I wonder what % of the modern tanks can actually make it to battle. In WWII there were lots of breakdowns. I’ve heard tank game designers say they go for realism except when it comes to reliability. That would make for a pretty boring game.
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I think we have maybe strayed a bit from the topic 
It’s an interesting question which I believe is totally dependant on that particular countries readiness, combat preparedness and what they are willing to spend on upkeep, upgrades and repairs.
Canada for instance let their tank fleet of 82 tanks go into disrepair before being called up to go to Afghanistan in the late 2000s and at the time less than half were operational and only around 20 were combat ready. Since then about 50 are always combat ready and the rest in operational condition as per a press release from 2017.
At one point during the US’s long war in Iraq and Afghanistan approximately 1/3rd of the US armies 8,700 tanks were down due to damage, repairs and refits which is a pretty serious shortage of combat effective tanks.
Now to Russia which has the worlds largest tank fleet at 23,000. After seeing Russian tanks in action in Ukraine and inspection of abandoned and captured tanks many experts think that based on what they are seeing that maybe 40% of Russian tanks are actually fully operational and combat ready. (Inspection of captured and abandoned tanks showed that almost all were missing critical parts, many had non functional radios, some even had non functioning guns, almost all had poorly maintained tracks and the list goes on)
So again it is totally dependant on the country, their maintenance protocols and what they are willing to spend.
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Would you mined citing sources when you rely on their numbers? I am also curious for myself
I am an armchair reader so I peruse tons of news sites and forums so I have no specific source but as to the “experts” Ukrainians have documented and videoed and taken thousands upon thousands of pictures and have been in close contact with military experts in various countries like Germany, Great Britain and the US all three of which are well versed in tank building and warfare plus many other military experts in other countries and then they draw a I’m on consensus on what was seen and talked to Ukrainian soldiers and their tank experts.
It is likely that some of the captured Russian Equipment is already in NATO hands and they are going over the captured equipment with expert eyes as well.
To add to your point I would look at other war where west has counted their kills terribly wrong - Yugoslavia 1999.
From an article in The Guardian:
By early May, Nato was claiming that its aircraft had destroyed more than 200 tanks and had cut off Serb forces in Kosovo from their supply bases. It portrayed a Serb army whose morale was crumbling from mounting casualties, shortages of food and fuel and lack of sleep, as it dispersed into smaller and weaker units to escape the relentless bombing.
Yet when the western media saw the Serb military withdraw from Kosovo in early June, they saw convoys of Serb tanks, armoured cars, guns, trucks and military equipment untouched by Nato’s air assault.
Nato’s bombing campaign, with thousand of sorties and the dropping of tens of thousands of bombs, including sophisticated precision weapons, succeeded in damaging just 13 of the Serbs’ 300 battle tanks in Kosovo.
It is so much easier to destroy tanks and win wars on Internet.
Wildly exaggerated kill claims are hardly new or unique to any one side. Part of the fog of war or more appropriately the BS surrounding it.
More BS? What happened to the Moskva? Whose claim is right? The only thing we know for sure is she sunk. You want answers. Might be a couple years if divers can get to wreck but that may not be allowed either.
#OTD in 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted foreign dignitaries aboard USS Enterprise to watch the Navy demonstrate the latest surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles against a drone. After the missiles failed to score a single hit, a dignitary asked if his country could buy the drone.
I thought that was funny. 60 years later, missiles still miss and missile makers still claim they won’t.
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Well said Dan
Casualty counts are almost always over or under reported depending on which side your on.
It is well known Russia has had casualties that number in the thousands with dead, wounded, missing and POWs in the mix. Ukraine estimates that Russia has suffered 60,000 or more casualties in deaths, wounded, POWs and missing. Nobody really knows the truth because Russia refuses to admit they’ve lost more than 1700 although it is well known the Russian casualty count numbers in the thousands.
On the Ukrainian side they admitted that they’ve lost 2700-3500 soldiers however much like the Russians Ukraine hasn’t admitted to casualty counts not released by them. Nobody is really sure how many casualties there are and the true answer may never be known on either side.
With that being said most tend to be more believing of the Ukrainian numbers even if they are inflated as western media is everywhere reporting on the devastation in and around Ukraine and have not been censored unlike Russian media where it is tightly controlled.
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Thank you.
If we accept that the Ukrainian numbers are in the ballpark consider that the defender also tends to inflict more casualties so higher Russian losses make sense. Being road bound due to attacking in winter/spring also increases vulnerability. If they had attacked in summer and had been able to use more of their mobility they might have lessened some of their casualties.
So I don’t know Russian losses but their own statements without numbers mention that their casualties were quite serious so I doubt the Russians are happy about them.
If and when peace is obtained, war colleges will spend years teaching students about all the errors made in this conflict only to see those students make a whole new set of errors next time. Such is human nature.
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I always double an attacker’s caims about their own losses and halve the number an attacker claims to inflict.
Seems to work.
The thing about Ukrainian claims is that with cell phones we have a ‘gun camera’ of WWII on sterroids. Both sides claims are much more easy to verify and verified Russian losses have been substantial.
Abandonements where the tank is salvageable by the Ukrainians due to lack of supplies or desertion are especually evident; I wouldnt believe them but the video evidence speaks for itself.
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This is very true and goes back to an earlier post here in which this is the first war in which both sides have easy access to not only the internet but at technologically advanced and somewhat progressive societies and add to that everyone has a cell phone, there are security cameras everywhere and most importantly there are 44 million Ukrainian witnesses all with cell phones. Already this war has been more heavily covered than any other due to Social media, YouTube and news media.
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As of May 8th it has been estimated based on available evidence and documentation that Russia has lost around 12 billion dollars in equipment, ships and aircraft and around 3 billion on munitions, missiles and explosives.
What is unknown the cost of lives. Most western think tanks think around 18,000 to 21,000 Russian soldiers have been killed with upwards of a further 30-45,000 wounded, missing and captured.
On the Ukrainian side the military loss is estimated at between 4-7000 with around 18,000 wounded, missing or captured. Approximately 3 billion in equipment, ships and aircraft have been lost however munitions, explosives and missiles are harder to estimate due to the amount that has been sent to Ukraine by NATO countries and costs vary by country.
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Hard to think that Russia could move far against nato with the losses sustained so far. So their bluster is reduced to we will beat you in 30 minutes in a nuclear war.
I think their will be many lessons to learn from this and how to address new drone and man portable defensive systems.
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And modern artillery:
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What I’m interested to see is if he does go through with nuclear weapons which is more likely the longer the war drags on will NATO finally say enough is enough or funnel more weapons and funds through.
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I think if he goes through with Nuclear weapons, God help us all. I can’t think of a target in Ukraine that it makes sense to use them on except Lviv where the west is funneling weapons and aid through. That is so close to NATO what would we do? I don’t think this will happen but I think if that decision is made, the Russian government will fall internally.
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Likely targets would be Odessa(for the port), Kharkiv(because it has been a rallying point for Ukrainians), Kviv(Seat of power), Lviv( as previously mentioned), Dnipro(central distribution point of military and humanitarian aid). Less likely targets would be Kherson(Ukrainian resistance), Mariupol(Ukrainian pride)
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Ok but none of those targets make military sense. If you just intend to mass murder people sure But the first shot in a war should be a well calculated shot. If you kill a million people at Kviv you don’t even guarantee to take out the government. You want the port of Odessa for yourself not an irradiated mess. No, imho if you use a nuc. it needs to start as a tactical strike which puts your country in a better position and is not so damaging that it doesn’t demand a response. It is a high stakes gamble. Which is why his government has to buy in as well. Russian military has refused to fire nucs before.
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This is all true but everything the Russian military has done to this point and Putins thinking has left everybody wondering why did they do that, why didn’t they capitalize on opportunities and so forth.
The Russians have attacked targets that make no sense what so ever militarily and often attacked civilian targets which is well documented and there was no reason to attack these targets other than for pure terror. Which makes me think if a nuclear strike happens it will be on a non military target because everything Russia has done so far in this war has made little sense militarily.
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