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Originally Posted by Heffe
I know we've looked at Russian tank losses in this thread previously, but does anyone have information about Ukrainian tank losses beyond Oryx's data?
I ask because we know that Russian heavy equipment bases are emptying at an alarming rate, with them emptying entirely being likely in the next 12-18 months (recent attrition rates would indicate closer to 12). And as those bases empty, Russian tank forces are going to be of worse and worse quality.
I'm confident Ukraine is losing tanks as well, albeit likely at nowhere near this pace. Granted, they didn't have anywhere even close to as many to begin with, and the west as noted hasn't really provided many tanks either. But at some point, Russia will run out of tanks, which will "tank" their ability to conduct mechanized assaults, effectively ending their offensive operations further into Ukraine. That is, unless they want to send more waves of infantry and APCs into fortified defenses, which may be the case. At that point, Russia will be someone forced to either operationally pause and reassess their offensive operations, or attempt to broker a treaty by which they'd keep the land they've already taken.
If Ukraine has the tank capacity to outlast the Russian tank supply, that may open up some significant options for them. Or if nothing else, so long as the west continues to provide additional tank forces to them after Russia runs dry, that will impact any possible future negotiations.
*edit: This is also assuming Russia isn't able to begin sourcing tanks from elsewhere - namely Iran and the DPRK.
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From what I've been able to observe, both the Russians and Ukraines have been using tanks more as mobile pill boxes than their traditional role as breakout and maneuver elements. There have been some exceptions, but those ended very poorly for the massed formations. It may be that the current generation of guided and fire and forget anti-tank weapons is just too deadly for Gulf War and earlier tank tactics to be effective against peer / near peer opponents any more, especially without air dominance.
Probably some observation bias at play here, but what we see on a lot of the released videos is squad and platoon sized infantry probes that get wrecked by artillery, and then mopped up by drones, with some occasional close in trench fighting (which is nonetheless probably a lot more common than caught on go-pro).
In one sense, this war reminds me a lot of a WW1 trench style trench warfare with much lower troop densities manning the trenches (partly due to the greater accuracy of artillery and drones, partly due to the fewer numbers of men).
Long term though, an attrition war definitely favors Russia.