Russia Tank Force: Present and Future (Numbers)

There are jobs on the battlefield where a tank is just a mobile gun platform that delivers direct fire accurate HE shells to a target not that far away.

Other times they deliver indirect HE fire to area targets to suppress the enemy.

In fact for anything other than taking on enemy tanks with the latest and heaviest armour a T-54 or T-62 with an armour upgrade package is probably good enough.

Would a 125mm be needed to penetrate Leopard ones... no... 100mm and 115mm rounds will do that just fine, and for any other armoured light vehicle like a self propelled gun or a towed artillery gun or an infantry vehicle like a Bradley or some special Euro BMP a 100mm or 115mm round will do the job just fine... it is really only the few Challengers and Abrams and Leo 2s they would have problems with, or their better ATGMs or Mines or drones that would be a problem but such threats would be a threat to any tank.

They likely have enormous stocks of 100mm and 115mm ammo they might want to use up and when the targets can't tell it apart from 125mm rounds then why not?

They likely also have guided missiles in those calibres that are just sitting not being used that could be used against a variety of targets out to ranges where their lower level of protection compared with newer vehicles would actually make them quite safe.

When the T-34 entered service they could have fitted it with a 57mm high velocity gun that would have penetrated most of the tanks the Germans had right up to about Kursk. It might have struggled from the front with the Elephant, but Panthers and Tigers could be penetrated at 1km range or less, but the HE round for the 57mm gun was not as effective as the HE round for the 76.2mm gun.

Some people go on about barrel length like it is the main factor but in actual fact it is only part of the issue, the old 76.2mm shells the gun of the T-34 and KV-1 fired did not have a lot of propellant so extending the barrels would not improve velocity and performance by very much. In comparison the 75mm gun of the Panther had a huge propellant case so the extra barrel length made it a very effective anti armour weapon.

You don't hear people say the M4 carbine is useless because it has a shorter barrel than an M16 rifle even if they use the same ammo. The 5.56mm ammo they both use has a large propellant case with lots of powder and a small light bullet and it relies on muzzle velocity for effect.

At the distances you could hit someone... up to about 200m, but bullets will kill so in many ways the extra barrel length of the M16 is just wasted.... makes the weapon longer and reduces handling, makes it heavier and harder to clean. It might extend range and improve accuracy but the accuracy of the M4 is good enough and the range is good enough too.

Regarding tank gun barrel length the Germans wanted to get rid of DU rounds so they determined how much more barrel they would need on their gun to achieve the same penetration with Tungsten rounds that the Americans achieve with their DU rounds from their gun (which the Germans made).

The result of the calculations means the original L44 gun everyone used in the west with the Rheinmettall gun, was lengthened to an L55 gun for German use which means that when an Abrams or other tank with an L44 120mm smoothbore gun fires a DU round, a German tank firing Tungsten rounds through an L55 gun gets similar performance in terms of penetration.

The Lxx number tells you the length of the gun barrel measured in calibres.... so Rh-120 120mm smoothbore gun L44 has a 44 calibre long gun which makes it 5.28 metres long (.12 x 44 = 5.28), while the L55 gun has the same calibre and same chamber to fire the same rounds, so its barrel is .12 x 55 = 6.6 metres.

The 2A42 30mm calibre automatic cannon as used by the BMP-2 and also Ka-50/52 and Mi-28 and Ka-29 in some versions is an L80 weapon, which means the barrel is .03 x 80 = 2.4m long (does not include the muzzle break of course).

It is also confusing when talking about calibre only when talking about tank guns... the Tiger had an 88mm gun and so did the Tiger II, but they were very different guns firing very different shells with very different performance. The 88mm gun of the Tiger 1 is the 8.8cm KwK 36 which is an 88 x 571mmR shell, while the 88mm gun of the Tiger 2 is the 8.8cm KwK 43 gun and fires 88 x 822mm R shells with rather more propellant.

Equally the short and long 75mm guns in the Panzer 4s were not related to the 75mm gun of the Panther... the Panther had the KwK 42 gun that was 70 calibres long and fired a 75 x 640mm R shell.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:Probably is that. The t-55 and T-62 have some roles that can be used for (of course not as Main battle tanks). 

The T-64 properly modernised possibly have even more potential than T-72, but they are not yet needed.

T-62 and T-55 upgrades are performed at level of State Depots and not in a factory, so actually working on them is not in direct competition about resources with newly produced tanks a.t.c. they consent to use productive factors i.e. both material than skilled workforce that would otherwise remain unused.
T-64 were made in Kharkov and were left for the most part to Ukraine until even there production were switched to T-80UD (or better said suspended), so actually has more sense to resume production of T-80 in Kirov factory in Saint Petersburg first.

Is there any way to get to a more specific number of tanks made and delivered to Russian armed forces in 2023?
The vague figures of 2100 tanks include all sorts of stuff, from the made from scratch tanks to properly refurbished and modernized tanks to even just minimally refurbished ancient tanks, refurbished only enough to make them move and shoot.

For example, just by knowing the number of T-90M tanks delivered throughout the last few years, we might be able to conclude when it's gonna be physically impossible for those to include refurbished types, as the stocks of old T-90s are known and limited. So does anyone have a source listing T-90M deliveries (new builds or refurbishments) since 2020 onwards?

eridan wrote:Is there any way to get to a more specific number of tanks made and delivered to Russian armed forces in 2023?
The vague figures of 2100 tanks include all sorts of stuff, from the made from scratch tanks to properly refurbished and modernized tanks to even just minimally refurbished ancient tanks, refurbished only enough to make them move and shoot.

For example, just by knowing the number of T-90M tanks delivered throughout the last few years, we might be able to conclude when it's gonna be physically impossible for those to include refurbished types, as the stocks of old T-90s are known and limited. So does anyone have a source listing T-90M deliveries (new builds or refurbishments) since 2020 onwards?  

The actual figure released yesterday was 1530 tanks in 2023 and the Russian government doesn't want you to know right now how many of each.

I guess it comes down to their condition, if they think they could upgrade them to a useful state and put them back into use in an emergency then proper storage might be worth the extra money where at some time in the future when all older stocks of tanks are used up and they start on these perhaps applying upgrades they have developed and applied to T-80s that are being returned to production it seems.

If they have decided that they are a dead end in terms of tank design for them because they are not as simple and easy to use as the older types and giving them upgrades to make them useful is going to cost almost as much as making new tanks they might decide to star scrapping them if they haven't already done so.

They might already be stored with the intent to be scrapped which means they are not in very good condition and that condition will just get worse.

@marcellogo so if they are being produced at state depots that upgrade and repair vehicles rather than build from scratch, can we assume that most regions have their own depots for upgrades and repairs to reduce having to transport these things all over the place and that in peace time these places would be not hugely busy.

With this conflict going obviously such depots will have more work on that normal because repairing battle damage would be added to their list of jobs to do, but in any actual conflict such organisations would take on an enormous amount of work potentially to get upgraded and repaired vehicles back into the fight as fast as possible so it must be able to adapt to the size and capacity needed at the time and they have had a while to expand its potential too with this being almost 2 years.

franco wrote:

The actual figure released yesterday was 1530 tanks in 2023 and the Russian government doesn't want you to know right now how many of each.

Thanks.
So what one can dig out from the purely public sources is basically what data Sergio Miller managed to collate here.
https://wavellroom.com/2023/03/10/t90m-are-appearing-on-the-eastern-front/

30 or so T-90M delivered in 2020,
at least 26 (but possibly more) delivered in 2021,
possibly 30 more delivered in 2022.
And then the estimates stop, with no figures being estimated for 2023. One might assume the 2023 figure is at least 30, though due to war needs, it could have easily been higher.

So about a 120 or more T-90M altogether sounds right about now. Though there's really no way of knowing how many of those were new builds. Allegedly 10 of the 2020 batch were new builds.
Did that continue in the following years? Possibly.

One might expect that due to war needs, 2022 and 2023 industrial priorities were volume, not quality. So expanding the line for modernization of old T-90 into M models might have been
a priority over expanding the new builds figures. If true, then some 40 or so T-90Ms might have been new builds while 90 or more might have been modernizations and refurbishments.


https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2020/02/13/823042-minoboroni-opredelilos

There were those original contract signed in 2017 to 2019, totalling 160 tanks, but those might have easily been amended due to war needs. Given that those contracts had their schedules slip,
with first deliveries in 2020, and with sanctions later on possibly having some impact, it's not assured even all 160 of the initially contracted tanks have been made by now.

Pre-war wishes and plans seem to include 400 T-90Ms by 2027, as per that article above, after initial delivery was planned for 2018. As that delivery slipped by two years, that might mean 400 might had been achieved by 2029,
had there been no war. Still, production ramp up is always somewhat gradual. It doesn't seem plausible, even with the war ramp up, that 2023 production went much over 40 or 50 pieces. Though 2024 production might keep rising, due to war needs.

To sum it up, estimating total T-90M production/conversion might kind of be done, though it can't be precise. But estimating new builds is simply impossible at this point. At least not until total number produced start eclipsing numbers of old T-90s.

Said article basically collated other data that cab be found online, some of which I find sound. Hence the link.
When and if I find other, more up to date data, I will try to post it here.

eridan wrote:So what one can dig out from the purely public sources is basically what data Sergio Miller managed to collate here.
https://wavellroom.com/2023/03/10/t90m-are-appearing-on-the-eastern-front/

This guy is retarded. For example he confuses a work stoppage at UVZ due to lack of roller bearings used for rolling stock, i.e. train carriages, with production stoppages at UVZ for making military tanks.


The Russian MIC had reduced its dependence on Ukraine and the West, since Ukrainian and Western sanctions on sales of military equipment and parts in 2014, but of course the civilian sector was still vulnerable to the 2022 sanctions. The notion that Russia needs to import bearings from the West to make what is essentially a souped up T-72 tank chassis as designed in the Soviet Union is just idiotic.

Russia manufactured over 200 T-90 tanks a year at UVZ even in peacetime. Moving from a single 8 hour shift, Monday to Friday work schedule, to a two 12 hour shift, Monday to Saturday work schedule certainly increased tank production even further.

ALAMO wrote:Not forgetting that after 2014, Russia already substituted wagon trolleys imported from Ukraine for years with its own production AND one of the biggest producers out there was in Doneck.

And a funny fact.
1500 tanks is more than the rest of the world.
Combined.
Ten times more.

Russia was importing bearings from the West for the high speed rail carriages which are supposed to operate at 160 kph. They can still make the older low speed grade rail carriages without those bearings. And China also makes their own high speed rail bearings and wheels. So I doubt it was a problem for too long.

Russia have in past more then 800 T80UD in their inventory. All of them moved to reserve and later in storage. If they wanna used them in this war they need new engine for it. But is hell of a work because this tank isnt same as T80U made in Omsk. Lot of differance especialy in engine compartment. Still Russia can do it in OMSK and probably will do it ehen they run out of T80BV in stocks...

Does anyone have any information on how current Russian tank welding processes are done? I would assume submerged arc welding as it is hard to imagine them using a dozen men poking around with handheld stingers on 80mm thick plates.

lyle6 wrote:
Largely manual. The level of process automation is directly controlled by the rate of production. AFVs are not cars with minimum production runs of hundreds of thousands per year - at best you get a couple thousand spread out over many years. This is true for much of military production except for consumables like ammo that have to be produced at literal machinegun cyclic rates...

I was asking about welding method, submerged arc welding was used by the Soviets in the second world war/great patriotic war and presents many advantages over fully manual methods like MMA.

There are a many Russian manufacturers of SAW semi auto welding machines, Kedr, Selma, ext.

https://kedr-welding.ru/product/svarochnyj-traktor-kedr-alphatrac-1/

https://zavodselma.ru/katalog-produktsii/avtomaticheskaya-svarka/

There is nothing stopping Ural or Omsk from simply buying the equipment and it presents a significant advantage over having a dozen men work tirelessly to fully weld two 80mm plates together with a couple of hundred MMA sticks.

I would assume they already use this equipment or better, but it would be nice to know the specifics.