One year ago, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit for the second time, following the October 2022 attack. Russians tried to repair that damage, but the results seem to be…subpar.
👀💥 Kerch Bridge: As a result of the damage received, the structural elements of the bridge are degrading, which leads to the crumbling of its individual parts, – ATESH pic.twitter.com/99WgC1HaYX
I’m not an expert in bridge structural integrity, but that warping/sagging/bending doesn’t look good. In a video game, that looks like a structure you’d get once chance to jump off of before it collapses into the sea.
The Kerch Bridge, a strategically vital structure used by Russia to connect with occupied Crimea, is in need of urgent repairs and cannot survive structural damage, according to a Crimean-based pro-Ukrainian group.
“The Kerch Bridge is living its final days,” Atesh, a pro-Kyiv military partisan group of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
A partisan source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Denys Davydov covers the bridge damage in the first minute of this video:
“The Crimean Bridge looks very tired.”
“Those images appeared in Internet yesterday. Indeed, you may see some of the damages towards the railway part of the bridge. Which is quite strange, because there were no recent strikes reported. It means that this part of the construction wasn’t repaired properly after the first strike on the bridge.”
“You may say that those are just minor damages, and the bridge can still work. Yes, it works, but there is the feature which tells us that the bridge now has the limited capabilities for the transfer of the heavy cargo, and the structural damage of the bridge could be much more severe than we see just visually on those pictures.”
“So the clue that the bridge is not OK for the heavy cargo lies with this ferry, which Ukraine kaboomed around three weeks ago. Russia used this ferry to transfer the oil products, but somehow didn’t use the Kerch bridge. And with the new pictures that appeared on the Internet, we may understand that the bridge is not in a good shape.”
“So indeed, the Ukrainian attack on the Russian ferry fleet was a main destruction of the Russian supplies towards Crimea and the southern part of Ukraine, which is now partially occupied by the Russian Federation.”
From the limited information we have to go on, this analysis seems correct.
It can be hard to determine the truth of things coming out of a warzone, even with Russia’s notoriously poor operational security. But absent photo manipulation (which we can’t rule out without more firsthand evidence), it does appear that that the Kerch Strait Bridge is clearly slumping and may even be unusable, which will severely complicate Russian logistics in southern Ukraine.
One wonders if Vladimir Putin knew that not only would his three day “special military operation” in Ukraine drag on for at least two and a half years, but that Ukraine would launch a successful invasion of Kursk oblast, if he might have reconsidered ordering it.
Ukraine’s Kursk incursion continues to take territory in Russia.
A lot of observers (myself included) were puzzled by what endgame Ukraine is seeking in Kursk. So here are a couple of theories.
Peter Zeihan thinks the invasion is to cut off supplies to the city of Belgorod (one of the two major logistical hubs for Russia’s war effort).
“No one invades Russia on a whim.”
“The problem that the Russians have always had expanding for Moscow is that there’s no logical place to stop that’s within a thousand miles of them. So they expand, they conquer some minorities, they occupy them, they try to Russify them, they turn them to cannon fodder, and they throw them in the next line of minorities. They continue this process over and over and over and over and over until they eventually reach a geographic barrier that they can actually hunker down behind.”
“It works until it doesn’t. And what we’re seeing with Russia right now is that the demographic decline among the Russian ethnicity is so high that within a few years they’re going to be having problems occupying their own populations.”
“The incursion that the Ukrainians have made into Russia proper isn’t all that impressive from a territorial point of view. Basically in the last two weeks the Ukrainians have invaded Russia proper. They’ve taken over about a thousand square kilometers in the province of Kursk. And the question is why, and what is next.”
“They have already destroyed the three permanent bridges over the river Seym, which is a east-west river that cuts through Kursk province, and by doing that they’ve made it very difficult for the Russians to reinforce the territories around where this incursion has been.”
“The Ukrainians are currently expanding on at least four different axes, northwest, northeast, north and east, and in doing so they’re basically looking to swallow, at least temporarily, about half the province, about 6,000 square mile.”
“The thousand square kilometers that the Ukrainians have captured so far is greater than the entirety of what the Russian army has achieved in the Donbas in the last 18 months.”
Ukraine has taken out all the bridges, leaving Russians to use pontoon bridges for resupply, which are much more easily destroyed. And, as Suchomimus has shown in his recent videos, they seem to be rebuilding those bridges in the same spots, presumably because they’re the only suitable spots for building them, making it that much easier to take them out.
“I have always identified the city of Belgorad as one of the cities that the Ukrainians have to neutralize if they’re ever going to win this war, because it’s the tip of the spear for Russian forces. This is where, in the northern theater, all of their armies and all of their artillery are concentrated, because it’s at the end of the logistical lines. It’s a big rail and road hub. Well, if the Ukrainians are capable of basically taking the southern half of Kursk province, they take out most of the infrastructure that feeds into Belgorad.” Maybe, but there’s a whole lot of territory to take before Belgorad gets cut off.
“This took the Ukrainians scraping up the last of their reserve units, along with some advanced units that were training with NATO for future operations. I don’t think they’ve got a very deep bench beyond this.”
Invading here has allowed Ukraine to outflank Russia’s deep system of trenches, minefields and artillery. “The Ukrainians have been able to basically locate a battlefield that plays to their strengths rather than the Russian strengths and they’re kicking some serious ass.”
“The problem is they just don’t probably have enough men to fully take advantage of it, but neither do the Russians have the men necessary to eject the Ukrainians. Russia is also nearing the end of what they can scrape up through conscription of ethnic minorities. “The cupboard is getting dry.” They’re also extremely low on capable leadership (such as it is). Putin “just assigned one of his former bodyguards to run the operation in Kursk, and you can imagine how well that’s going.”
“What we’ve seen them do in the last two weeks is basically mobilize every military force that they have left in the country, which is not a lot.”
“They haven’t been able to find the 30,000 to 70,000 troops that they need in order to retake Kursk, and with the bridges gone they can only approach from the east, so the Ukrainians are having a bit of a heyday at the moment.”
The biggest fallout of the Kursk incursion is a dog that didn’t bark. “Nukes haven’t flown. Throughout this war, the Russians have, at every stage, identified a series of red lines, saying that if you cross this line we’re going to nuke Washington and Warsaw, Berlin and Paris and London and the rest, and at every stage it’s turned out to be a bluff. Well, now the Ukrainians have crossed the international border in force. They have castrated the Russian military in the area.”
“The Russians are showing an inability or an unwillingness to go to that level, and that tells me that the conservatism in Western capitals about challenging the Russians is about to evaporate. Because if the Ukrainians can do this without that sort of counter reaction, then pretty much every Russian threat to this point is meaningless.”
Next up: The Russian Dude, an anti-Putin and anti-Ukrainian War YouTuber who fled Russia just as the first conscription orders were coming down. He thinks the Kursk invasion may be a way to force Putin into calling up a second general conscription, something he has been loath to do since the first was so unpopular.
“The initial reaction to Ukraine’s move into Kursk was mixed. Many, especially those in the Russian military establishment, dismissed it as a mere PR stunt or a psychological operation, a distraction intended to draw attention away from other fronts. But as the days progressed, it became clear that this was no mere show of force. The Ukrainian Army was committed, and their objectives were far more strategic than anyone had anticipated.”
Even “Z propagandists” in Russia are admitting that ejecting Ukraine from Kursk oblast will take time. “This was a wakeup call. The country’s military and political leaders had long been accustomed to dismissing Ukrainian operations as inconsequential. The belief was that Russia’s superior military power would always be enough to repel any significant threat. But the events unfolding in Kirsk challenged this assumption.” Even some of the most pro-war Russian milbloggers began to express doubts.
“Russian president Vladimir Putin is facing a very scary decision. For years Putin has positioned himself as a strongman, a leader who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. But the events in Kursk revealed the limits of his power. The Russian military, once his unstoppable force, was now struggling to respond to a determined and well-coordinated Ukrainian offensive.”
“Putin’s dilemma is rooted in the fact that he has few good options left. The Russian military is stretched thin, its resources depleted by years of sustaining conflict the invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to be a quick and decisive victory, has instead turned to a grinding war of attrition. And now, with the Ukrainian forces pushing into Russian territory, the weaknesses of the Russian military are becoming more apparent than ever.”
“One of the key indicators of this is the absence of a new mobilization effort, despite the heavy losses Russia has suffered. Putin has not ordered a new wave of conscription [because] another round of mobilization would likely would like destabilize his regime. The last call-up in 2022 was deeply unpopular, sparking protest and unrest across the country.”
“Many Russians who had previously been indifferent to the war suddenly found themselves directly affected and the backlash was significant. Putin knows that another mobilization would likely provoke a similar response, potentially undermining his hold on power, but without new recruits the Russian military is running out of manpower.”
“Russia’s defense industry is struggling to keep up with the demands of the war. Missiles fired at Ukrainian cities bare markings from 2023 and 2024, indicating that they were produced recently. This suggests that Russia has managed to bypass some of the sanctions imposed by the West to acquire the components needed to build these weapons. But it also means that there is no surplus. Every single missile produced is immediately sent to the battlefield. The same is true for other military equipment like tanks, drones, and ammunition.”
Everyone who could be tempted by a sign-up bonus has already joined, even though they keep increasing. “If you do announce another round of mobilization and start grabbing people from the streets and sending them to fight in Ukraine for free, well, I don’t think that’s going to sit well with these people.”
“While Russia grapples with these challenges, Ukraine’s western allies have been surprisingly quiet, in a good way.”
“This raises the question: Have they finally realized that Putin’s ability to escalate the war further is limited? The answer appears to be yes. After nearly two years of watching Russia’s military strategy unfold, it seems that western powers have concluded that Putin is already operating at his maximum capacity.”
“Now Western leaders seem more willing to allow Ukraine to use the weapons as it sees fit. The focus has shifted from preventing escalation to supporting Ukraine in its efforts to defend itself and reclaim its territory.”
“Ukraine is now receiving more advanced technology, including long-range missiles and sophisticated drones. These weapons are designed to not just defend against Russian attacks, but to strike deeper inside Russian-held territory, disrupting supply lines and targeting key military objects.”
Thus far Putin has avoided seriously conscripting soldiers from the only two areas of the country he cares about: Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ukraine’s Kursk gambit may force him into doing so, possibly triggering his downfall.
Several people have wargamed possible outcomes to the Russo-Ukrainian War, but probably few have so literally gamified it.
His argument is pretty simple: Russia has X-industrial capacity, it’s using up Y amounts of war material, broken down into rough categories of how much Z time it takes to replace said war material. As this material is used up faster than it can be replaced, a scale estimates the chances of the Russian lines collapsing due to lack of material to carry on the fight, which runs from 10% in June to 100% on December 26, 2026.
There is a certain rough and ready logic to this analysis, and Russia is using up its stockpiles of Soviet-era equipment at an unsustainable rate, especially when it comes to aircraft. But there are numerous problems with this gamified analysis:
This is an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction. The map is not the territory, and the Russo-Ukrainian War is not a game of Strategic Conquest where any city’s productive capacity can be set to any task.
It’s not a question of how much generic productive capacity, it’s how much steel, gas, titanium, precision machinery, semiconductors, etc., Russia can produce.
By assuming Europe will keep Ukraine well supplied with war material, the YouTuber (Mark Biernat, “a Ph.D. student in Poland and teach college economics in the US”) is making assumptions that may not be warranted, especially when it comes to manpower, which may be a serious constraint on Ukraine.
It also assume that Russia won’t change it’s wasteful, grinding assault tactics to conserve men and material. Maybe not a bad bet, given their continued stupidity, but not a sure thing.
The author has not covered the general state of the Russian economy here, but he seems to have gone into that in other videos. The problem is that YouTubers have correctly predicted 10,000 of the last zero Russian economic collapses, so I’m getting a little jaded on this front. Russia’s economy is clearly in trouble, but large economies can stay in trouble for quite a long time before collapsing.
I am broadly sympathetic to the author’s thesis and worldview, but this argument is too abstracted from reality for me to assign any veracity to the estimation dates for possible collapse.
Suchomimus mentions that this is long enough range to hit the large oil refinery in Omsk. Which is true, but if it can reach that far, there are a lot of logistic choke-points now in range that have the potential to put a world of hurt on Russia:
If you can hit Omsk, you can hit the Transiberian railway bridge over the Irtysh river, which Deep State marks (I’m using a launch point of Lyman in Ukraine for all these) as 2494km. As far as I can tell, that’s the only rail line in Russia that connects Moscow with Russia’s far eastern oblasts*. Russia could reroute some traffic through Kazakhstan’s rail network (which runs on the same Soviet 1,520 gauge rails), but I imagine there would be considerable pain in rerouting things that way.
You could hit the E30 highway bridge over the Ishim river near Abitskiy AKA Abatskoe (2324km). Compared to America and China, Russia has a very poor road network east of the Urals. E30 is their only decent east-west highway. You could possibly run some trucks down smaller roads, some of which may not even be paved, or, again, reroute some traffic through Kazakhstan’s highway network, depending on how the Kazakhs feel about it. At the very least, they’ll want to get paid…
There aren’t many crossing spots across the Ob river further north. Hit the rail bridge near Surgut (2582km), the one south of there across the Protoka Yuganskaya Ob (2577km), and, for good measure, the highway bridge just south of Nefteyugansk (2549km), and you’ll put northern Russian transportation in a world of hurt. (Of course, those areas are sparsely populated, and I don’t know how much material extraction done there is vital to the war effort.)
This is hardly an exhaustive list, and was only what I came up with off the top of my head and with a little Google map work. Russia east of the Urals is has extremely poor infrastructure, is crossed by rivers with few bridges (some places where you think there has to be a bridge only has a ferry), and hitting the right parts of that would require Russia to expend a lot of time, effort and logistical difficulty to repair. (Russia’s military has an number of railroad repair units, with the 48th Separate Railway Brigade in Omsk being the most relevant to this discussion, but they have to be able to get there, and get the materials to repair the damage, and bridge repair presents a whole different level of difficulty, like finding a floating crane and getting it in place.) You hit a few Transiberian choke-points and it puts a serious crimp in Russia-China trade, including most heavy military equipment China is selling.
Caveats: The map is not the territory, and bridges can be hard to take out. But 350kg of a modern explosive is not a small charge, and there are a whole slew of logistical targets to be found within 3,000km of Ukrainian territory.
*And krals. And autonomous okrugs. Russian administrative divisions are weird…
Two videos on increasing Russian logistics difficulties in the Russo-Ukrainian War. First up: A video that suggests Ukraine has switched from a territory recapture strategy to an attrition strategy.
“Russia is burning whether it’s oil terminals on the Baltic and the Black Sea, factories in far-flung Siberia, or military bases in Crimea, it seems almost every day something bursts into flames in Putin’s backyard. And Ukraine is thought to be the one behind it.” It’s an open question whether structure hits in places like Siberia are Ukrainian “werewolf” teams operating behind enemy lines, or native anti-Putin/anti-war (or even anti-Russian) partisans, but the effect seems the same: Russia now has to worry about attacks to its military, transport, energy, and manufacturing infrastructure far from the frontlines in Ukraine.
Zelensky warned Putin that if Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with indiscriminate missile attacks again, Ukraine would hit back. When it did, “Ukraine struck back a fire at the electrical substation outside Moscow, plunged three districts of the capital into darkness. Water pipes also burst, leaving people freezing in their homes. The plague of accidents soon spread to the cities of Omsk and Novosibirsk, deep in Siberia, which were left without heating as temperatures fell below -2.” Actually, Omsk and Novosibirsk aren’t “deep” in Siberia, because the place is so vast there another five time zones east of there.
“Soon after attacks began on critical infrastructure, including oil refineries upon which Putin’s economy relies. To date, three refineries have been blown up or set on fire, including two which were hit by long-range Ukrainian drones. One of those the Ust-Luga oil refinery near St. Petersburg, is almost 600 miles from Ukraine.”
“Railways and factories have also been blown up or burned down at the same time the Ukrainians have stepped up their campaign against Crimea.” Naval successes we’ve covered here already skipped.
At this point the video argues that Ukraine’s strategy was to liberate Ukrainian territory, no matter the strategic value. I don’t think that was the case.
Following the “failure” of the summer offensive (I would say “limited gains”), “Ukraine is digging in and refocusing liberation of territory is no longer the main goal hitting Russia where it hurts most.”
“Ukraine knows that victory in a long war depends on two things above all else: The will of people to keep fighting, and the ability of the country to provide weapons for them to fight with, and that’s where these drone missile and sabotage attacks come in.”
It then argues (as many others have) that Crimea is Putin’s main weakness, and that losing it will cripple his prestige and ability to stay in power and continue the war.
I think there has been a shift in Ukrainian strategy, but that shift has mainly been driven by the development and availability of longer-ranged weapons Ukraine lacked earlier in the war, combined with the effects of a long-term campaign to degrade Russia air power, naval assets and SAM systems, opening up avenues for longer range strikes. Ukraine focused on attacking Russia’s logistics systems right after the Battle of Kiev was won, but now they have the capability to hit much deeper into Russia’s logistics infrastructure.
Actually, I’m surprised there haven’t been any reported attacks on the Trans-Siberian Railway, given what a long, slender link that is. A few medium-to-long range drone teams inserted into northern Kazakhstan or Mongolia could wreck real havoc on trains, lines, bridges, etc.
Next, a video from Kanal 13 (very much a pro-Ukrainian source) suggests that the war and sanctions are cratering Russia’s military industrial complex.
“The Russian military industrial complex is being destroyed because of the war against Ukraine.”
Dimitri Fidive, CEO of the Muram Machine Building Plant, wrote in an email intercepted by the activists, that inflation and the shortcomings of Russia’s bureaucratic approach prevents plants that form the country’s military industrial complex from fulfilling government orders.”
“Plants are forced to sell their goods at prices set in 2019, but are at the same time expected to purchase details at market prices and in advance.”
“The money received from the government was not enough to cover the interest on the credit that his firm would need to take out to pay its suppliers.”
“Money is tied up until the completion of the government contracts, which normally last 3 to 5 years, meaning during this time the money is effectively frozen.”
“There is a shortage of staff at the plants due to both mass mobilization and a lack of accommodation [housing] in the area.”
Hell of a way to run a railroad. One wonders how extensive these problems are with other companies in Russia’s military industrial complex
Ukraine’s strategy has shifted more in relation to the way the war developed, and the changing availability of western weapons, than any fundamental shift in strategy. It became apparent that this was going to be a war of attrition in the first year, and the question of which would break first: The west’s willingness to send Ukraine weapons, or Russia’s economy and ability to wage it’s illegal war of territorial aggression?
Nothing about that strategy has changed, only Ukraine’s greater reach to affect the latter.
Lockheed Martin just assembled the 1,000th F-35, making it one of the most widely produced and successful modern fighters ever. Here’s a pretty good video busting various myths about the F-35.
“There are more F-35s in the world today than there are all other stealth aircraft ever built by all nations combined.”
“There are more F-35s on the deck of the USS Tripoli in this single picture than there are stealth fighters in all of Russia.” Eh, supposedly Russia has managed to finally get 20 Su-57s into service, which matches the 20 plane test deployment of the F-35Bs to the Tripoli. But it’s Russia, so several shakers of salt are in order.
“The F-35 lightning II is the seventh most widely operated fighter on the planet. This program began with nine nations involved in its development, but today its list of buyers has stretched all the way to 17.”
“In the past last few years, F-35s have accumulated some 773,000 hours in the sky spread out across 469,000 sorties.”
The F-35 had a troubled development cycle, but pilots love the finished product.
They “make older fourth generation fighters significantly more capable just by flying nearby, thanks to their incredible degree of sensor fusion and the data they can securely transmit to other aircraft flying in the vicinity.”
Myth #1: “All they do is crash.” “This is an excellent example of a combination of recency and availability biases. F-35s seem as though they crash often because there are so many of them in the sky on on any given day.”
“The truth is, the F-35 is actually the safest modern fighter ever developed. If you go back and look at the crash data of the F-35 during its first 12 years of service, as compared to the A-10, F-15, F-16 or F-22, you’ll find that the F-35 has a significantly better track record.”
“By this point in the A-10 service life, 9% of its airframes had already been lost in accidents. By this point in the F-16’s, that number was 13%. But today, the F-35’s loss rate is about 1%.”
Myth #2: “The F-35 is too expensive top operate.” “There really used to be something to this. As recently as 2016, it was reported that F-35s cost an average average of about $67,000 per hour to operate.”
The Air Force and Lockheed Martin have been driving this number down. By “2023, that operating cost had been reduced by more than 80%, down to right around $28,000 per hour. That’s only a little bit more than an F-15.”
Myth #3: “The F-35 can’t dogfight.” “First of all it probably shouldn’t. It was designed to operate like a sniper.”
“Most of the claims that say it can’t dogfight stem from a 2015 report published by War is Boring about an F-35a squaring off in a duel against a block 40 F-16d, and in that fight the F-16 definitely came out on top.” The problem is, the F-35 in that match was literally the second F-35 ever built.
“It didn’t have the vast majority of combat systems F-35s fly with today, including the helmet and electro-optical targeting system that allows F-35 pilots to target enemy aircraft without having to point the nose of the jet directly at them, as well as the F-35’s radar absorbance skin that would limit the F-16’s ability to get a radar lock on its opponent.”
“And to make matters even worse, that particular F-35 was flying with software restrictions on board that prevented the pilot from pushing the airframe too hard, limiting it to under 7g maneuvers, a restriction the F-16 obviously didn’t have.”
“The F-35 was forced to fly with both wings tied behind its back and it ended up losing against one of the most prolific dogfighters in history.”
“Most pilots say they’d still rather avoid that by taking out the enemy before they ever even know it’s there.”
Myth #4: “The U.S. has already spent more than $1.7 trillion on the F-35.” That’s only the projected cost over the entire lifetime of the program.
Myth #5: “The F-35 has abysmal readiness rates.” There’s some truth to this, as readiness rates sit at 55%. But a big reason is the F-35 repair depot infrastructure hasn’t been fully built out yet. That’s supposed to be finished in 2027. “At which point the F-35’s readiness rates are expected to jump across the force to just about comparable with the F-15 and F-16.”
It’s not all roses: The F-35 has significant delays and cost overruns for the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade. “That will provide a 37-fold increase in onboard computing power 20 times the onboard data storage, and new double redundant display processors with five times the power to give the pilots far more situational awareness than ever before.”
“And Tech Refresh 3 is really just an appetizer that will lead to the Block 4 upgrade, which will be such a massive massive increase in capability that I have long argued the Block 4 F-35 deserves its own designation.”
“This new version of the F-35 will have a newer, even more advanced onboard radar that’s rumored to use Gallium Nitride transmit and receive modules that will dethrone the F-35’s current AN/AGP-81 radar as the most advanced and powerful radar ever affixed to a fighter.”
Plus new weapons and a bump from four to six internal weapons slots.
“Air Force secretary Frank Kendall has already stated plainly that in the future Block 4 F-35s will be flying with their own AI enabled drone wingmen, just like the sixth generation fighters in development today, Meaning the F-35 really will be a bridge to the sixth generation of fighter.” As in everything related to AI, the devil is in the details.
Like other modern fighter development programs, the F-35 has had its teething problems, but there’s no nation in the world that wants to face one in combat…
A fair amount of tank news has built up in the hopper over the last month or so (some, but not all, related to the Russo-Ukraine War), so let’s do a roundup.
The U.S. Army has announced that it’s not doing an M1A2SEPv4, and instead will produced the M1E3.
The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.
The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.
The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “[I]t’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”
The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”
Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.
The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”
“We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”
Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.
Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”
General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.
The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.
The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.
The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.
The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.
The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-sight upgrade including improved target discrimination.
“I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.
For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.
The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.
Which looks to be 2030.
Nicholas Moran looks at what this might or might not mean in practical terms, with an emphasis on what it doesn’t say:
“We have about 10 years that the SEPv3 is the latest and greatest.”
“They are actually going to backfill some of the v4 modernizations to the v3.”
“‘The Abrams tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight and we need to reduce its logistical footprint.’…There’s two parts to that one sentence that have a lot of digging into.”
“The Abrams started at 55 tons…now the v3 is 72 1/2 tons. If you add the Trophy APS, that’s an additional two and a half tons on its own. Then you put the reactive armor tiles on the side. Oh! Let’s put a mine plow on the front. Now your M1 is breaking 83 tons.”
One way to shed weight is with a smaller turret, like the Abrams X.
“What it doesn’t say in here, and what they’re not saying, is just how much weight are they trying to shed. Because if you’re trying to shed five to ten tons, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to shed 20 to 30 tons, then that’s something else entirely.”
The Abrams is essentially an analog tank which has had digital systems bolted onto it. “the upgrades that we have paid for our tanks have not been integrated upgrades from basically the ground up.” We’ve bolted on integrations modules, each of which adds weight.
“You can probably shave a few tons without touching the form factor of the M1A2 one bit.”
“Rip out the guts. Rip out all the electrics, all the electronics, and replace it from something that is designed and programmed from the ground up to be completely integrated.”
Replace the M256 cannon with the XM360, “which, as far as I know, does work. You install that you’ve shaved a ton off already.”
Replace the turret hydraulics with electrics.
Swap out copper wiring for fiber optics.
“So getting it from this current 73 tons down to, oh, let’s say 65 tons, probably isn’t all that hard.”
“If you want to take off more weight, you’re gonna have to look at a more radical redesign.” Like an unmanned turret.
If you mean fuel efficiency, you can pull out the current gas turbine engine and replace it, either a more efficient turbine or something else.
“The Army has spent a lot of money paying Cummins to develop the Advanced Combat Engine. This is an opposed module, opposed piston modular engine, and it can be configured for 750 horsepower. I believe it’s just a six cylinder version to the 12 cylinder or piston version, which is a 1500 horsepower, the same as a turbine the same as modern MTU. It would make some sense that the Army is going to look very hard at this.” The AEC is a bit funky, with two pistons per cylinder working together to compress the gas. They claim it offers about 25% fuel economy and a similar reduction in waste heat.
They might also look at a hybrid power train.
You can also save logistical weight in spare parts. “If you were to rip the guts out of the tank and start from scratch, you can probably come up with a maintenance and logistics system for maintenance which is much more refined and efficient.”
“‘The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection from soldiers built from within instead of adding on.'”
“This has apparently been in the works for the better part of three years now. In 2020, the director of operational test and evaluation put out his annual report, and when it gets to the M1A2v3 section, it basically says ‘Guys, this is getting a little bit out of hand. The tank is a tad heavy.'”
“The Army understands that they’re pretty much at the limit.”
All this is being done now because Ukraine finally made them pay attention to things that had already been identified as problems but not addressed. “Something like the Ukraine conflict is a little bit of a kick in the pants, and it’s probably going to attract somebody’s attention and say ‘OK, yeah, this is what we need to do it.”
Trophy adds so much weight because you need to balance the turret. Redesigning the turret from the ground up solves that issue.
Modular open systems architecture standards: “The backbone, the central nervous system of these things, is a new version that’s compatible across vehicles.”
Chris Copson of The Tank Museum offers up an assessment of the use of tanks in Ukraine’s summer offensive (posted September 29).
“One commentator has been dubbing it ‘Schrodinger’s summer offensive.’ Is it or isn’t it, and it appears to be currently tentative at best.”
“We’re also seeing the tank struggling to assert influence in what has increasingly become a slog dominated by artillery.”
“Putin’s special military operation saw the Russian army fought to a standstill, and they’d suffered huge losses in men and material. But they’re still in possession a swathe of Ukrainian territory running through the Eastern Donbas right the way down to the coast of the Black Sea.”
“Russian forces have fallen back into a defensive posture behind layered defenses minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.”
“Ukrainian response has been probing attacks in greater or lesser strength, and they’re starting to use some of their Western supplied military equipment to attempt to break through before the Autumn rains, and the rasputitsa, the roadless time, puts an end to the campaigning season.”
“Zelensky fought for supplies of modern Western military material, and, after quite a bit of hesitancy, it’s begun to arrive.”
“So far there’s been enough, we think, to equip up to 15 Ukrainian brigades, and each of those is going to be around about 3,000 personnel and about 200 vehicles of all types.”
He covers the trickle of Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, Abrams, etc., and the capabilities of each, which we’ve already covered here.
“In the early stages of the invasion, February and March 2022, Russian tank losses have been estimated at anything from between 460 and 680 from a total inventory around about 2,700 in BTs. Both of those figures are estimates from Western or Ukrainian sources and they’re now putting the figure well over a thousand.”
“An awful lot of these losses seem to be in tanks and AFVs either stuck bellied out through poor driving, or run out of fuel. That’s just poor logistics.”
Russian tank units lack enough infantry support to protect their armored columns from Ukrainian anti-tank units.
“We’re starting to see images of Ukrainian Leopard 2s and Bradleys knocked out by mines or artillery in attempts to breach Russian layered defenses.”
Ukraine’s western tanks have much higher repairability than T-72s. “Western MBTs [are] designed so that an ammunition or propellant explosion actually vents to the outside, and this tends to maintain damaged vehicle’s integrity and make it repairable, as well as increasing the likelihood of crew survival.”
Damaged Leopard 2s are already being repaired.
“Because Russian industry is under the cosh, a shortage of chips and high-tech components, and that is because of the western embargo. The solution their general staff has come up with is to pull tanks out of storage, and this includes some very elderly models indeed. Some of the estimated 2,800 T-55s which comes into service.” Cold War designs.
“Commissioning tanks after decades in store is a huge undertaking. It’s not just a question of charge in the batteries, it’s more like a total rebuild.”
“They’re not likely to be in peak condition,” but might be OK in static defensive roles.
“There is evidence that at least one has been used as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.”
“Against tanks like Challenger, Leopard or Abrams in an open country tank engagement, it’s fairly obvious they wouldn’t make the grade.”
Keeping all the different western tanks supplied and running is going to be a huge challenge to Ukraine. “A range of different and very unfamiliar, in some cases artillery pieces, trucks, logistic vehicles. Now the range is huge. Finding trained mechanics and procuring a huge range of spares. It’s going to be a colossal headache.”
“Artillery is really of central importance to the Russian, and before that the Soviet, way of war. And it’s the primary lethality in deep and close battles. Now perhaps 70% percent of Ukrainian casualties so far are being caused by Russian artillery.”
“At present a [Russian] brigade grouping is assigned a brigade artillery group, BRAG, and that’s two battalions of self-propelled howitzers and a battalion of multi-barreled rocket launchers. Use is made of forward observers, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery location radars to identify targets.”
“At its most effective this uses the Strelets reconnaissance fire system to pair tactical intelligence and reconnaissance assets with precision strike artillery, and that gives you real-time targeting [Reckify?] uses the 2K25 Krasnapol 152mm laser guided round, which is able to inflict accurate strikes.” But it doesn’t work so well with cloud cover.
“We’ve also heard quite a lot about the Lancet range of loitering munitions for precision targeting. The Lancet-3 drone has a 40 minute flight time and it counts a 3kg warhead.” Oryx credits over 100 kills to Lancets. “These mostly have been self-propelled artillery, but also tanks.”
“With the constant presence of surveillance drones and satellite intel, it is getting just about impossible to hide anything on the modern battlefield.”
“The main take-home from the current conflict, and this might be stating the blindingly obvious, is that the battlefield is a very open place these days, and tank tactics have to evolve to take this into account.”
One thing we haven’t seen much of recently: Russian air power.
“There seems to be some progress around Robotyne, and the Challenger 2, Maurder and Stryker IFVs of the 82nd Air Landing brigade have been deployed to bolster 47th Brigade. And there seems to be some penetration of the Russian air defenses. Ukrainian offensive has broken through the first of three defensive lines, but the progress is really slow, because you’ve got minefields, dragon’s teeth and anti-tank ditches, and the Russian forces are very well dug in.”
The Uralvagonzavod factory in Omsk, in Siberia, hasn’t manufactured a new T-80 hull since 1991. And work on the T-80’s GTD-1250 turbine, at the Kaluga plant, likewise has idled in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
No, for nearly 30 years the Russian army has replenished its T-80 fleet with old, refurbished hulls and engines. Those hulls and engines obviously are beginning to run out as Russian tank losses in Ukraine exceed 2,000. For context, there were only around 3,000 active tanks in the entire Russian armed forces when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.
Uralvagonzavod produces just a few dozen new T-72B3s and T-90Ms every month: far too few to make good monthly tank losses averaging a hundred or more. That’s why, in the summer of 2022, the Kremlin began pulling out of storage hundreds of 1960s-vintage T-62s and ‘50s-vintage T-54s and T-55s.
But the T-62s and T-54/55s, as well as only slightly less ancient war-reserve T-72 Urals and T-80Bs, are a stopgap. Some get fresh optics and add-on armor; many don’t. To sustain the war effort into year three, year four or year five, the Russian armed forces need new tanks. Lots of them.
Thus it was unsurprising when, two weeks ago, Alexander Potapov, CEO of Uralvagonzavod, announced his firm would resume producing 46-ton, three-person T-80s “from scratch.”
It’s a huge undertaking. While the Omsk factory still has the main T-80 tooling lying around somewhere, it must also reactive hundreds of suppliers in order to produce the tens of thousands of components it takes to assemble a T-80. That includes the gas-turbine engine.
During the T-80’s initial production run between 1975 and 2001, Kaluga built thousands of 1,000-horsepower GTD-1000 and 1,250-horsepower GTD-1250s for the type. A thousand or more horses is a lot of power for a 46-ton tank: a Ukrainian-made T-64BV weighs 42 tons but has a comparatively anemic 850-horsepower diesel engine.
The T-80’s excess power explains its high speed—44 miles per hour—and commensurately high fuel consumption, which limits its range to no more than 300 miles. Why then would Kaluga bother with a new 1,500-horsepower turbine?
As long as certain Russian forces—airborne and marine regiments, for example—value speed over fuel-efficiency, it makes sense they’d want even more power for their new-build T-80s. A 1,500-horsepower engine also would give a next-generation T-80 lots of growth potential. Uralvagonzavod could pile on tons of additional armor without weighing down the tank.
A few quick thoughts:
This hardly expresses confidence in the future of the T-14 Armata, does it now? (Speaking of which, they withdraw it from service in Ukraine, evidently without engaging any enemy tanks in anything but an indirect fire role (assuming they weren’t lying about that as well.))
If they’re struggling to produce just a few new T-72B3s and T-90Ms, why would producing T80s be any easier?
Russia announces a whole lot of things that never come to pass. In many ways its their default mode when announcing MilTech Wunderaffen.
Restarting a production line that’s been idle 30 years isn’t just difficult, it’s damn near impossible. At lot of the people who had the knowledge of how to actually build the things have probably died, and Soviet-era schematics are not an adequate substitute.
I’m pretty sure they have the capabilities to build the heavy equipment parts. The modern electronics? Not so much.
Like a lot of Russian announcements since the beginning of Vlad’s Big Adventure, this is probably a bluff to overall the gullible. I’m sure the Russians intend to restart production of T-80s, but I wouldn’t count on doing it very soon, or producing terribly many.
Many observers have been shocked at the furious rate of ordinance expenditure seen in Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine. Much attention has been focused on smart munitions like Stingers and HIMARS, but plain old dumb artillery shells are also being used up at a furious rate.
“Recently, the COO of Lockheed Martin said that Ukraine consumes a year’s worth of production for some munitions in just one month.”
“In March 2023, the Ukrainian minister of Defence Oleksiy Reznikov said that Ukraine uses on average 110,000 units of 155mm caliber shells per month. But he stressed that Ukraine can fire 594,000 shells per month, if the ammunition was available.”
“This discrepancy between what is actually fired and what could be fired means that over 300 western artillery systems that Ukraine has are sitting unused 80% of the time. That’s why Ukraine wants 250,000 artillery shells per month from the European Union alone.”
“According to the Ukrainians, in order to achieve their battlefield objectives, they need at least 60% of the full ammunition set, or 356,000 shells per month. If the EU were to provide 250,000 shells, the other 106,000 would have to be supplied by other western partners, primarily the United States.”
“But there’s a problem. The United States is currently producing only 24,000 155mm artillery shells which is up from 16,000 shells produced in February 2022, prior to the Russian invasion.”
America isn’t into grinding artillery duels, we’re into speed, precision munitions and air superiority.
“The unguided shells have been the cornerstone of the 18-month old conflict, since each day, thousands of shells are fired from both sides.”
“Since the Russian invasion began, the Pentagon has invested billions of dollars to produce record levels of artillery shells, not seen since the Korean War in the early 1950s. By 2024, the United States wants to produce 80,000 shells per month. That would be a 500% increase from prior to the invasion.”
Part of the solution to that problem is coming from Mesquite, Texas. (For those outside Texas, Mesquite is part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, and is east of Dallas and south of Garland.)
Earlier this year, the Mesquite City Council approved the construction of a manufacturing facility for military manufacturer General Dynamics and Tactical Systems.
The 240,011-square-foot building is expected to employ 50 salaried and 75 to 100 hourly employees after the city approved the new $60 million industrial campus in 2021.
“This unique opportunity is a direct result of our strong partnership with the U.S. Army and a very responsive and collaborative Mesquite, Texas, community,” said Steven Black, vice president and general manager at General Dynamics. “We are very excited to grow our company in this region.”
Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley echoed similar sentiments, saying he is “excited” to have Mesquite become a “robust commercial center” so that residents “no longer have to leave” the city to work.
“Once the installation is complete, the manufacturing facility will effectively produce 20,000 units per month for the Department of Defense, which will contribute to the inherently necessary defense capabilities of the United States and our allies abroad,” General Dynamics said in a letter to the city.
According to The New York Times, those “20,000 units” refer to 155-millimeter artillery shells for howitzers. The U.S. government is planning to increase its production of 155-millimeter shells from 15,000 to 90,000 per month to keep up with the need in Ukraine.
“We don’t want to say we’re profiting off of a conflict like that — we’re not feeling any of the effects of war,” Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley told the Times regarding the war in Ukraine. “But at the same time, it’s a global scale of the economy, and that generates a need.”
My guess is that the shells manufactured in Mesquite will be used to backfill U.S. shell stock sent to Ukraine.
It’s not complete solution to Ukraine’s shell problem, but it’s a start. But Ukraine is going to need a lot more help than that to supercharge its current grinding counteroffensive.
Ukraine is stepping up it’s naval drone game, as they just hit a Russian tanker.
A Ukrainian sea drone full of explosives struck a Russian fuel tanker overnight near a bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea, the second such attack in 24 hours, both sides said on Saturday.
No one was hurt, but the Crimean Bridge and ferry transport were suspended for several hours, according to Russian-installed officials in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
A Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters that the drone with 450 kg of explosives hit the SIG vessel as it transported fuel for the Russian military in Ukrainian territorial waters.
“The tanker was well loaded with fuel, so the ‘fireworks’ were seen from afar,” the source said, of the joint operation by Ukraine’s navy and security service.
Kyiv says destroying Russia’s military infrastructure inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine is crucial to its counteroffensive after the February 2022 invasion.
Another sea drone attack on Russia’s navy base at Novorossiysk damaged a warship on Friday, the first time the Ukrainian navy had projected its power so far from its shores.
Suchomimus has two separate videos up about the attack, the second of which includes footage of the strike itself:
To me one of the interesting things in that video is not about the attack itself, but the sat pic 25 seconds in that shows over a dozen ships anchored some 20km south of the Kerch Strait Bridge. I don’t know why they’re doing that (Escorting them one at a time through the strait? Port capacity?), but an anchorage area like that offers a target-rich environment now that we know Ukraine has the capability to hit it.
That video shows a guided rather than pre-programmed drone, as it corrects course to hit the tanker.
In the second video, Suchomimus also covers the various Black Sea naval assets Russia might have to employ to defend against naval drone attacks. The choices are limited, and some of the ships they have available seem unsuited to the task. And a few that are suitable will have to be taken off duty firing Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
The Kerch Bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea has been hit again.
Two people have died after an “attack” on the bridge linking the occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia.
Moscow has blamed Ukraine for the incident, alleging US and UK involvement, but Kyiv has not officially said it was responsible.
The Kerch bridge was opened in 2018 and enables road and rail travel between Russia and Crimea – Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow’s forces since 2014.
Russia’s transport ministry said the bridge’s supports were not damaged.
The ministry said investigations were continuing, but unconfirmed reports said explosions were heard early on Monday.
It is the second major incident on the Kerch bridge in the past year. In October 2022, the bridge – which is an important supply route – was partially closed following a major explosion. It was fully reopened in February.
Suchomimus has a video showing the damage. One of the road spans has been dropped by the attack, but not completely. It took several months to repair the road span damage from the last attack.
He says that a sea drone appears to be responsible.
With Russia’s supply lines in Zaporizhzhia under increasing pressure due to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there, even partially disabling the bridge is going to put more pressure on Russia’s logistics network to keep their troops supplied, not to mention encouraging even more Russians to get out of Crimea while the getting is good.
