Russian tank manufacturer shuts down production | Hacker News Reader

Russian tank manufacturer shuts down production

luciantruscott.substack.com

49 pointsborski25 comments

Is the source legit? I found only Ukrainian sources claiming Uralvagonzavod ceasing production, no Russian sources. It also has military and civil branches, even if some civil production stopped it does not mean military branch is affected.

fog of war. It's going to be very hard to find factual information for a long time about anything.

I couldn't find anyone to back up this story except for this Facebook post which appears to be the original source. In it it does not mention lack of computer chips but simply "foreign-made components"

https://m.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/277666367879782

I would be very surprised if their military operated with a just-in-time inventory instead of a stockpile system for crucial components. But several surprising things have happened recently.

It's been 2 years of semiconductor shortages. They'd be hand to mouth by now no matter what their inventory policies were.

I don't think it is.

> Ukrainian forces have been able to take out Russian tanks using the Javelin anti-tank missile system being supplied by the U.S., and a lighter, more easily transportable missile supplied by Great Britain.

That is not true. Vast majority of tanks have been destroyed by artillery (2nd is stugna-p). You can see on the videos publish by UA. They are burning with twisted parts. Javelins don't cause this kind of damage. People with military experience would know that.

What is more, they must have a stockpile of chips in case of war (Soviet Union was the only country with aluminum cutlery - side effect of stockpiling resources for potential wars). China and other countries would give them chips quietly.

>> Ukrainian forces have been able to take out Russian tanks using the Javelin anti-tank missile system being supplied by the U.S., and a lighter, more easily transportable missile supplied by Great Britain.

> That is not true. Vast majority of tanks have been destroyed by artillery (2nd is stugna-p). You can see on the videos publish by UA. They are burning with twisted parts. Javelins don't cause this kind of damage. People with military experience would know that.

You're not responding to what you're quoting. It didn't make any mention of what proportion of tanks were destroyed by what weapon. The statement would only be not true if the Ukrainians have not been able to take out any tanks with the Western missiles.

> 2nd is stugna-p

Given that's an indigenous Ukrainian weapons system, I wonder if they're still capable of manufacturing/resupplying their forces with them (i.e. is the factory in a captured/threatened area and unable to be relocated).

> Javelins don't cause this kind of damage. People with military experience would know that.

Not necessarily. I'm sure there are plenty of people with military experience who wouldn't know that (e.g. don't have experience with Javelin missiles for one of numerous valid reasons). It's like someone can have lots of programming experience, but not know some specific about how Java works because they haven't worked with Java.

> You're not responding to what you're quoting. It didn't make any mention of what proportion of tanks were destroyed by what weapon. The statement would only be not true if the Ukrainians have not been able to take out any tanks with the Western missiles.

To be precise UA may take out some tanks with Javelins, but I'd guess it's very tiny minority of tanks. It's a really bad investment. You need 3-7 shots for a tank (40%-30% miss, active and passive protections, $100k for a single shot). The best way to take out a tank is to cut the fuel and ammunition supply and this is what UA does.

If someone makes statements like it's an indication that his source are propaganda videos. We don't have a single video from the frontline.

> Given that's an indigenous Ukrainian weapons system, I wonder if they're still capable of manufacturing/resupplying their forces with them (i.e. is the factory in a captured/threatened area and unable to be relocated).

I can't find the source but they have 10x stugna-p's comparing to Javelins. (can't find the source. They've been producing it for 10+ years and stockpiling for 8)

> Not necessarily. I'm sure there are plenty of people with military experience who wouldn't know that (e.g. don't have experience with Javelin missiles for one of numerous valid reasons). It's like someone can have lots of programming experience, but not know some specific about how Java works because they haven't worked with Java.

Military analyst that doesn't specialise in ATGMs pointed out to me that almost all videos we see shows the damage from the artillery. Maybe it's like someone can have lots of programming experience, but not know what for loop is. I'm not sure.

> To be precise UA may take out some tanks with Javelins, but I'd guess it's very tiny minority of tanks. It's a really bad investment. You need 3-7 shots for a tank (40%-30% miss, active and passive protections, $100k for a single shot). The best way to take out a tank is to cut the fuel and ammunition supply and this is what UA does.

Do you have a source for that?

>>> Javelins don't cause this kind of damage. People with military experience would know that.

>> Not necessarily. I'm sure there are plenty of people with military experience who wouldn't know that (e.g. don't have experience with Javelin missiles for one of numerous valid reasons). It's like someone can have lots of programming experience, but not know some specific about how Java works because they haven't worked with Java.

> Maybe it's like someone can have lots of programming experience, but not know what for loop is. I'm not sure.

No, I'd say it's more like an embedded C programmer not being able to recognize symptom of the Java garbage collector going awry. Being able diagnose from a photograph what kind of weapon was used to destroy a tank seems like an extremely specialized kind of military experience.

> Do you have a source for that?

an interview with https://twitter.com/wolski_jaros Sorry, not in english.

> an interview with https://twitter.com/wolski_jaros Sorry, not in english.

1. Who is that person, and what's their source?

2. What interview, exactly?

> they must have a stockpile of chips in case of war

They would also prepare enough fuel and rations for the front in case of a war, but we have seen that they did not. Maybe they thought it was just an exercise.

IMHO, this is adequately explained by stupidity.

I'd bet my money on corruption. They told the soldiers it would be a fast thing like an exercise. In that case I can burn more fuel to keep me warm, sell 1/5 to a local farmer. Old food rations? They are fine for a few more years. I can pocket the money.

Article here "280 Russian tanks destroyed with US missiles", dated 4th March https://www.observerbd.com/details.php?id=355843 and that they have a 93% kill rate. That must be a good proportion of those destroyed at that point.

The title is misleading. 280 armoured vehicles. 93% sounds like a propaganda number.

Good active protection system can get this number to a single digit e.g. Merkava thropy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRJzcM5ETY4

I feel like all these articles and news analysts are copying from Kamil Galeev twitter. Here is his thread about tanks:

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1507820035829497859?t...

I wouldn't be so optimistic to think Russian tanks are full of computers. I know many things have changed since last time I sat in T-72/T-80 tank but back then the electronics were quite primitive. You would see massive boxes full of cards with rows and rows of low-density chips. Gyroscopes mentioned in the article were mostly mechanical. If they are now being retrofitted with newer electronics nowadays I do not know.

A modern tank is basically useless without a thermal sight. This is what is meant by modernisation - improved sensors + maybe comms & makeshift reactive armor. I don't really think anyone would be crazy enough to attempt using a 1960s' tech tank in today's battlefield.

On the other hand it is extremely naive to think that anyone would use a consumer-grade chip in a military project. Security being a much bigger concern than even supply chain issues. This is the hardware they seem to be using (and manufacturing locally). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCST - pretty laughable by today's standards, but secure and seems to do the job. Weren't the space shuttles running 80286 and wasn't 80386 being manufactured until recently?

Shuttle used a computer designed in the 60s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/4_Pi

SpaceX, which has been used to launch military hardware, uses "dual-core x86" chips. And, obviously, they use a boatload of microprocessors, some of which are PowerPC chips, all over the rocket. All of this is connected over triple-redundant Ethernet.

And as for software: It's C++. Including a version of chrome, with UI components at least partially (but maybe entirely) in Javascript.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2y14y4/engineer_the...

Not trying to detract from the current crisis, but it is interesting to think that China would be looking at these issues and changing a lot of aspects to their military over the next half decade or so.

You learn more from failure than you do from success.

That's not true. Think about it. In reality there's 10^82348733 or some other ridiculously huge number of things you can do. If you get it right, you know how to make it work, and there may be some obvious routes to improve. That's a LOT of information because you can effectively exclude 99% of possibilities.

If you can't make it work, you know that 1 out of 10^82348733 things don't work. Great. You can excluse 1% of possible solutions.

Success has WAY more information than failure.

The factory than makes the HMMWV (Military Hummer) engines is rumored to be shut down 'til August for lack of parts, too.

The US isn't engaged in a flailing attempt to sieze neighboring territory, so not quite as interesting.

The dangerous thing is not the tank production halting, but the tractor production. If the Russian agricultural production fails and they can't feed the population then it is an existential threat to the Russian State. And they have nuclear weapons and a policy that they can use them when faced with an existential threat...

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