Of Russia's nearly 13,000 active combat tanks, only a fraction are main battle tanks. A 2021 Russian source estimated that their operational main battle fleet was closer to 2,600 tanks, made up of T-72s, T-80s, and T-90s, with another 400 T-72 variants used as range tanks.
There are maintenance activities that are needed each year to keep tanks from deteriorating. In seven months, 785 good tanks were removed from storage and another 700 were removed before the war. In March 2023, there are 3911 good tanks available in Russian storage. Russia has about two years of tanks left.
Russia's army is estimated to have lost nearly 40% of its prewar fleet of tanks after nine months of fighting in Ukraine, according to a count by the specialist thinktank the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).
According to the latest findings, approximately 1,239 tanks have been destroyed, 106 tanks damaged, 113 abandoned, and 544 captured by the Ukrainian troops in combat. Many images of severed turrets and burned-out wrecks of Russian tanks have made headlines, eroding the Russian Army's image of invincibility.
As far back as last May, the Russian army was said to have as few as 100 T-90M tanks. That said, the latest batch of an unspecified number of T-90 tanks was delivered to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) by the state-owned Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) in December 2022.
Thus by the beginning of 2022, when the Russian Army fielded approximately 2900 tanks, approximately 2000 of the were T-72s - of which around 1400 were of the recently modernised T-72B3 and B3M variants. Of an estimated 10,000 tanks in storage, around 7000 of these were also T-72s, for a total of around 9000 tanks.
Basic T-72s cost about $500,000, the new T-90Ms reportedly costs around $4.5 million.
Military analysts and armchair generals watching the conflict generally agreed in February 2022 that Russia had about 3,300 main battle tanks of late Cold War or early 2000s vintage assigned to combat units, and somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 in storage.
Russia Loses 2 Tanks, 18 Armored Vehicles and 690 Troops in a Day: Kyiv.
Moscow has to rely on lower-quality tanks from storage, says think tank. LONDON—Russia has likely lost more than 2,000 tanks in its war in Ukraine, more than half of its operational tank fleet, according to estimates released Wednesday from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
With Ukraine's armed forces claiming to have destroyed more than 3,600 Russian tanks since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, Netkachev stressed the sheer quantity of old Soviet tanks in Russian storage — as many as 10,000, he claimed — as a potential battlefield advantage.
Russia is seeking to increase the size of its military by 137,000 to 1.15 million. U.S. officials have said that Russia has lost between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in its misguided war on Ukraine.
According to the report, Australia Army has a total of 59 combat tanks and 2040 armoured fighting vehicles.
In terms of active-duty personnel, they are the world's fifth-largest military force, with 1.15 million and at least two million reserve personnel.
Russia, on the other hand, has roughly 370 MiG-29, -31 and -35 fighters as well as 350 Su-27, -30 and -35 fighters, according to Flight International's almanac.
There are roughly 200 tanks in service for each tank type, making a total of 800, plus roughly 1500 Leopard 2's and roughly 2500 M1 Abrams, the majority of which are M1A2's and the rest M1A1's.
HOW MUCH DOES AN M1 ABRAMS TANK COST? The Abrams tanks are made by General Dynamics and each one costs over $10 million when including training and upkeep, according to Reuters.
In 2023, it was estimated that North Korea had approximately 6.6 thousand military tanks, followed by China with an estimated strength of around five thousand military tanks.
According to Forbes, Ukrainians had around 105 MiG-29s, Su-24s and Su-25s before the Russians attacked — and, a year later, still have around 105 of these types. It is estimated Ukraine still has up to 50 Su-27s.
According to the report, Russia has also lost 3,802 tanks, 7,469 armored fighting vehicles, 6,219 vehicles and fuel tanks, 3,445 artillery systems, 575 multiple launch rocket systems, 332 air defense systems, 313 airplanes, 298 helicopters, 3,092 drones, and 18 boats.
It's the M1A2 Abrams, named for Vietnam-era General Creighton Abrams.
Even in export versions, the Abrams M1A2 SEP v. 2 variant significantly outperforms any Russian production tank (the newest is the T-90M, the Armata has not yet gone into a large series),” Pukhov was quoted as saying by the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.