Russia’s largest military equipment storage facility has seen a drop of 40% in Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles that are stored on its grounds since the invasion.
by Straight_Ad2258
Russia’s largest military equipment storage facility has seen a drop of 40% in Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles that are stored on its grounds since the invasion.
by Straight_Ad2258
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translation:
The Moscow Times calculations based on Google Earth data show that the Vagzhanovo base in Buryatia is the largest in Russia. “Vagzhanovo is located near Ulan-Ude and covers about 11 square kilometres, which is considerably larger than two dozen other known military equipment storage bases in Russia.
**The Moscow Times gathered information about their location from open sources: blogs of photographers, travellers and media publications.Five months before the full-scale war in Ukraine – in September 2021 – about 3,840 armoured vehicles were stored in Vagzhanovo under the open sky, The Moscow Times calculated on the basis of Google Earth images. After 8 months of war – in November 2022 – about 2,600 armoured vehicles remained at the base, and by May 2023 – about 2,270. Thus, during this time, 1570, or 40.8% of armoured vehicles were removed from the base. Moreover, most of it (32%) left after mobilisation was announced at the end of 2022.**
According to the instructions of the Ministry of Defence, there are four categories of preservation of military equipment. The first category – the most valuable equipment – is stored in special ventilated and heated rooms, the second – in unheated hangars. The third category of preservation – storage under tents, the fourth – in the open air.”Where there are tent shelters – there the machinery should be at least on the move. Under the open sky – what is not to be pitied,” explains military expert Pavel Luzin.In Vagzhanovo the equipment was stored mainly in the open air. Images from November 2022 show that about half of the equipment was without turrets or had other signs of damage visible from the satellite.
Similar signs can be seen on about half of the remaining equipment on the base by May 2023. The base also has 10 hangars, which, according to The Moscow Times, can accommodate up to 400 armoured vehicles.The Moscow Times found several large pictures of tanks stored at the Vagzhanovo base in the social networks of former servicemen. Military experts interviewed identified them as T-62 tanks, which were produced in the USSR from 1962 to 1975.
Modernisation instead of disposal
Before the war in Ukraine, Russia regularly disposed of obsolete armoured vehicles: 35 contracts worth 232.2 million rubles were signed between 2014 and 2022. The number of contracts for the destruction of tanks began to decline in 2017: at that time, General Alexander Shevchenko, head of the main armoured vehicle department of the Ministry of Defence, said that only four thousand tanks would be destroyed instead of the previously planned 10 thousand. The rest may come in handy “due to changes in the international situation,” the general said. In 2022, the Defence Ministry stopped concluding contracts for the disposal of military equipment.Against the backdrop of President Vladimir Putin’s statements that some samples of old Soviet equipment are still superior to Western weapons, media reports on the decommissioning of old Soviet equipment began to appear. For example, in October 2022, 103 BTRZ near Chita was ordered to modernise 800 T-62 tanks. There, the tanks are undergoing deep modernisation, being equipped with additional protection, more modern engines, as well as optoelectronic systems and thermal imagers.
Defence Minister Shoigu regularly visits enterprises that repair and modernise equipment that has been taken out of preservation. The other day Shoigu inspected Remdiesel in Tatarstan, and this year he visited plants in Nizhny Novgorod and Omsk regions.According to the Dutch military analytical project Oryx, by the summer of 2023 Russia will have lost more than 2,000 tanks in the war with Ukraine. But the mothballed equipment is used not only to make up for the loss of armoured vehicles, but also for palliative replacement of artillery, Luzin said. “In addition, barrels and transmissions can be removed from tanks from the stockpile for overhauling operating tanks and for restoring other tanks removed from storage,” the expert continues.
Deconservation of old tanks is a worldwide practice: the entire fleet of US tanks is stored in the open air for conservation, including thousands of M1 Abrams tanks, another military expert told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity.”We have at least 15 tank repair plants across the country engaged in de-conservation and modernisation,” he added. – That is, these tanks are checked, if necessary, engines and transmission are changed, motor life is confirmed, modern instruments and sights and communications are put in place. Then they will be used as infantry support vehicles, not as tanks. The calibres are different, old, but there are wagons of these shells in the warehouses”.Ukraine also uses old tanks: about half of the fleet of NATO weapons supplied to the AFU dates back to 1950-1960, the expert emphasises.In an interview with Ukrainian blogger Volodymyr Zolkin, Russian prisoners of war repeatedly spoke about the malfunctioning of armoured vehicles.
For example, one of the mobilised told about the breakdowns of BMPs that had just come from repairs. Another prisoner of war shared that out of 15 tanks in his brigade, only five were working, and vehicles coming from storage often arrived in a malfunctioning condition, such as with non-functioning electronics.Sometimes the modernisation of tanks for the war in Ukraine looks rather exotic. Both the AFU and the Russian army in the second year of the war are forced to use hybrids of different equipment and homemade weapons. For example, Russia has been recorded using an MT-LB armoured personnel carrier equipped with 2M-1 shipboard anti-aircraft turrets, which were adopted in 1945. Obsolete tanks hit in Ukraine often show signs of unusual modifications intended to protect them from modern weapons.
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Covert Cabal has reached similar results by counting Russian artillery systems stored in military bases: a drop from 12.000 before the war to 7.500 in June 2023
Wtf, is military hardware really stored like that under the open sky?