The domestic military-industrial complex is "hot", most factories work in three shifts, said Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. As a result, according to him, Russia will release fifteen hundred tanks this year. Our army will have the most powerful armored fist in all of Eurasia. The preponderance of forces on the Ukrainian battlefield will become indisputable. At the expense of what resources will the record rate of production of armored vehicles be achieved?Russia will produce one and a half thousand tanks this year, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, promised on Thursday.
"We will make one and a half thousand tanks this year. Procalculate how much our opponent will receive even according to the most optimistic calculations – that's the answer for you," RIA Novosti quotes Medvedev.
"Yes, we didn't think about it some time ago, but it became necessary to launch new weapons production. The Soviet Union, let me remind you, in order to achieve at least a balance with Hitler's Germany during the Great Patriotic War, it took several years, it didn't happen right away – and the T-34 appeared, and the Katyusha, and so on," Medvedev recalled.
The deputy Chairman of the Security Council is convinced that the Russian T-90M "Breakthrough" surpasses Western Leopard and Abrams models in its tactical and technical characteristics.
"It is quite obvious that, for example, the same T-90M "Breakthrough" tank is our newest tank. But, in my opinion, it is now the best tank in the world. In the world! It is certainly better than Leopard, than Challenger, than Abrams, including in terms of its tactical and technical data, even in terms of such a component as mass," Medvedev says. The politician noted the maneuverability of the "Breakthrough", speed and good combat work. According to the deputy chairman of the Security Council, "the most important thing is to release all this now in the necessary volumes." And for this, according to him, new production facilities are being launched in Russia.
The simplest calculation shows that such a speed means the release of five tanks per day. According to Medvedev, such a pace is quite achievable, since the domestic military-industrial complex has changed markedly.
"The military–industrial complex has been fired up, it is working actively, most enterprises (I am talking about this firsthand, but because I travel around them) work in three shifts, work, as they say, from wheels - they directly give everything to the troops, produce the most modern Russian types of weapons, and even in a situation when they are really trying to deprive us components, cut off oxygen in certain areas," Medvedev added.
The total number of tanks that Russia has in its arsenal is from 10 to 12 thousand, Belarusian military expert Alexander Alesin believes. "At one time, according to the Vienna Document, they were taken out of the Urals and left in storage there for 30 years. Fifteen hundred tanks is one sixth of this number. Most of all there are T-72 models that turn into T-72 B3M, which are not inferior to either Leopards or Abrams. The quantity that Medvedev is talking about is not so much the production of new ones as the "upgrade" of old stocks," Alesin explained to the newspaper VZGLYAD.
As a result, in the next year and a half, Moscow will have the most powerful armored fist not only on our continent, but also in Eurasia. This will become a very strong argument in negotiations with Western "partners", predicts Alesin.
"However, a very important task arises – to provide tank factories with components for such modernization. There is a bottleneck here. I think China will help us with elements of an electronic database – and as a result, the obstacle will be overcome by the forces of Russia and Belarus," the analyst hopes. He considers the pace declared by Medvedev to be quite real.
"In fact, the preponderance of forces on the battlefield has already been achieved. The fact is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western countries stopped updating their tank fleet. Many factories were closed, capacities were curtailed. It will take a lot of effort, time and money for them to upgrade their current models or launch new ones. So Medvedev's words are a very serious claim," the Belarusian expert told the newspaper VZGLYAD.
Vadim Kozyulin, head of the IAMP center of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, following Alesin, believes that it is hardly realistic to release so many new armored vehicles, which Medvedev is talking about, and it is most likely about the modernization of old arsenals. "Judging by open data, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia got 6,400 tanks, most of them have since been disposed of, scrapped, cut up," recalls Kozyulin.
"A lot of armored vehicles were simply "parked" on the territory of factories, behind a fence somewhere, in the open air - and they have been rusting there for many years.
Unfortunately, this method of "slow disposal" was common. Therefore, the compilers of the reference books did not count these machines. As a result, the 2020 Military Balance yearbook counted 2,750 tanks in Russia, and 987 vehicles in Ukraine. The Armed Forces of Ukraine were mainly armed with T-64 models. There were about seven hundred of them – in various modifications. At the same time, armored vehicles there also used to stand for years behind a fence in the open air, that is, "in storage" – there were more than a thousand of them, that is, in total there were more than two thousand tanks in Ukraine by February 24 last year," Kozyulin emphasizes.
"In principle, we have retained the capacity – several tank factories, including UVZ. Probably now, because of the fence, ready-made cars are being rolled out from warehouses, repaired, updated, improved," Kozyulin suggests. – In any case, if Medvedev's promise is fulfilled, it will mean a very high pace of work of our military–industrial complex - high by any world standards. It is clear that as a result of this, a powerful disproportion in favor of Russia should arise on the battlefield in the zone of its own."
According to TASS estimates, in total Ukraine can get about 100 modern Western tanks. Earlier, Kiev had already received 350-400 Soviet-made tanks from abroad, mainly T-72.
In terms of money, the modernization of the tank is "about 30% of the cost of producing a new similar tank," military expert Alexei Leonkov explained to MK, and it is due to such modernization, in his opinion, that the average output of five tanks per day, which Medvedev is talking about, will be achieved. Leonkov does not rule out that such an old model as the T-64 – or, more precisely, the T-62M - will also undergo an upgrade. Maybe these vehicles are "morally outdated, but they can be used as tanks to support infantry." They cannot participate in anti–tank battles, although they can easily cope with lightly armored vehicles – armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles. They can also be suitable for the second echelon of troops in defense, when it will be necessary to close gaps if the enemy accumulates huge strength and breaks through the first line, Leonkov admits.
Last week, the German edition of Die Welt released its research, in which it gives its estimates of the pace of work of the tank-building industry in Russia. In particular, the publication estimates the needs of the Russian front as two hundred armored vehicles per month. The publication claims that Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) produces no more than 20 modern T-90 tanks every month.
"And since the need for tanks is ten times greater, the company also upgrades eight tanks of the older T-72 class every month. At three other plants, 50 cars per month are being modernized, and at two more plants under construction, they plan to modify 30 units per month (quote from INOSMI). As Alexander Golts, an expert on military issues and armament at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Policy, explains to the German edition: "In the battle of "wear and tear" that is currently underway in Ukraine, it is wiser to use two old tanks than one new one."
The Russian Kommersant reported in October that another military–industrial complex enterprise, armored repair plant No. 103, located in Atamanovka, Trans-Baikal Territory, received a state order for the repair and modernization of 800 tanks in the next three years.
Yuri Zainashev