I really hope Russia is collapsing soon so Ukraians can have actual peace.
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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And the world. Fuckers have infected everything
Agreed. I want the killing to stop and Russia to stop it's conquest.
Don’t worry, the US will probably bail Russia out to keep that from happening
lets bankrupt them next. they obviously have too much power and dont know how to be responsible with it.
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It's seriously astonishing that they managed to wear though the entire massive Soviet stockpile.
Covert Cobal has great tank and apv counting vids, documenting the ever worsening condition of the vehicles remaining. https://youtube.com/@covertcabal
Yes. Back when analysts used to talk about a war with Russia pre-2022, something you heard pretty often was "they're not as advanced, but they have so much stockpiled armour".
This is like America running out of guns or Canada running out of syrup.
I think not even the CIA predicted the effectiveness of drones and javelins against old armor. Without modern defenses, they are just sitting (or slowly moving) ducks. Add to this the corruption in the military, causing lack of maintenance and missing parts, plus the gaps in skills and training of their soldiers.
We are maybe 1-2 years away from the Russian military collapsing, if it weren’t for the orange clown.
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I seem to remember they were using actual WW2 tanks?
Yup. Not because they were out of more modern tanks yet at that point, but because the more modern tanks took longer to refurbish. But now they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
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The stockpile was built in the 50s, 60s and 70a though. The vast bulk of it is 50-70 years old. Post soviet Russia didn't have the money, and prior to that the stockpile was good.
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So let's have a ceasefire eh? /s
Finally the reality is catching up with russia.
Slava Ukraine!
Yeah, the fact that Putin is not really pushing for a ceasefire means that they are not as out-of-stock as the headline suggests...
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Elsewhere on Lemmy today;
Germany warns Russia may be preparing attack on NATO
Both of these cannot be true.
The idea is that after some kind of cease fire, russia will churn out stuff for 3-4-5 years (so mebbe 1.000 tanks?) and then not go full frontal against NATO but say take a bite out of Lithuania, just to see what the response will be.
Like they have been doing since forever (Chechnya, Moldavia, Georgia, Ukraine and so on).
Correct. The issue with Ukraine though is they fought back and didn't give any land to Russia. Now Putin needs to save face and how many people put through the meat grinder to do that is irrelevant.
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There are ways Russia can attack that doesn’t include massive tank charges
They can be true. They might be low on current stockpile, but what is building up is production capacity. Preparing to attack doesn't mean immediately attacking, what most have concern is that once Russia's war against Ukraine cools down, Russia will spend the next 4-10 years building up towards potentially attacking NATO nations.
Yes, years down the line doesn't sound as alarming to the layman, but it is critical for that eventuality to be recognized and prepared for, nations and industry move slowly, and they need to prepare to fight another long drawn out war.
Both things can be true because Germany is talking about risks in the upcoming 5 to 10 years, while this issue is relevant today.
They absolutely can.
Russia has thousands of men willing to fight in horrendous conditions.
A few thousand soldiers that are very well equipped might lose to 10x as many badly equipped enemies.
I think they would lose, but they might not think so.
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We have to keep in mind that Europe needs to justify austerity for the citizens and rearmament for their militaries. I have no evidence of this, but I think it's an entierly sensible read that the warning from Germany is an overstatement with that intent in mind.
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If you know anything about current Russian government, you'd know that one necessarily follows the other. The more desperate Russia gets, the less reserves they have, the more bold and aggressive they're getting. There is a combination of factors leading into it, both psychological and material.
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It's ok, they'll just buy them from the US. That's what allies do.
Unfortunately I think this also has to do with the changing tech around war. Drones are the new hotness and it is a very good counter to tanks warfare.
Drones don't hold ground, soldiers do. Soldiers that have tanks are going to be more effective than those without them.
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According to the researchers, even though there are still about 4,700 tanks in storage, most of them will be difficult to restore due to their poor technical condition.
This is Russia though - "poor technical condition" is "ready for service."
Covert Cobal has been classifying in mainly 4 categories. Abysmal is the lowest one, and are often missing such minor accessories as the turet, tracks, engines, and wheels. Not to mention having sat outdoors for upwards of 50 years. Those conditions are mostly what they're down to. It might allow for slightly higher throughout on production to start on these rusted husks rather than from raw steel, but it'd definitely be harder and more expensive to make these usable than to build a new tank from scratch.
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I don't know what to think anymore. I feel like every week for the last 4 years it's been "China's economy is going collapse any day now" and "Russia is losing so many people and resources in this war. They might as well give all of Russia to Ukraine"
I don't take any news written in English with any seriousness for these two countries.
Also, pretty sure modern warfare has learned heavily that tanks are completely obsolete against drones. Or even less modern warfare tells us how useless they are in cities against gorilla fighters.
Unless the Ukrainians have resorted to conscripting great apes, it's "guerilla" rather than "gorilla".
I'm just here hoping it's both. A guerilla fighting gorilla sounds awesome
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Russia has been coasting on old Soviet stock for a while. Most of their modern t-90s and t-14s have been exploded. They've been sending mothballs tanks and apcs to the front for years now. Last year a good deal of frontline troops were using unarmored Chinese golf carts to move around. They never had the manufacturing capability to keep modernized armor at the front, and it is costing russian lives
t-14s have been exploded
Ehhhh, more like they only had like 15 of the things and none where really out of a prototype phase. Not worth sending due to the bad propaganda when they do get blown up (since there has been no tank platform in that conflict that does not get got).
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And somehow it won't effect the war at all
Russia has been on the brink of collapse for 20 years now.
Ping me when something actually happens that isn't just propaganda.
Amazing.
SLAVA UKRAINI!
Edit It looks like Ukraine has began serious production of truck mounted mobile 155mm artillery systems, something the US doesn't take seriously here because it can lean on an assumed air superiority to deliver overwhelming force, something Ukraine can't do . This coupled with a depletion of Russian tanks might actually be decisive here since the more Ukraine can field mobile, extreme lethality cannon artillery the more necessary it becomes for Russia to have main battle tanks with significant armor and extreme survivability under the hellish conditions of metal shards hurtling at terrible speeds in all directions from exploding ordnance....
The problem with artillery smaller than this is that it doesn't actually pose an existential threat to very highly armored/entrenched targets and the range is that much more limited. Again, if the U.S. had taken arming Ukraine seriously, they would have made sure that the Ukranian military had a very deep and resilient supply of mobile artillery pieces that could serve in place of the role U.S. airpower plays (or U.S. forces assume air power will play at least). As long as Ukranian infantry has access to effective, shoulder launched anti-tank weapons this could tip the balance of the war significantly.
longer answer
I hope this hits Russia hard, but I wonder how much Russia needs tanks at this stage of the war vs a breadth and depth of infantry and artillery reserves.
Main battle tanks are for punching through enemy defenses and making a run on enclosing enemy forces/enemy territory.
Once you capture that territory tanks are still very much useful, especially because of their mobility and ability to reposition quickly, but they aren't necessary in the same way that you need some kind of tank or something behaving like a tank in the maneuver portion of the war. Even if Ukraine counterattacks with main battle tanks, the most effective counters in that case are artillery, entrenched infantry, and mechanized infantry with effective AT that can respond and reposition to slow down armored columns attempting to break through their front lines. Don't get me wrong, tanks would absolutely decisively help too, but if I had to choose between depriving Russia of artillery and depriving Russia of tanks, I would choose artillery. I mean... obviously but especially at this stage of the war.
Who knows though, I hope Ukraine can get a steady supply of main battle tanks from someone (do they currently?), if Russia can't field main battle tanks even if it doesn't immediately affect the strategic balance of the war, the immediate psychological impact and tactical efficiency of tanks chewing through emplaced machine gun nests and enemy positions will be huge. No matter where you are on the battlefield you know that if Ukranians show up with an actual main battle tank, you are fucked as a Russian unless you have a whole lot of artillery/air support at the ready (which they do sometimes).
A single tank if used with an effective screen of infantry can delete entire columns of armored personnel carriers and armored fighting vehicles, I hope Russia suffers severely from a lack of tanks to directly counter this.
The problem though is that the Ukranians need much more artillery or extensive & resilient close air support for their tanks to be anything other than juicey targets for Russians unless they are always kept in the rear and deployed as very limited motorized artillery pieces. To the Ukranians an abrams mbt is effectively just a shittier paladin in the current status quo.
...Add the persistent presence of self propelled 155mm artillery backing Ukranian infantry and armor though and the current status quo of fiddly uav flying bombs and horrific close quarters fighting will simplify for the Russians to "get in a trench or heavily armored vehicle or die". This will hopefully create a situation where tanks are much more necessary for Russia.
Modern war is like rock paper scissors, tanks are the rock, infantry are the paper and artillery is the anvil dropped on the rock paper scissors game...
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the industry is not covering combat losses
Since it's not clear from the headline, that's the restoration industry. We're not even talking about the production of new tanks (which was never that impressive at any point in the full-scale war).
Tanks have not been very useful relative to their expense in the age of drones.
And yet, moving the front is almost impossible without them. All vehicles struggle with drones but at least tanks won't go down from machine gun fire, and without vehicles were pretty much back to WW1 tactics, fighting over inches.
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