If you are like me and check the Minusrus website daily, you have definitely noticed that the number of lost Russian tanks is creeping towards two thirds of their entire tank fleet. I have recently done a thought experiment that I think is worthy of sharing, a sort of napkin calculation guessing when Russia is going to completely run out of tanks. However, please bear in mind that I am no military expert and my conclusions should not be taken at face value.
With that in mind, let us first establish the assumptions we have, and which side the bias will favor.
---
- Russia had 3300 tanks at the start of the war, and every single one of them is combat-ready. This assumption is biased in Russia’s favor, as they could have inflated their numbers and we know for sure that there are some inoperable, rusted tanks in their fleet. However, we have no clear idea if and how much they lied about the numbers, or how many tanks could be useless. So bias it is.
- Russia is losing 10 tanks a day on average. Ukraine reports current Russian tank losses at 2097, after 196 days of fighting. Rounding these numbers a bit, we get ~2000 tanks over ~200 days, so 10 every day.
This assumption is biased both ways: It takes Ukraine’s reports at face value, and while they have proven trustworthy in general, it is perfectly possible they are inflating the enemy losses. However, there is also Russian bias: 10 tanks a day is an average throughout the war, and September has been and will be far more intense than average. Also, the rounding favored Russia.
- Russia is not procuring new tanks. Flat-out false, I know. I am only doing it to simplify this experiment and to sort of balance out previous biases — they mostly favored Russia, so let’s favor Ukraine now.
We know that Uralvagonzavod shut down back in March due to lack of spare parts, but it must have produced something before that. I also found reports stating that it has delivered tanks to Russian MoD in August, and even as early as May.
How many tanks did they deliver? How credible are these reports? How long has it been shut down for? Is there another factory besides Uralvagonzavod? I have no clue. This is why I decided to simplify and make this a Ukraine-favoring assumption.
- Russia is willing to lose every single tank they have. This assumption disregards an extremely likely scenario — at some point Russia will lose so many tanks that they will not be willing to lose any more. In the real world, we will not be counting to zero tanks, but to whatever number Russia finds unacceptably low. We don’t know this number, so we will count to zero.
This assumption is counter-intuitively in Russia’s favor, as it makes them run out of tanks later — thanks to their willingness to use every single one.
---
So now that we know in which ways we’re wrong, what is our estimate? They had 3300, lost 2097, with 1203 remaining. Round down to 1200 for sanity. 10 lost per day leaves us with 120 days to go. Four months. Just about when 2023 rolls around.
If we were more pessimistic and implemented Oryx-reported losses (the absolute proven minimum), which just recently reached 1000 tanks, we’d be down to 5 lost tanks a day on average. And if we assume Uralvagonzavod is online and churning out a massive amount of tanks, say, 5 a day, then the answer to ‘when is Russia going to run out of tanks?’ becomes ‘never’. I could also be more optimistic and make them lose 15 a day. Or write off 500 tanks as rusted and looted from the get-go. The point is, this is truly a napkin calculation with more question marks than numbers. A guess, nothing more.
So why do we even bother to guess?
Well, as you can imagine, completely losing one core part of your military is terrible news. It is yet another pillar eroded to dust. Yet another deficiency that has to be compensated for, putting strain on the rest of military apparatus. Yet another possible breaking point that could lead to a total collapse.
Russia is rushing head-first into this scenario — not within years, but within months. That, I think, is the main takeaway here.
I plan to release another article soon, elaborating on my thoughts about military resilience and Russian army collapse. In the meantime, let me know how I did with my first ever Daily Kos article!
- with love from Czechia