his original estimates were far too generous, and revised the number of probable T-72’s in storage at the start of the invasion down from 6,900 to a mere 1,500 — with, again, many of those unlikely to have been maintained in a condition to be usable.

Given that Oryx has visually confirmed losses of over 1,000 T-72’s. Combined with probably losses we don’t know about, if partizan_oleg’s estimates are indeed close to accurate, Russia has lost well over half of it’s available T-72’s, especially if many of those in storage are not in good shape.

The second article notes that Russia’s factories are struggling to produce more than 20 modern T-72 and T-90 tanks per month and can refurbish about 50 from storage in the same timeframe. That’s not keeping up with Russia’s rate of loss.

I’ll wrap up with this nugget that is the start of the 2nd article:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/15/2158485/-Forbes-Russia-is-running-out-of-modern-tanks

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