Russian defense industry may soon produce more tanks than it loses in Ukraine

A few days ago, British intelligence estimated in one of its daily reports that Russia was losing 10 times more tanks in Ukraine each month than the Russian defense industry could produce today.

It is true that the Western sanctions imposed following the aggression against Ukraine, allowed a time to severely handicap the Russian defense industry. However, in recent months, and beyond the statements of the Russian authorities, which are known to be unreliable, objective findings tend to greatly moderate the enthusiasm of His Majesty's intelligence services.

Production at the Uralvagonzavod plant in Nizhny Tagil

Remember that last March, the most important Russian tank assembly plant, the Uralvagonzavod plant in Nizhny Tagil announced that it had succeeded in reorganizing its subcontracting chain and finding alternatives to the Western components used in its production, to produce, each month, about fifty tracked armored vehicles.

These would include T-90M, T-80BVM and T-72B3M tanks, as well as the BMP-3M and BMD-4 infantry fighting vehicles, while it would continue to modernize some armored vehicles to send them to the units of fight.

Beyond the declarations of the Tass Agency, and of Dimitri Medvedev assuring that Russian industry now remained capable of producing 1000 to 1600 tanks per year, very little data allowed us to attest or contest these allegations.

Since then, things have evolved relatively, and do not go in the direction of the British declarations. Indeed, the observation of documented losses of Russian heavy tanks in the last 2 months tends to confirm the monthly production of around thirty tanks per month between November 2022 and June 2023.

T-90M, T-80BVM, T-72B3M: Documented losses confirm the rebound of the Russian defense industry

Indeed, in May and June 2023, Oryx website referenced the destruction or abandonment of approximately 120 tanks by Russian armies. While the majority of them were older models, ranging from the T-72B3 to the T-90A, including the T-62M, 27 were specifically identified as T-62M, T-72B/B3M, T-80BVM in an “obr-2022” version, that is, produced in recent months, as well as T-90M for more than half of them, also produced exclusively by Uralvagonzavod.

In fact, the losses of modern tanks produced recently represent 25% of the losses recorded in May and June. However, if we admit that the Russian armies still have a thousand heavy tanks produced before the outbreak of the conflict, out of the 3000 initially in stock and after deduction of 2000 referenced lost, the production of 30 T-72B3M tanks, T-80BVM and T-90M per month from November by Uralvagonzavod, and around twenty T-62M tanks by the other sites as advanced, would therefore represent around 350 additional tanks.

Deducting tanks in transit which have not yet reached the front, this value therefore represents, effectively, 25% of the Russian fleet, knowing that this evaluation is at the end of June, and should be weighted by a linear progression tending to consolidate it. representativeness.

Towards a reversal of the dynamic of erosion of the Russian armies?

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