Yohann Michel & Michael Gjerstad
Despite intense armoured vehicle losses since Russia launched its unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine about two years ago, there are few signs they will cause an end to the fighting anytime soon. The IISS will publish its assessment of Russian equipment losses on 13 February with the release of The Military Balance 2024. The losses are estimated to include more than 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles in the past year alone and close to 8,800 since February 2022.
Russia’s losses over the past 24 months raise a key question: how long can Moscow sustain these equipment-attrition rates?
Russia’s offensive on Avdiivka, which began in autumn 2023, is only one example where the assaulting force has suffered heavy equipment and personnel attrition. Still, Russian troops have been able to make inroads there, aided by an advantage in artillery.
Defogging war
Tracking the active fleets of main battle tanks (MBTs), armoured personnel carriers (APCs), infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and other equipment for either side in the war in Ukraine is an imprecise science. Unlike the high-profile Black Sea Fleet losses or those Russia’s aerospace forces have suffered, the inventory evolution in the land domain comes with far more variables. Refurbishment and production rates can vary greatly, as can the intensity of losses.
The Military Balance 2024 reflects figures up to November, though the IISS has continued to update its data. The numbers for Ukrainian- and Russian-equipment changes reflect a range of inputs, including visually confirmed losses drawn from a variety of sources, the preponderance of which are based on images from the battlefield, especially those collected by uninhabited aerial vehicles. These inputs generally reflect the impact of tactical skirmishes and understate the scale of losses; they tend not to capture the full scale of long-range engagements and associated destruction of equipment, particularly of weapon systems mostly operating further behind enemy lines than tanks and infantry-fighting vehicles, such as artillery and air defences.
On a few occasions, losses came to light when forces quickly withdrew from an area, leaving behind destroyed equipment that would otherwise not have been visible. The IISS cross-referenced indicated losses from imagery with other information sources, including Pentagon data leaked in 2023, open-source trackers, including Oryx, interviews and other reports.
Not all the images of equipment hit in combat equate to a system being destroyed, of course. Our calculation also reflects an estimate of what damaged and abandoned equipment was restored to service and what portion was taken off the battlefield for good. In other instances, inventory adjustments reflect equipment captured. For instance, Ukraine now operates a meaningful number of the armoured vehicles it captured from Russian forces.
Ukrainian inventory
The situation for Ukraine’s land force-equipment evolution is also opaque, in some cases even more so because open-source imagery of battlefield losses is skewed on the Russian side. A detailed recording of available information on losses as well as on new equipment deliveries from Western supporters of Kyiv, supports our judgment of Ukraine’s current inventory. In some cases where information on vehicles has not been available for months, we opted not to include detailed numbers because of the uncertainty over their operational status.
Overall, we estimate that two years after the full-scale invasion, the number of MBTs in service in the Ukrainian armed forces remains near pre-war levels, while the number of APCs and IFVs has increased thanks to Western support. However, Ukrainian efforts to field additional combat elements have outpaced equipment supply, leaving some units lacking equipment to be even close to full strength.
Bottom line
Despite losing hundreds of armoured vehicles and artillery pieces per month on average, Russia has been able to keep its active inventory numbers stable. For 2023, we estimate that Russia was able to reactivate at least 1,180 to 1,280 MBTs and around 2,470 IFVs and APCs from storage. On top of that, Moscow was able to manufacture new tanks and other armoured vehicles, though precise numbers are difficult to glean even from satellite images.
Commercial overhead imagery does shed light, though, on Russian equipment in storage that is potentially available for activation or refurbishment to compensate for further battlefield losses. Russia has 10 Central Tank Reserve Bases, at least 37 mixed equipment- and armaments-storage bases, and at least 12 artillery-storage bases. An in-depth assessment by the IISS last year showed equipment replenishments were roughly keeping pace with battlefield attrition.
It is our assessment, therefore, that Russia will be able to sustain its assault on Ukraine at current attrition rates for another 2–3 years, and maybe even longer.
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