“Abrams vs. T-34” is on my wish list of things to see on video before this war ends.
Yeah but in WW2 weren’t the allies helping to supply the soviets with military hardware? As it stands now, Russia is a pariah state, I don’t think even China is giving them military aid. They’ve had to resort to asking North Korea for military assistance, which is pretty bad.
But that brings me back to my original point. What value are infantry with AK-47s if the Ukrainians have the artillery, tanks, APCs, intelligence, air support, etc?
Ehh, I haven’t seen any record of T-55s being destroyed, but there’s plenty of evidence of T-62 and T-64 models being destroyed in Ukraine. If they had all those extra T-72 and later tanks in a serviceable state, why ware at least 45 or so earlier models pushed into service?
This really is the question. Wouldn’t it make infinitely more sense from both a logistics and a tactical perspective to send functional T-72 variants or T-80s if they had any at all in their reserves before resorting to having to support additional hardware/weapons lines by sending the much older and less capable T-64 or 62s?
It can be a viable tactic when defending your homeland against Nazis when you have no other choice.
I don’t think sending human waves equipped with rusty AKs and old Mosin rifles is an effective strategy for invading a modern, NATO-equipped and trained nation.
Putin may not care, but enough Russians might care that some of Putin’s rivals might feel that a regime change is viable.
I recently watched this video (32 minutes but they make this point in the first 5 minutes or so) which makes the claim that the Russians over-extended themselves. The Russians could not defend all the things they needed to defend. The Ukrainians simply noticed where the bulk of the Russians were and went where they were not.
There was just no good way for Russia to hang on to all they had taken and so were forced to retreat.
I think conscripting more troops, even poorly trained and equipped troops, is a means to fill-in those holes.
Certainly those weak troops cannot stand against a well trained and well equipped army but they will slow them down a fair bit which gives time for the effective troops to respond.
I think it is also fair to note that the Soviets mobilized for total war (not sure if there is a proper term for it). By that I mean the Soviets bent their entire economy and industry, their entire population, to the sole task of fighting the war. Something Russia is not doing now (not even close I do not think).
The T-64 isn’t very different from the T-72; they were produced at the same time and the T-64 was the primary MBT of Ukraine at the start of the war as well as still being in limited use in the active Russian army. They are visually indistinguishable to a layman’s eye; they both have the same 125mm gun and autoloader. The T-62 is a very different beast than the T-64/72 series, with no advanced composite armor, auto-loader, advanced fire-control, thermal sights, etc. and a 115mm gun, but only 5 have been confirmed lost out of 1,192 confirmed Russian tank losses. Moreover, the T-62Ms appear to have been used by the forces of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which the Russians have been using as cannon fodder. They’re also the ones who have been seen with Mosin-Nagant rifles of WW2 or earlier vintage. As mentioned earlier, conscription in these ‘republics’ has been extremely extensive over the past 7 months.
That also raises a very unpleasant thought when it comes to the sham referendums being conducted and the soon to be proclaimed annexation of those two people’s republics as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. With how expensively the Russians have been willing to bleed the Donbas by forced conscription, and with their intention to now consider Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts to be a part of Russia, I’m pretty much expecting the Russians to conscript able-bodied men from those Oblasts and throw them into the meatgrinder against their own countrymen.
Oh and just to quickly note, you’ll be seeing T-55s in the war pretty soon, but on the Ukrainian side. Slovenia has agreed to ship their 28 M-55S modernized T-55s to Ukraine. Not entirely useless, but I’d really prefer it if Germany had gotten off of its ass and agreed to supply Leopard 2s, or the US Abrams.
I may have provided the wrong link. That video is good (and worth a watch I think) but I don’t think it is the one making the point I said it did. I am looking for that but can’t find it now.
Sorry about that.
Well, yes, and the T-62s documented destroyed/abandoned/captured were all in Sept., as well. That points to them being most likely used by the LPR and DPR troops. But that still begs why so many of these and the T-64 models are being used if the Russians have literally thousands of T-72 and T-80 models in storage and ready for use. It’s been seven months of actual war, and they had years before that to bolster their puppets in these areas. If they really had thousands to spare from old stock, I can’t see why they wouldn’t all be sporting at least T-72s.
So, given that these machines have been put into service at all, the most generous interpretation seems that the Russians didn’t take this war seriously, not even when they started it in 2014. The other option is their reserve machinery consists mostly of entries in a log, and it will take considerable work to put them into a condition where they can fight. Either one is arguable, but given that the older machines even showed up in recent combat, I’m more inclined to bet on the latter.
This is the video I meant to link about Russian issues with defending all it had taken (15 minutes long):
Didn’t someone once say wars are won on logistics (or something to that effect)?
You can jump to the Ukrainians trapping the Russians at about 6:50 in the video.
The other thing is: even if they have the tanks, and even if they are in good working order, and even if they do have the munitions for them, and even if they can get the logistics supply chain to get the munitions safely to the front, and even if they can instantly transport these tanks without the Ukranians knowing just where they are (thanks to US Intel)…
Then I’m not convinced that these very recent conscripts, many of whom have not been trained on tanks in years, and many others who have never been trained on tank use whatsoever are going to be instantly able to use them in a combat situation against modern NATO supplied weapons.
This is half the reason I made my T55 quip in the first place. However, a couple points:
-The M-55S bear about as much relation to an original recipe T-55 as a T-bucket hot rod does to a Ford Model T. Different engine, different armour, different gun, different optics, different fire control. They’re T-55 chassis, but they’re at least as capable as the T-72 variants that make up the majority of fielded tanks in this war.
-I thought the Germans were contemplating supplying old Leopard I’s out of storage, not Leopard II’s. Would love to be wrong. Probably a better chance of seeing Abrams after the lend-lease stuff officially starts. At least US mothball storage is in the desert so things don’t rust out so much.
-The Russian stored tank reserve is massive, but it’s clear from the T-62’s that have been fielded that they can’t just drive operational T-72’s and T-80’s out of the storage yards. At the very least, the presence of T-62’s in Ukraine means that the rate at which stored tanks can be made operational is not sufficient to keep pace with Russian losses. This situation is made worse by the massive equipment losses in the recent retreat/rout from Izyum, and unfortunately for the Russians that situation may be about to repeat. Lyman is close to being surrounded with significant Ukrainian advances between Lyman and the Oskil reservoir towards Ridkodub, and word is that troops in Lyman have been ordered not to retreat. Add in all the stuff that’s trapped on the wrong side of the Dnipro if the Russian positions around Kherson collapse (and they’re in massive logistical trouble on that axis) and it’s not out of question that Russians might be short on operational armour that doesn’t date to the 60’s.
Ahh… YOU are the conscript guy who is travelling with his very own legal counsel to draft up a good conditional surrender proposal… 
relevant question 3,000 tanks in a period of how many years to be rebuilt? 2, 3, 4 or 5 years?
its not as easy as take 3 bad tanks and make one good out of it … all 3 most likely have all rubber hoses dry-rotted, gas-tanks with rust inside, electronics and cable-trees eaten by rodents, pistons seized and frozen solid, etc…
here just to give you a feeling of what is involved - a (very worthwhile) YT vid of a 15+ year abandoned airplane. (longish, but if run at 1.5 speed a good and entertaining thing to watch) … now multiply that by 2 or 3 and factor in russian winter to get a feeling of what is involved rebuilding old metal
Why do you assume that none of the Russian tank losses came from vehicles pulled out of storage? Again, the T-64 isn’t an inferior vehicle to the T-72, they were produced in tandem. At the time of production the T-72 was introduced as a cheaper, less effective version of the more expensive and capable T-64. From wiki:
These features made the T-64 expensive to build, significantly more so than previous generations of Soviet tanks. This was especially true of the power pack, which was time-consuming to build and cost twice as much as more conventional designs. Several proposals were made to improve the T-64 with new engines, but chief designer Morozov’s political power in Moscow kept the design in production in spite of any concerns about price. This led to the T-72 being designed as an emergency design, only to be produced in the case of a war, but its 40% lower price led to it entering production in spite of Morozov’s objections.
The T-80 was an upgraded T-64, and the T-90 an upgraded T-72. With all of the many and varied upgrade and modernization programs all 4 of these tanks have gone through over the past decades since they were built, it isn’t easy to classify one as superior to the other based only on the base model. The T-72B3 Obr. 2016 is arguably superior to the T-90A, the most common variant of the T-90 for example.
There aren’t many T-62s or T-64s being used by the Russian side in any event, and giving such inferior vehicles as the T-62M to the LDR and DPR makes the same sense as giving LDR and DPR forces Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles - they don’t care about the LDR and DPR suffering heavy losses and being used as cannon fodder.
The breakdown of visually confirmed losses by Oryx by base tank model is:
- 5 T-62
- 42 T-64
- 730 T-72
- 249 T-80
- 26 T-90
- 140 Model Unknown - which speaks to how closely related the entire T-64/72/80/90 series is.
So 61% of all identified Russian tank losses are T-72s, or 69% of losses excluding the unknown models. T-62 losses make up 0.4% of identified Russian tank losses.
The Military Balance broke down the 2,840 tank on active duty in 2021 as 650 T-72B/BA; 850 T-72B3; 530 T-72B3M; 310 T-80BV/U; 140 T-80BVM; 350 T-90/T-90A; 10 T-90M, which gives T-72 models as 71% of the total tank force, or about the same percentage of identified T-72 losses, and the 10,200 stored tanks are listed as 7,000 T-72s, 3,000 T-80s and 200 T-90s. Again, the stored fleet is 70% T-72s, or virtually the same percentage as identified losses and active tanks.
You’re assuming that all 10,000 vehicles have all been stored in equally bad condition - and worse, that they were abandoned, not stored. Some will have been decently stored, some not very well, and some stored so badly that they are only of use to be cannibalized for spares. Deep storage doesn’t (or at least isn’t supposed to) mean leaving them in the open air to rot. They are supposed to be maintained, the engine turned over, fluids replaced, broken systems repaired or replaced on a regular basis, etc. I have no doubt that with the amount of corruption in the Russian army that proper maintenance wasn’t performed on all, or even most, possibly even many of these vehicles. They certainly didn’t all receive no maintenance, however, and aren’t going to need years to rebuild.
On the T62 issue, that may well be because of logistics. The T62 has a 115 mm main gun, versus the 125mm on the ‘64,72,80,90. Since as has been said by several posters then T62’s have mostly been seen with the various militias from the “liberated” territories, it may well be tyte decided to simplify supply by saying “if its 115mm it goes there”.
I’m not sure were you got that impression. I assume almost all of the losses came from vehicles pulled out of storage. T-64s wouldn’t be getting destroyed otherwise.
But again, if they had thousands of more modern, more inexpensive to maintain and recently built tanks in a serviceable condition, why send the older tanks, at all? It makes your army that much more difficult to support logistically.
Which is to say, not much sense at all. Again, they either didn’t take the conflict seriously, or didn’t have the equipment to arm their allies.
And again, why send them at all if you have literally thousands of T-72s ready to be put into service? Even if they aren’t inferior, the most recent T-64 was built in the Soviet era. T-72s are still currently being built. Trying to find parts for a car last built in small quantities in '87 is going to be difficult. I can’t imagine tank parts from that era are any easier to come by. That they appeared in service at this late date at least implies that the Russian army was already scraping the bottom of the barrel before they decided to go into Ukraine.
I’m honestly not qualified enough to speak to how well those are maintained … but they surely dont look like fill them up and send them out to Kherson - our folks are in a bind there.
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… but if the past 7 or 8 months showed me something it was: “never underestimate russian incompetence”
Consider the source, but earlier this year there were claims that a Russian commander killed himself after discovering that 90% of his reserve tanks were unusable.