Russian special military operation in Ukraine #40

The Russian Army in 2013 had around 100 T-55s in a Reserve Capacity with around 500 in Storage awaiting Decommissioning; it’s likely now that they have less than 300 Operational T-54/T-55s at this point.

But how many does the Russian Naval Infantry have because they were the most recent users of such vehicles... including the use of such vehicles fitted with the APS system called Drozd in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

German study on DU ammo from 2012 by German section of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

The Germans actually upgraded their 120mm tank gun from an L/44 to an L/55 gun to achieve the same performance with tungsten in the L/55 gun that the DU round achieves in the L/44 gun.

(L/xx is a description of a gun by indicating its barrel length... in this case a L/44 gun is 44 times the calibre long, so 120mm x 44 = 5.28m long barrel, so the L/55 version has a 120 x 55 = 6.6m long barrel.)

Pretty dumb to not have upgraded the t-55/62 from long time ago.

And if they upgraded them in 1995 they would need another upgrade before they could be put into service.

Perfectly normal to not upgrade vehicles in storage and to upgrade them with standard stuff when they are used.

They could have been also given to allies like SAA, Wagner or donbas soldiers.

They likely still have thousands of T-72s in storage which would make more sense.

But using up old tanks in storage and their ammo does make sense but when both are gone then new vehicles will go into storage to use next time.

One plausible theory imo is if the tanks are being sent to Ukraine they will be used as long range support tanks, Iran produces a round heat around that those tanks can fire.

A long range support tank might be a T-14 with a 152mm main gun... long range support tanks generally have more powerful guns, not less powerful guns.

For all we know they might be getting upgrades and going to Syria, or they might be going to the scrapyard, or the Russian Navy might want some more T-55AMs.

The missiles they fire have HEAT warheads too...

I mean the removing of badly needed captured munitions from the troops, the stupid and costly frontal attacks, and other strange actions.

Foreign ammo that the enemy complained about because it was ancient stock and unreliable... I would not trust it in the hands of troops I want to win.

Those NLAW tubes were enormous, and Javelin is not tiny for what it is either.

Here GarryB´s fetish for airships or tethered ballons is justified. Equipped with EO systems they could search for
these craft.

Not to mention they could have antenna arrays that detect objects moving past a line... keep them tethered and on alert for months at a time unmanned...

It won't work bro, and that is the issue.
Those drones are powered by electric motors that emit extremely low heat.

They don't have to be hot... a decent high grade thermal imager that sees in the IR spectrum can see objects and a moving object can be picked out amongst stationary objects through AI processing...

The fabled counter offensive is underway

The real kicker is that of the three vehicles the vehicle at the extreme rear is the one with the mine plough spades that normally operates at the front of any column moving through a mine field...

Regarding the discussions about Leopards, lets see what they are getting first, I would say the bulk of the ones they get first might be Leo 1s in which case they are not comparable with any model T-72, but the real core of their problems is that nobody is talking about hundreds of tanks let alone thousands so they could be getting T-14s for all it really matters because air power and anti armour power of the Russian forces is more than the T-72s they have deployed... tiny pockets of armour deployed by Kievs forces on the battlefield to support their attacks will have an impact but will also be targeted by ground and air forces, and most of the things that kill them the wont even see coming...

The missiles the Russians can fire from their tank guns are quite capable of penetrating even quite modern vehicles from the front.