A rather interesting statistical study of the losses of the russian army in tanks based on the analysis of verified destroyed samples from Oryx was made public by the Norwegian researcher Ragnar Gudmundsson, writes Defense Express.
In his post, he compared all the data on the losses of russian tanks from February 2022 to June 2023 and divided them depending on when exactly the tank was produced or modernized – during the times of the russian federation or during the times of the USSR. Thanks to these data, it is possible to get a fairly accurate picture of the ratio of the tank fleet of the russian federation by years of production and modernization of vehicles.
It should be noted that according to this methodology, the new russian tanks include, for example, the T-72B3 and T-80BVM, because they were modernized or were already manufactured in the times of russian federation, and the soviet vehicles, for example, include the T-72B and T-80BV.
According to these data, if in the first days of the full-scale invasion of the russian army, 71% of the lost tanks were russia-made vehicles, and 29% were Soviet-made models, then as of June 2023, the situation is completely mirror image: 73% of the Soviet-made tanks lost by the russians against 27% of the lost vehicles of new models, already manufactured in the russian federation.
Due to the fact that these data can be considered quite approximate, after all, we are talking about an analysis based on available photos and videos, the level of 50% was maintained for quite a long time – until February 2023. After this time mark, the fate of Soviet tanks in the Russian Federation begins to increase.
And this, in turn, speaks of quite simple things – the Russian military industry cannot modernize the machines that are removed from storage at the appropriate pace, and the throughput capacity of the Russian industry is only sufficient for their restoration in regular performance.
Also, in these statistics, the influence of very old tanks, such as T-62, T-55 and T-54, is quite small. In particular, according to Oryx, only one T-54/55 Rashist tank was destroyed (and it was destroyed as a kamikaze tank), as well as 127 units of T-62 tanks of various versions.
