http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/russia/articles/20240320.aspx
March 20, 2024:
Hard limits are appearing on Russia’s ability to continue the Ukraine war. It has begun running out of tube artillery (as opposed to rocket artillery) and light armored fighting vehicles (AFVs). The artillery shortage is because tube artillery barrels are wearing out, while the light AFV shortage is because so many have been lost in combat.
Russia’s stocks of self-propelled tube artillery pieces were eliminated by combat losses in the Ukraine, worn-out barrels or exploded from firing with worn-out barrels, and were replaced by towed artillery from its reserve stocks. Now the Russians have lost, worn out or almost worn out everything but their oldest reserve tube artillery, 50+ year-old 122mm towed guns of which they allegedly had about 4,000 in 2021. These are Russia’s last artillery reserve, are being put into service now and, when those are worn out this year, Russia’s tube artillery park will be reduced to their current production of about 200 yearly tube artillery pieces. At that point Russia can no longer continue the war unless their 2024 production increases to at least 2000 a year.
. . . Skip a bunch about artillery . . .
The Russians began the war with about 27,000 light armored fighting vehicles in their active army and in reserve stocks. Half of those have been lost so far. New Russian production of those has been only several hundred a year. The number of Russian light AFV in the field is now plunging because they can no longer replace losses from reserve stocks. That is shown by increasing Russian use of imported Chinese farm tractor carts (which look like big golf carts) to transport troops on roads, off roads, and through mud and heavy snow.
Light AFV are crucial for medium-intensity combat between peer opponents such as the Ukraine war, and not only for combat and transport. They are essential for command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) because they provide electric power for better and longer-range radios than those which can be carried by troops on foot. This is even more important for the Russians because of their lack of encrypted man-pack radios. Their troops will use unencrypted cell phones for tactical communications when radios are not available, which is extremely dangerous, so the backbone of Russian tactical communications are vehicle-borne radios in light AFV. It is not clear whether the Chinese farm carts can power those. Russian tactical communications may collapse once their number of light AFV drop below 7,500 or so, and that will probably happen by the end of 2024 because 2022-2023 losses have been about 6,500 – 7,000 a year.
These are reasonable grounds for believing that Russia will be unable to continue its war in Ukraine past the end of this year.
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(Entire article is at the link. Zim.)
(Also, remember that Russia has lost so many tanks that they are reduced to pulling old Cold War tanks out of mothballs.)
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