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RUSSIA OUT OF EVERYTHING The Military Show: THIS Is the Reason Why Russia Will Run Out of ALL WEAPONS PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf5Fh7GWwdg Peter Burgess COMMENTARY The validity of the information in this video is somewhat questionable ... though quite likely that big bits of the information are right. The size of Russia needs to be remembered as well as the massive differences between the different 'classes' in Russian society. I want to be optimistic abouit the outcome of the Russian war against Ukraine ... but my hopes must be realistic! Peter Burgess
THIS Is the Reason Why Russia Will Run Out of ALL WEAPONS The Military Show Sep 27, 2024 1.08M subscribers #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis In June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted to a critical shortage of weapons, setting the stage for a military alliance between Russia and North Korea in 2024. Russia’s struggle in its war with Ukraine has led to dwindling artillery shells, tanks, and missiles, forcing it to rely on old, Soviet-era technology and aid from North Korea. In this video, we explore how Russia’s ammunition shortage, outdated equipment, and crumbling military capacity are impacting its war efforts and global alliances. #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis #themilitaryshow SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/MFJFVZNU Transcript 0:00 We don’t have enough weapons. That was the claim made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2023 as he held a meeting with pro-war bloggers in the Kremlin. Putin told the assembled crowd that “during the course of the special military operation, it has become clear that there are shortages of many things – precision-guided munitions, communications equipment, aircraft, drones, and so on.” It was a startling admission by a man who very rarely shows weakness, and it may have set the stage for something that happened just over a year later: Russia signed a cooperative defense pact with North Korea. On June 19, 2024, Putin and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, confirmed they had signed a pact in which each promised to come to the other’s aid if either were attacked. While this raised alarm in the West over the likelihood that Russia will help North Korea to develop nuclear missiles and submarines, the wording of the pact is also important to consider. Throughout 2024, several Western nations have permitted Ukraine to use the weapons they supply in Russian territory. Perhaps Russia considered that an attack against it, leading to it calling on North Korea to provide aid in the form of missiles and artillery shells. That brings us to a question: Why would Russia make a deal with what may be the world’s most isolated nation, 1:02 both geopolitically and economically? The answer is that Putin has failed to solve the problems he highlighted during his June 2023 speech, as Russia is on track to run out of all of its weapons in its war against Ukraine. Let’s start with some of the most important weapons Russia has been using: Artillery. The Ukraine war has been characterized, in part, by Russian bombardments of Ukrainian positions using thousands upon thousands of artillery shells. In 2022 alone, it’s believed that Russia fired up to 11 million shells at Ukrainian positions. The numbers have decreased since then, with Forbes staff writer David Axe suggesting that Russia now believes it needs a further three million shells to defeat Ukraine in February 2024. It's unlikely to get them. And even if it does, they may not be enough to win the war in the face of the Western support Ukraine has received throughout 2024. But more worrying for Russia is that needing three million shells in 2024 shows how far its stockpiles have fallen since a year in which it fired more than three times that amount. Russia’s struggles with artillery became evident within the first year of 2:01 the Ukraine war. In January 2023, CNN ran a report in which it claimed that Russia’s artillery fire was down by as much as 75% in some regions of Ukraine. Applying that to the previous year’s volley of 11 million shells, this would suggest that Russia had run so low on artillery ammunition that it would only manage to fire around 2.75 million shells in 2023 – a number that’s suspiciously close to the number of shells Forbes said Russia believed it needed in 2024. The report speculated on several reasons for this massive decrease, including Russia rationing the shells it has remaining or the country simply switching tactically to rely less on shells and more on other weapons. It is likely the former. The same CNN report notes that one senior U.S. military official pointed out that Russia was being forced to rely on 40-year-old shells to maintain its bombardments. That use of degraded ammunition, combined with Russia reaching out to North Korea and Iran even back at the beginning of 2023, all point to a country that has been running out of artillery shells less than a year into the war. It gets worse for Russia. Not only is it running 3:03 out of shells, but it’s also running low on the artillery it needs to fire them. That information, again from David Axe for Forbes, claimed in January 2024 that Russia’s soldiers are quickly running out of howitzer barrels for their artillery. These barrels are typically usable for several thousand shots before the steel used to make them becomes so brittle that they can’t withstand further firing. Normally, a country would replace these degraded barrels with new ones fresh off the production line. Russia hasn’t been doing that. Instead, Axe claims, Russia is pulling Cold War-era howitzers out of storage. Quoting open-source analyst Richard Vereker, Axe says that these old howitzers aren’t being sent to the frontlines – it’s their barrels that are heading into Ukraine. Russia is stripping those barrels, which are old but lightly used, and using them to replace the worn ones in its more modern howitzers. That’s a problem because these older howitzers have typically been mothballed in poorly maintained storage facilities. The steel in their barrels may not have degraded much due to overuse, but they will likely have felt the effects of oxidation and moisture exposure over the last 40 years. So, Russia is trying to make up for 4:03 a barrel shortfall by pulling from old supplies that aren’t especially fit for war. All of this may seem strange given that there are also reports of Russia producing far more artillery shells. In March 2024, CNN put the number at three more times that produced by the U.S. and the rest of Europe, suggesting that Russia is replenishing its stockpiles. But even then, that heightened production means it’s creating 250,000 shells per month, amounting to three million per year. That’s enough to cover the amount Russia claims it needs to win the war, but far below the 11 million shells it fired during the first year of the Ukraine war. Russian officials also claim that the country is firing 10,000 shells per day, which would amount to 3.65 million per year – 650,000 more than it’s producing. It's these shortages that have forced Russia to rely on the few allies it has to provide artillery shells. For instance, February 2024 saw South Korean intelligence officials claim that North Korea sent 6,700 containers carrying either three million 5:00 152mm artillery shells or 500,000 122mm shells in exchange for food and other goods from Russia. Throw Putin and Kim’s recent pact into the mix and it’s clear that Russia is being forced to rely on other countries to keep its artillery firing as it struggles to align production with the number of shells it uses daily. It's not just artillery that Russia is struggling to source. Even ammunition for basic weapons has been a problem throughout the war. In December 2022, Reuters reported on a senior U.S. official’s claim that many of Russia’s soldiers are being sent to the front with old ammo. “They have drawn from their aging ammunition stockpile,” the official claimed, “which does indicate that they are willing to use that older ammunition, some of which was originally produced more than 40 years ago.” Again, we see a reliance on Soviet-era stockpiles rather than the production of new bullets. These claims back anecdotal reports that come from a similar time in the war, such as a Business Insider article that quoted Russian soldiers as they explained their predicament. The soldiers claim that Russia “threw us out into the fields like dogs,” following their 6:01 brief basic training before they went on to say that Russia sent them to war with AK-47s, though no ammunition to load into them. “No radio, no ammo, not a ****ing thing. No medical suppliers either,” one of the soldiers claims. So, it looks like Russia’s ammunition situation is, at best, inconsistent. Some soldiers have modern rounds. Some have none at all. As for those who have older rounds, they face the predicament of having rounds that may only be safe to fire if the cartridges have been stored somewhere cool, dry, and lacking in moisture. That can’t be guaranteed given how much of Russia’s equipment was mothballed, raising the possibility of cartridge jams when firing. One official, quoted in a Reuters article published in February 2024, summed up the issue succinctly: “Russia’s domestic ammunition production capabilities are currently insufficient for meeting the needs of the Ukraine conflict.” That faltering production affects everything from artillery shells and rockets to the bullets soldiers should be able to load into their rifles. Of course, a lack of ammunition isn’t the only problem Russia’s soldiers face on the frontlines, 7:00 and it’s a problem that you could argue is balanced by Ukraine’s own struggles with munitions stockpiles. Perhaps far more worrying for Russia is that it’s also running out of a key weapon it’s been using to gain ground in Ukraine: Tanks. Estimates vary on just how many tanks Russia has lost. The Kyiv Independent quoted the open-source investigative project Oryx in July 2024, placing the number of Russian tanks damaged or destroyed in Ukraine at 3,180. However, that figure comes with the caveat that Oryx’s data comes from open sources, meaning that the losses are likely much higher. Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance certainly suggests they are. It maintains a live tracker of Russian losses in Ukraine, leading to its claim that Russia has lost 8,344 tanks as of July 3, 2024. Still, even 8,000 lost tanks shouldn’t be too much of a problem for Russia. Global Firepower, which ranks 145 nation’s militaries annually based on over 60 data points, says that Russia still has 14,777 tanks, with 10,344 of those tanks being in a combat-ready 8:04 state. That means it should have enough for another two and a half years of war, right? Not necessarily. For a start, production isn’t keeping pace with the losses. Once again, we cite David Axe of Forbes, who states that Russia is only producing between 500 and 600 tanks per year. Even if we take the lower figure of 3,180 tanks destroyed, that means Russia is losing more than 1,000 tanks annually against a production of around half that number. The country simply isn’t building enough tanks to refill its stockpiles of those it’s losing. There’s a gap in play. And it’s that gap that forces Russia to do precisely what it’s doing with its artillery – rely on Soviet-era technology to increase its numbers. Speaking to Reuters, Henry Boyd, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS’s, senior fellow, claims that Russia is “breaking even” when it comes to replacing its lost tanks. He estimates that it had put between 1,000 and 1,500 tanks into service in 2023, though there is a caveat: Only 200 of these tanks – at most – were newly built. 9:02 The much larger majority are tanks that have been mothballed for years, with World War II-era T-55s even making their way onto the battlefield. As Boyd puts it, “Moscow has been able to trade quality for quantity by pulling thousands of older tanks out of storage at a rate that may, at times, have reached 90 tanks per month.” Boyd estimates that Russia’s older tank reserves could sustain its war effort until around 2027, though that sustaining will come with a trade-off. Older tanks are less capable on the battlefield and far more vulnerable to modern anti-tank weapons, such as Javelin munitions and drone strikes. So, Russia will put more quantity onto the battlefield, but it will sacrifice quality in doing so, resulting in tanks being lost at an even faster rate than they were at the beginning of the war. Russia faces another problem. Even its most advanced tanks aren’t performing as well as Russia would expect on the battlefield. Take the T-90M, which the Kyiv Independent notes that Putin has often described as “the best tank in the world.” Ukraine has managed to destroy at least one of these tanks using a pair of Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, which have been in military service since the 1980s. So, 10:04 Russia finds itself in a position where its best tank is not only facing the modern weapons the West has supplied to Ukraine but is being taken out by older fighting vehicles. As we’ve moved deeper into 2024, the situation has only gotten worse for Russia. Toward the end of June 2024, Newsweek published a report on the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung’s use of satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to work out how many tanks Russia has left. The paper analyzed 87 military sites – 16 of which were bases known to store tanks and armored vehicles – to get a count of the number of tanks Russia has lost since the war’s beginning. The 111th Central Tank Reserve Base of the Army, located in southeastern Russia, was one of these bases. Before the war, that base held 857 tanks. Now, it’s empty, with Süddeutsche Zeitung’s artificial intelligence suggesting that Russia has lost at least half of the tanks deployed from that base. IISS research analyst Michael Gjerstad sums up Russia’s situation by suggesting the nation likely 11:00 has around 3,200 tanks still in stock, though “the vast majority of them are in bad condition and require significant repairs.” If that’s the case, Global Firepower’s estimates are well off the true state of Russia’s tank situation. Therein lies the tank problem for Russia: Does it invest an increasingly limited set of resources into restoring 3,000 old and battered tanks, or use them to build far fewer but new tanks? Either way, its battlefield losses are outstripping its means of production. Russia’s armored vehicle situation isn’t looking any better. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Information, or Minfin’s, figures, Russia has lost 16,095 armored fighting vehicles, or AFVs, as of July 3, 2024. These vehicles aren’t used in the same way as tanks, which excel at breaking through battle lines, but are instead typically used to transport troops and carry out small-scale attacks. Minfin’s numbers seem to align with other estimates of Russian AFV losses, with Newsweek reporting in May 2024 that Russia had lost 14,246. It’s not a huge stretch to 12:01 imagine another 1,000 or so have been destroyed in the month since. Much like with Russia’s tanks, Newsweek reports on the use of satellite imagery to determine how many AFVs Russia has left. Reporting on a post by an X, formerly Twitter, account run by a user named Jompy, Newsweek shared that satellite images reveal Russia has just 10,389 AFVs left in storage. That’s down 32% on the country’s pre-war stocks, suggesting 4,763 older AFVs had been removed from storage as of May 2024. Digging into specifics, Newsweek notes that Russia has lost over 1,500 MT-LBs, which are Soviet-era amphibious AFVs, meaning it only has 922 left from a previous stock of 2,527. BMDs are another major loser. The number of airborne and amphibious tracked infantry AFVs is down to 244 in stock from pre-war numbers of 637. You may have spotted a trend here. Just as it has with its artillery and tanks, Russia has found itself relying on mothballed Soviet-era armored 13:03 vehicles to continue fighting in Ukraine. These AFVs are being lost in huge numbers, in part, because they’re not technologically advanced enough to combat the drones that Ukraine has been using to destroy them. Charter 97, translating a report published by RBC-Ukraine, highlights the severity of this problem. It also notes that Russia is resorting to using AFVs built in the 1970s – with some that have found their way into Ukraine being from the 1960s and 1950s – and that it’s quickly running out of these older vehicles. It quotes Artur Rehi, an Estonian military blogger, who claims that Russia will have run out of these mothballed AFVs by mid-2025, putting it in a situation where it’ll need to produce more to keep its troops supplied. It's trying to do so. In February 2024, Forbes reported that Russia is building around 4,500 armored vehicles per year to replenish its faltering supplies on the frontlines. An impressive number, for sure, though one that doesn’t keep pace with the country’s losses. Ukraine has already destroyed over 15,000 AFVs in the war, creating a tally of around 6,000 per year, meaning that Russia’s 14:04 heightened pace of production isn’t enough. Moscow will run out of AFVs as long as Ukraine keeps destroying them at the same rate it is right now. If you need any more evidence that Russia has an AFV problem, you only need to look at a recent purchase by Moscow – 2,100 Desertcross 1000-3 all-terrain vehicles from China. While that name may sound impressive, the reality is that these all-terrain vehicles are essentially heavy-duty golf carts that offer practically no protection to the unfortunate soldiers forced to drive them. They weigh 1.5 tons – about the same as the average car – and have 85-horsepower engines. And Russia is already using them in support roles on the frontlines. These golf carts have already been the subject of ridicule and, more damaging for Russia’s forces, have already been demonstrated as being extremely vulnerable to drone attacks. The Forbes report points to one such strike, carried out by a drone, which killed a squad of seven soldiers as they attempted to use one of the carts to assault a Ukrainian position in Berdychi 15:00 in March 2024. Golf carts. In a battlefield. The fact they’re being used at all showcases how dire Russia’s armored fighting vehicle situation is. Still, at least it has plenty of missiles it can use to strike Ukrainian positions. Or does it? Reports often vary on Russia’s missile stockpile, though there have been rumblings that it was running low almost from the war’s beginning. In October 2022, Politico published an article in which it quoted several Western officials saying that Russia was experiencing a shortage of long-range precision missiles just six months into the war. One of those officials, speaking about Russia’s early strategy of destroying as many Ukrainian power stations as possible, said the country was increasingly having to rely on Shahed drones purchased from Iran to carry out its strikes. Why? Its stockpile of cruise missiles was running low: “Our assessment is that the ability for the Russians to continue with these saturating barrages of precision weapons is getting to the point now where this will be unsustainable,” the official said in October. A January 2023 report in Defense and Security Monitor offered a more 16:02 mixed viewpoint. It noted that Ukraine believed that Russia only had around 20% of its pre-war missile stockpiles left, amounting to just 550 missiles, or enough to conduct attacks on two or three cities. Russia, of course, denied this, claiming that it had enough missiles to continue the war before adding that they have thousands left and had the ability to build more. Still, it’s telling that Russia was already purchasing Iranian missiles at this point in the war, with Ukraine also pointing out that it was repurposing its S-300 and S-400 air defense missiles to attack ground targets. That repurposing wouldn’t be needed if Russia had enough missiles. Plus, it’s worth remembering that Putin himself has told people that Russia is running low on precision-guided munitions, suggesting that Ukraine may have been correct in its assessment. Running low isn’t Russia’s only problem. Just a month into the war, Reuters published a report that claimed some of Russia’s missiles may have a failure rate as high as 60%. Quoting a trio of U.S. officials, the outlet said this failure rate is one of the reasons why Russia failed to compromise Ukraine’s air force during the first month of the war, despite having 17:03 launched 1,100 missiles. Air-launched cruise missiles had failure rates between 20% and 60%, claimed one of the officials, with others having failure rates as high as 50%. For context, a failure rate above 20% is considered high by these officials, meaning that Russia doesn’t just have a stockpile problem. It's also dealing with many missiles that simply don’t work. Russia also has an eye toward the future when it comes to its missiles. It believes it has reached a stage of open confrontation with NATO that, though it hasn’t escalated into war, means Russia needs to build more missiles. Speaking to Russia’s RIA state-owned news agency in May 2024, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Grogory Mashkov made the open confrontation claim while saying Russia hopes that direct armed conflict will not follow. Still, Mashkov says Russia needs to be prepared, noting it has to “take further steps to strengthen the country’s defense capability, including building up the missile arsenal, in order to discourage any potential enemy from testing Russia’s strength.” First Putin, and now a prominent official. Both say that Russia doesn’t have enough missiles, 18:04 with the ambassador putting that into the context of a possible future war with NATO. That means its stockpiles have run low enough due to the Ukraine war that it needs to replenish and is likely going to increasingly rely on drones ahead of missile strikes to preserve what it has left. Missiles were supposed to be another of Russia’s trump cards in the Ukraine war. Still, there was another key advantage it had back in February 2022 – a much stronger air force. Unfortunately for Putin, Russia has failed so terribly at developing aerial dominance in Ukraine that it is also starting to run out of the planes it’s trying to use to win the war. Minfin provides basic figures for how many aircraft Russia has lost so far. As of July 3, 2024, it claims that Ukraine has destroyed 360 planes, along with 326 helicopters. The situation has become so bad for Russia that it’s barely using its air force in the war, instead relying on ground troops to achieve its objectives. However, “barely using” doesn’t mean it’s not using planes at all. It’s just that those planes are getting shot down at an incredible rate. Take what happened in February 2024 as an example. 19:05 Forbes reports that this month saw Ukraine conduct what it dubs a “Sukhoi Massacre,” in which it managed to shoot down four Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bombers and two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters in just three days. That’s notable because these planes are among the best in Russia’s air force, with the Su-34 being a supposedly powerful supersonic strike plane. Russia is far from in a position where it’s going to run out of either of these planes. It still has 125 Su-34s and around 110 Su-35s. The problem here is that the few times that Russia has deployed what are supposed to be its best planes in Ukraine, they’ve been shot down. While it may not be running out in pure numbers, it’s running out of situations – or perhaps the tactical knowledge – to deploy these aircraft. If that’s the case, Russia may as well not have any at all. March 2024 brought with it reports that Ukraine is also chipping away at Russia’s stockpile of A-50 spy planes. Russia lost two of those planes to Ukrainian attacks in the first two months of 2024, in addition to seeing a base it uses to repair the planes damaged by a Ukrainian drone strike. A Newsweek 20:02 report notes that Russia now has just six A-50s left – a definite shortage given that it relies on these planes to conduct aerial surveillance and reconnaissance. Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, who heads Ukraine’s GUR intelligence agency, says that taking out one more A-50 would mean Ukraine prevents Russia from maintaining 24/7 operations. Russia is already trying to replace its downed A-50s with reconnaissance drones. Note that we said “drones” and not “planes.” That’s because, as The Wilson Center reported in April 2024, the West’s sanctions against Russia are preventing it from building more of its own planes. Most of the effects are being felt in Russia’s attempts to build more commercial airlines – it initially illegally kept more than 400 foreign planes when sanctions were first instituted – but they’re carrying over to the country’s air force. After all, if Russia isn’t getting the parts it needs to build its commercial airliners due to sanctions, it’s also likely not receiving what it needs to build more military aircraft. In this case, Russia isn’t going to run out of planes. It still has hundreds left, especially in its Soviet-era stock. 21:02 However, it’s proven itself so ineffectual at launching aerial assaults that it’s barely using its air force. And when it is, it’s having to watch Ukraine shoot down some of its best planes while it struggles to replace them. Finally, we come to ships. Russia’s navy is in no danger of running out of ships. As Global Firepower reports, it has 781 naval assets. The problem is that the vast majority of these ships aren’t involved in the Ukraine war. In fact, the only ships it has that can fight against Ukraine are part of the Black Sea Fleet, which contains around 60 to 70 of Russia’s vessels. Or, at least, it did. Ukraine has managed to destroy or damage around a third of the Black Sea Fleet since the beginning of the war, severely compromising Russia’s ability to use its navy to strike Ukraine. Combining precision missile attacks with drone strikes, Ukraine has been whittling away at the fleet, safe in the knowledge that Russia isn’t able to replenish it. Why? The Montreux Convention. Signed in July 1936, the Montreux Convention is notable because it essentially grants Turkey control over seaborne passage through the Dardanelles 22:02 and the Bosphorus – collectively known as the Turkish Straits. Specifically, Article 19 of that convention says that Turkey can close access to the Black Sea via these straits to any military ship that doesn’t call the sea its home base. That’s precisely what it’s done since the war began. No vessels from the Russian navy – or from any other country’s navy, for that matter – can enter the Black Sea. Russia was able to keep the Black Sea Fleet in place because it was stationed in the sea, but it couldn’t supplement that naval force with any new ships. So, Russia isn’t at risk of running out of ships on the global level. But in the context of the Ukraine war, it’s already lost a third of its ships and it can’t rebuild the Black Sea Fleet because it’s banned from sailing military vessels through the Turkish Straits. It’s running out of ships it can actually use to fight against Ukraine, with the rest of its navy essentially being ineffectual to the same degree as the country’s air force. There’s no point in having over 700 naval assets if you can’t bring them to the fight. The final question is simple – where does all of this leave Russia? It’s facing a situation where it’s increasingly less able to keep its troops supplied with modern weapons, 23:03 forcing it to rely on Soviet-era stock and other countries to keep weapons flowing in. Russia has attempted to boost production – as we see with its artillery and AFV building – but it’s unable to keep up with the pace of the losses it has experienced in Ukraine. None of this means that Russia is on the verge of losing the war right now. It still has stockpiles and it’s shown it’s willing to sign pacts with countries like North Korea to get what it needs. But each passing day weakens Russia’s military as it burns through more of its weapons. That only spells bad news for the country in the future. But what do you think? Will Russia eventually lose the Ukraine war because it runs out of weapons, or does it have enough to continue to slowly gain ground in Ukraine? How big a role has Western support played in helping to drain Russia’s supplies? Share your opinions in the comments and thank you for watching the video. Now go check out Why Russia Is On Edge of TOTAL COLLAPSE or click this other video instead!

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