Western Think Tanks: Russia is running out of Tanks
Reality strikes.
It should not have taken this long for the West, with its considerable talent, to recognize this reality. The cracks have been visible for a long time: the Russian army is quickly running out of tanks and armored vehicles. Many people overestimated Russia’s capabilities, but evidence from the ground kept indicating otherwise.
The Russian armed forces have been behaving like the mobs in Mad Max, using golf carts and motorcycles. It made no sense. Why would anyone send their troops without protective cover if they had it? The conclusion I reached as early as March is that the Russian army does not have enough tanks:
What we do know is that Russia does not have a lot of usable tanks in storage. Maybe 3,000, probably less.
If the Russians had enough tanks, they would be rolling ahead of the infantry. Not hidden in the rear.
Michael Gjerstad, a research analyst for defense and military analysis at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), says Russia has around 3,200 tanks in stock, and a vast majority of them are not in great condition.
Not just the IISS, but also the European Council on Foreign Relations, another think tank, has come to the same conclusion.
Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, that Russia is “losing far more equipment than it can replace, and stocks are running out. It is therefore important for Ukraine to inflict such high material losses on the Russians that things will become critical for them at some point.”
My own assessments on the Russian battlefield tactics pushed me to that conclusion:
I was not far off from the numbers given by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which estimated Russia has around 3,200 tanks.
I thought it was closer to 3,000.
The Russian Tank Roulette
Russians have suffered heavy tank losses since the beginning of this year. Upon realizing they are on a path to becoming the first army in the world to be in battle without tanks, they have started to slow things down. They are holding the tanks back. Not that they have many, but they are not actively sending them to the front lines in the numbers they used to.
Large-scale mechanized attacks have almost stopped. They are sending tanks and related fighting vehicles in small numbers, and these mechanized assualts are becoming sporadic. The Russian army operates like a sine wave: when they have more, they press as much as they can; when they have less, they start to pull back.
What they are doing now is keeping the tanks away from battle. They will cautiously slow things down so that the overall number of tanks in occupied territory slowly regains strength. They know they will never regain their full strength, but by controlling the pace of destruction, they will try to maintain reasonable numbers to play active defense in the future.
Russian Tank Losses Since Avdiivka:
- March: 528
- April: 222
- May: 427
- June: 143
Can you see the up and down? That is the way the Russian army operates.
Spend. Conserve.
Spend. Conserve.
The loss of fewer than 150 tanks in June compares extremely unfavorably to the infantry losses, which are well above 30,000 troops.
One reason the Russians are losing so much infantry is that these troops lack the mobility they desperately need to move in and out of the combat zone safely. The lack of tanks only compounds this problem further.
Ukraine and the West should realize this weakness and make full use of it. They need to procure the right weapons for this mission and keep targeting the tanks wherever they can find them. Russia has a weakness that can be fully exploited to gain the advantage on the battlefield, potentially making them the first self-proclaimed superpower to run out of tanks in the midst of a war.
The arrival of artillery shells in volume and Ukraine’s scaling up of first-person view drone production will further escalate the pressure on Russian regiments with tanks.
According to Herman Smetanin Head of (Ukraine) State Weapons Company, Ukraine is mass producing first person view drones:
“We have become more non-linear and innovative. Russia has huge resources and a superpowerful industry, so it makes no sense to blindly copy its approach. We are forced to be more flexible and resourceful. In time, David realized that fighting Goliath with Goliath’s own methods is a wrong idea. In the end, he chose the weapon that could bring victory, and skillfully used it.
Let me remind you that Ukraine has already successfully launched mass production of FPV drones. A significant contribution was made by our enterprises, which established close cooperation with private individuals and helped them scale up production”.
Media reports claim that Ukraine is now manufacturing 3,000 drones per day. This puts them on track to achieve the million-drone target that President Zelensky announced in December of last year.
Ukraine knows where the Russian tanks are in the occupied territory. Now they need specialized teams with a singular mission. Get rid of them from their sovereign territory.
Thanks for reading. Making critical information on Ukraine accessible is one way to fight misinformation. That’s why I’ve made 226 stories free to the public in 2024, including this one.
