After 20k Losses, Russia Is Now Functionally Out of Armored Vehicles | Hacker News Reader

After 20k Losses, Russia Is Now Functionally Out of Armored Vehicles

daxe.substack.com

29 pointsvinnyglennon19 comments

Can someone knowledgeable about the state of this conflict give a few pointers on how much of this post is cope vs actual fact?

It certainly seems like we've been hearing about the near depletion of russian armor for 2.5 years...

Exact stats are hard to come by but depletion of vehicles has certainly been noticed in battlefield footage: they started with proper military grade vehicles, went down to WW2 era vehicles, then down to light vehicles, civilian vehicles, motorcycles, scooters... donkeys.

That doesn't mean they are completely out of modern stuff but you just dont see it being used on frontlines anymore.

What is happening, however, is the rapidly developing drone warfare which is becoming terrifyingly efficient to conduct warfare in. I dont think we are far off from fully autonomous kamikaze drones at mass produced scale, at dirt cheap price.

It pretty much makes a lot of previously developed modern missiles or even defense systems (e.g. patriots) useless due to how cheaply and effectively you can launch kamikaze drone swarms.

It will require a modern Geneva convention or the extinction of humans eventually. Drones are the modern equivalent of chemical and biological weapons.

> Drones are the modern equivalent of chemical and biological weapons

We didn’t ban these because they’re an extinction threat. (They’re not.)

We banned them because they’re only useful asymmetrically. Drones, on the other hand, are useful for everyone. So no bans. (I’m putting aside that we’re moving away from global arms control agreements.)

>We didn’t ban these because they’re an extinction threat. (They’re not.)

Sorry what? Biological weapons are absolutely an extinction level threat. If you haven't watched the spread of the flu and covid every year and quickly realized that in the modern day a properly engineered bio-weapon would functionally end the human race, I'd like some of what you're having.

>We banned them because they’re only useful asymmetrically.

That's simply not true and shows either a lack of understanding of history, or an intentional perversion. The Taliban don't care about the Geneva convention, but is functionally incapable of utilizing chemical warfare to any significant degree despite the fact I'm sure they'd have loved to use it to wipe out the US military in Afghanistan for the last 20 years and the Russians before that. On the flip side, their deployment in WWI wasn't asymmetrical, both sides used the weapons and both sides agreed after watching the end result that nobody should be using them.

*If anything, drones are far, far more useful for asymmetric warfare. They can be easily acquired for cheap, there are no export controls, there's very little expertise required, and you can attach something as basic as a pipe bomb to them to do significant damage.

> Biological weapons are absolutely an extinction level threat

They may or may not be. That’s not why we banned them.

> simply not true and shows either a lack of understanding of history

Here’s an accessible summary: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

The contemporaneous sources are vast and point in one direction: these weapons aren’t useful for the winners of wars, are annoying to deal with, have a bit of a notion of novel horror to them, and so were bannable. Nobody was talking about extinction.

> their deployment in WWI wasn't asymmetrical, both sides used the weapons

Not what asymmetric warfare means.

> drones are far, far more useful for asymmetric warfare

Sure. But they’re also useful for large military states. So not going to be banned.

Like, someone is free to cosplay a ban. But the incentives to circumvent it are too great. There are no incentives to make illegal chemical or biological weapons because they’re just not that great as weapons.

(I’ll note that your reading of history, while wrong, is far from unique. It’s unfortunately counterproductive as it implies a moral crusade against a category of weapon can get it banned. It might be able to. But chemicals and biological arms aren’t a precedent for it.)

Actual reason: indiscriminate civilian deaths.

> Actual reason: indiscriminate civilian deaths

Nope. Not supported by the historical record as a decisive factor. (Though unlike the extinction argument, it at least exists.) Also, see: WWII.

>We

You should add that to your bio.

You really need a link to the Wikipedia section on the semantics of “we”?

Wth are you talking about ...

Apparently yes. Here you go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We#Semantics

???

I’ve been seeing these stories since the opening of the current war. They said the machines were breaking down due to poor maintenance on the way to Kiev and couldn’t be replaced. Yet, here we are years later and they’re still at it.

While Russia has certainly depleted much of their storage that could be refurbished, they will never run out because they are building more of them every month

There is good OSINT on the makeup of equipment losses by type. Simple numbers often tend to be misleading because some losses are not total and can be repaired

Indirectly you van have a look on covert cabal YT channel, who is analyzing satellite images of Russian storages. They are essentially empty or near empty.

Directly you can have a look on subs like r/combatfootage and you can tell what year is footage coming from just by used vehicles - The more unusual the vehicle leading the assault looks like, the more recent the footage is. You will gradually get from normal military columns to BMPs and MT-LBs (Tractor for pulling artillery) to Dessert Crosses (golf carts), trucks, old tanks with huge amount of slat armor to soak the FPVs (Assault Barns) followed by BMPs dropping current suicide squad to quickly drive away before it will get hit by artillery or FPV to having suicide squads on bikes today.

Rarity of Russian armored assault today confirm what author is saying. Russians can still make more modern tanks, but is is low number of dozens a year. Not really useful when Russians were able to lose up to a hundred a month when tanks and IFVs were in abundance.

There's been a depletion of armor on both sides. Neither is getting far using tanks. The frontline is mostly dominated by drones. Russia is sending about 500 missiles and long range drones a day at Ukrainian civilians mostly, Ukraine is sending long range drones at Russia's industry and military.

Not sure how it'll play out. Russia's economy is struggling and they may need to taper things off. Broadly it's a bit of a stalemate.

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