SITREP 7/19/24: West Searches for New Deflection in Russian "Barrel Crisis"
Last time I debunked the new narrative being trotted out about mass Russian casualties, all to deflect from Ukraine’s own progressing collapse. Now this narrative has shifted lanes to the loss of Russian equipment, with a coordinated effort from pro-Western media to depict the Russian military as running out of tanks, artillery barrels, and armor altogether—not to mention the tired retread of the ‘low ammo’ trope.
To some extent, I think there is some truth to Russia’s tank and armor woes, merely in that I don’t think Russia yet produces as many brand new tanks as most people on the pro-Russian side think. Yes, there are figures of 1000-1500 per year tank production floating around, but the vast majority of that is likely refurbished tanks, which do have a finite limit. It’s questionable how many actual brand new ones they’re building, with lowest base floor estimates at around 200-250 per year.
Reportedly, the only new tank Russia now produces is T-90M, with both T-72 and T-80 production having ended in the early 2000s or so. However, Russia is slated to restart the T-80 production, and has done so for the turbine engines, but not yet the tank hulls themselves.
One plausible estimate is that Russia is producing about 250-300 T-90Ms per year, then refurbing another 200-250 old T-72s into T-72B3Ms, 200-250 old T-80s into T-80BVMs, then another 250 old T-62s into T-62Ms and probably an equal number of T-55s now being sent to the front as well. This would make for roughly ~1250 yearly “production” but only a fraction is brand new, and a large portion of it are old T-62s and T-55s—as an example.
Here are Western estimates for how those tanks could be dwindling:
As you can see above, Russia can potentially go up to 2029 and beyond, though a “critical point” is reached in 2027 whereby the remaining tanks would be in bad shape. However, any tank can be restored no matter the shape, so long as you provide all new components like engines, etc.
But many Western experts are now claiming Russia will run into trouble as early as 2025-2026. I’ve long held that by that point, Russia would have upped the production of new tanks to match losses. One thing the pro-Western ‘experts’ leave out is that recent Russian tank losses have been dipping extremely low, even by their own accounting:
June 24, as can be seen sees nearly the lowest losses of the war, at 56, with July not yet printed but likely as low or lower. Keep in mind, even the above losses are typically overstated as they list anything that’s hit even if the tank is recoverable, and likely double count a lot as well. But it still gives a good indication of trends.
In the above you can see the share of T-62 losses going up this year, and the T-72 share decreasing over time.
If Russia maintains current loss tempos then they can last quite a long time, particularly given that Ukraine’s equipment is getting worse over time as well. But of course, Russia’s chief concern would not be Ukraine, but rather getting its own tank force attritioned to the point where Russia would be defenseless against NATO. A weakened Russia with few remaining tanks would be viewed as ripe for the taking and would wield little deterrence against further NATO aggression in the future. Thus, Russia needs to maintain adequate tank forces in reserve to deter a NATO hellbent on building up its forces on Russia’s border.
It’s important to remember, however, that NATO’s tank forces—barring the U.S.—are so pitifully low that even a highly depleted Russia would vastly outnumber them. Germany, France, and UK have hardly 300 working tanks amongst the three of them. It’s the U.S. Russia would have to worry about, but even America’s tank force is not quite as strong as it used to be, with recent official figures showing a mere ~900 active tanks in the army.
More interesting is the discussion of barrels, where the West claims Russia is suffering its most critical issues at the moment. Western ‘experts’ now claim Russia only produces 100 artillery barrels per year, and that they only have one single foreign machine to do it.
Here’s one ‘expert’ commenting on the new Economist article:
In fact, in an earlier Economist article they even claimed Russia makes 50 artillery barrels per year:
And note the sly insinuation that the untermensch Russians can only steal forging machines from the superior Austrians and Germans, or buy them from the Americans.
Problem is, as I’ve reported before—the U.S. itself only has one single artillery barrel production line in the entire country, at the Watervliet Arsenal in New York, and guess what machine it uses? The same exact Austrian GFM as Russia.
Left: Watervliet Arsenal in Upstate New York
Right: Motovilikha Factory in Perm, Russia
The same exact GFM machine in both.
In fact, this article from earlier this year mentions how U.S.’ only artillery barrel manufacturer doesn’t even have the capability to create the longer 52 caliber barrels with further range to give Ukrainian M109s better capability. And so to do that, they’re forced to consider manufacturing the barrels at Rheinmetall Waffe Munition, Unterlüß, Germany. Recall that the U.S. can’t even design its own tank barrel—the Abrams tanks use German Rheinmetall Rh-120 barrels.
But more interestingly, I happened to find this semi-recently declassified CIA doc, which you can happily peruse on the official CIA site:
It discusses secret intelligence from the 60s, 70s, and 80s regarding the transfer of Austrian barrel forging machines to the USSR. And boy, let me tell you: the numbers are jaw-droppingly massive.
Here they state that the USSR initially purchased 26 of the rotary GFM forges:
Read the article for more details if you’re interested. It lists the USSR’s purchase of further forges later on, though many of them were used for all kinds of barrels from machine guns, tanks, large mortars like the 240mm Tyulpan, etc.
And what do you know, it even has a photo of the Watervliet Arsenal in New York, confirming its use of the same Austrian GFM SXP-55 machine:
But here’s the grand kicker: how many barrels could the USSR produce per year with all these machines? The CIA conveniently fills us in:
Now, we all know Russia is not the Soviet Union, and even Russia’s annual tank production capacity of ~1200 is said to be 1/4 of peak Soviet Cold War capacity of 4000 tanks per year. But how believable do you reckon it is, that Russia can now only make 100 barrels per year, when with the same machines, they previously could make upwards of a whopping 250,000?
And do you think Russia threw away all those dozens of machines and only has a single one left? If they’re in such short supply as the Economist article claims, then how come a cursory web search shows Russian companies literally trying to sell these machines on Korean websites? Here’s a GFM SXP-55 located somewhere in Rostov-on-Don:
Happen to be in the market for one?
Also, it should be noted that Russia doesn’t even actually need these specialty Austrian machines to make barrels. You can make barrels without them, it simply takes longer. The rotary machine allows you to hammer the barrel blank from all sides conveniently, reducing the time by several factors. The CIA report even corroborates this:
Even if Russia’s capacity were 1/100th of the USSR’s it would mean the production of vastly more than a mere 100 barrels per year, as the West laughably claims.
Interestingly, in light of all this, a recent RUSI (Royal United Services Institute) piece from last month has proposed recalibrating the entire strategy to defeat Russia—instead of trying to defeat it kinetically on the battlefield, they now see that Russia can only be beaten by taking out its defense-economic sector:
They propose to do this not by physically bombing the manufacturing plants but rather by working to cut the Russian defense sector’s ties to Western procurement and supply chains; e.g.
At the end of the day, all the above panic-stoking about Russian equipment losses is meant to mask the fact that Ukraine itself is coming closer and closer to capitulation. The situation has gotten so bad that even Zelensky is now openly saying the “hot phase” of the war will be over by year’s end, as in his latest interview during the UK trip:
Nearly everyone else is saying the same—for instance, Arestovich in his latest interview, who states that Ukraine will give one final “hurrah” offensive in October of this year, and that will be a wrap:
Many believe that Ukraine is being ordered to deliver one final powerful offensive just before the election, to give Biden—if he’s still there—a triumphant boost in the standings. And should that offensive massively flop—as it rightly would—then it could be the AFU’s swan song.
Ex-CFR head Richard Haass likewise went on the air to reiterate that Ukraine has no chance of taking any land back, and that the new policy has to be for U.S. and allies to simply protect what he calls “core Ukraine”:
It’s just another euphemistically soft way of saying: “Let Russia take its land and let us protect rump-state Ukraine while it still exists.”
And of course the biggest coverup of all—for which the Russian “equipment crisis” deflection is being drummed up—is simply how fast the AFU is now losing territory. Day after day, Russian forces continue to liberate multiple kilometers each outing, with numerous settlements and villages now falling each week.
It was only a couple months ago that I was writing here about the AFU’s Donetsk-region western-line of defense in Progress/Prohres—which was still far from Russian forces at the time with several other settlements between them.
Who remembers this map I posted a couple months ago? Check Prohres right on top of the big yellow line:
Well, guess what? As of today, Russian forces have entered and fully captured Progress/Prohres:
It’s a key town on the Vovcha River defense line, which was meant to be Ukraine’s last fallback in that region.
Now there are said to be major advances toward the Ugledar MSR:
Some Russian recon/screening forces have reportedly reached the highway, and it’s said to now be under fire control, which means Ugledar could soon be partly encircled and in deep trouble.
There are many other captures, such that I can’t even list them all. Ivano-Darovka, west of Sporne and south of Seversk, was taken:
The Toretsk and neighboring Niu York zones are in danger. New advances are pushing deep into the center of Pivnichne as we speak:
Zoomed in:
And Niu York continues to be lanced by a deep salient:
This is significant because Toretsk itself is slowly becoming encircled, and once it falls in the deeper future, a much tighter cauldron will begin forming over the critical Konstantinovka—which will be one of the key battles of the entire war:
What do you notice about the map above?
Here’s Bakhmut:
In fact, Konstantinovka and Bakhmut are very similar in size and population. And when Konstantinovka is taken, it opens the door to the final crown jewels: Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.
Granted, that’s still a long way’s away. But the advances are nonstop now, as can be seen.
An interesting little update: an Australian mercenary named Brock “Chippy” Greenwood was recently killed in Ukraine, reportedly in Makeevka, on the Svatove-Kupyansk front:
But what was more interesting is that he was actually an active Reddit poster, giving updates and answering questions about the war:
Tweeter Anomandris Purake gave some fascinating highlights from Chippy’s Reddit post history, and many of his statements are quite revealing.
Here he expresses frustration at armchair laymen’s inability to grasp how good Russian EW is:
Next, he says that most Western soldiers simply can’t comprehend the type of war this is:
In one of the most revealing bits of all, someone asks him about Russia’s infamous “meat-wave” tactics—a myth Chippy rebukes:
Here he says NATO training is a joke, confirming something we’ve long discussed here:
Another damning refutation of a false narrative. Recall how bitterly the West clings to the canard that Ukraine “vastly overmatches” Russia in drone production/warfare, etc. Chippy adamantly rejects this notion and says the opposite—it’s the AFU that can’t compete with Russian drone production:
Well, would you look at that!
And in fact, he confirms it twice—read carefully:
Isn’t it fascinating how the information directly relayed by actual frontline mercenaries always contradicts the popular pro-UA narratives? This must be the third or fourth merc we’ve featured here now—recall the Willy OAM series—that says the same exact thing.
In fact, he mentions Willy here after some commentators disparage him:
And here he brings a brainwashed loon who believes Russia suffers 10:1 casualties, back down to earth:
Well, so much for him:
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As a last related bit:
A big fiasco occurred in the Ukrainian 59th brigade recently, which was devastated badly. Not only do they speak about how the entire top staff of the brigade was wiped out, but that a newly recruited all-convict “Skhval” battalion was sent to reinforce the brigade with little training, which led to further massive losses of the brigade.
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Some last odds and ends:
Firstly, in light of some of the above discussions regarding Russian drone and EW capabilities, here famed correspondent Kharchenko reports from the Kharkov-Volchansk front and confirms that Russian EW is working very well in rebuffing AFU drone power:
The auto-translation can be a little wonky so here’s a writeup:
Spent a day with electronic warfare units in the Kharkov direction. Now I can definitely say that electronic warfare works.
Ukrainian drones are identified and destroyed. I saw with my own eyes how I turn over the “birds” and they fall limply into the fields. Artillery, aviation and air defense can be heard, but electronic warfare cannot be heard. That's why we often hear that our systems don't work. Without electronic cover there would be many times more drones.
Areas began to appear on the front that enemy drones avoid. But, of course, electronic warfare is not a 100% guarantee. It is impossible to intercept everything. Firstly, the enemy has more and more drones, and secondly, they are constantly changing frequencies. Our guys work to the limit and with sheer enthusiasm. They themselves are constantly collecting something and coming up with ways to intercept enemy drones.
Electronic warfare is only one of the means of destroying enemy UAVs, and these means must be used in conjunction with other measures. And, of course, we need more people and modern means of suppression.
Alexander Kharchenko
Another top correspondent, Sladkov, left a meeting with Defense Minister Belousov today, where many other correspondents again had a very frank discussion. Sladkov was very optimistic and says a lot of big things are coming down the pipeline:
Not only is Russia developing new EW systems to be included on factory tanks very soon but Belousov reportedly said that airplane hangers have finally been budgeted to shield Russia’s airbases from UAV and cluster munition attacks, amongst other things.
And on the topic of the Defense Ministry, Supreme Commander Gerasimov visited the front—specifically, the command post of the Vostok Group, presenting awards to those who liberated Urozhaynoye (Harvest). He also was given a first hand tour of some of the latest ground-bots the troops have been cooking up:
On that note, it was confirmed the Russian 40th Pacific Fleet Marines participated in that wild Mad Max-style motorcycle assault of Urozhaynoye, detailed in a more vivid account here:
And regarding UGV bots, here’s another latest design:
In fact, more and more Russian forces are incorporating large drones into their logistics deliveries:
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One of the clearest ever shots of a Russian Mi-28NM firing the LMUR, now designated as Kh-39, into Ukrainian positions:
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One of the first clear cases of an ATACMS being shot down, as can be seen by the fact its body is ruptured by what is likely fragmentation blast from a Buk or equivalent missile:
Manufacture date of 2002:
Geolocation: 48.542851,39.381282 over a field in Lugansk:
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The people asking the questions of the Australian merc Chippy sounded like infantile half wit morons. Western populations have become so dumbed down it isn't even funny anymore. I have first hand experience being Australian myself.
As long as Russia doesn't run out of shovels the war in Ukraine is a guaranteed Russian victory.