The Reason Russia's Logistical and Ammunition Problems Are Worsening

There are three basic problems facing the Russian army's logistics and resupply: they are burning out gun barrels at an irreplaceable rate due to inventory shortfalls, sanctions and inability to manufacture with appropriate steel; their ammunition is old, was never well made and has a tendency to blow up after being stored without climate control. 

Plus, much of their inventory is now in the hands of independent countries that left the Soviet Union. Finally, the Russian army is dependent on rail links for resupply, especially of fuel and ammunition - and Ukraine has cut those links from Crimea to the front line, meaning hundreds of miles must be traversed from Russia. JL

Trent Telenko reports in Twitter: 

The biggest issue is Russian artillery barrel life and lack of ability to replace them. Russians shooting 45,000 shells in a day means 22 and a half new guns are burned out at 2,000 a barrel. “The barrels wear out quickly, faster than the factory parameters, because either the steel is worthless, or they are made with a violation of technology." Due to states now gone from the 1989 Eastern bloc, about half of USSR Artillery ammunition storage capacity is missing from the current Russian borders. Plus Soviet manufactured ammunition blows up. (And) the Russian army lives by rail logistics. The 42nd Combined Army on the west bank of the Dnieper is cut off from rail.

This thread is about how much artillery ammunition the Russian Army has left over from the Cold War and what shape it is in. Lets start with what is know open source and the perils of Russian daily shell counts. The Covert Cabal channel did an estimate of 10K shells a day and quoted a RUSI document saying 7,176 shells a day. Individual day shellfire rates vary a lot, & in early June, Ukraine was on the wrong end of a 45K to 1K or 2K shell ratio in Donbas per General Zaluzhny (Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - UNIAN).

 

And the ability of the NASA FIRMS sensor to accurately track shellfire was handicapped in Ukraine both by natural wildfires it is designed to track in the summer & Pres. Zelensky ordering flooding north of Kyiv during the Rasputitsa. Fuzes fail in muck. The biggest issues were Russian artillery barrel life and a general lack of ability to replace barrels liners compared to 1991. Just like most nations lack enough tires & artillery shells (Russia excepted) before a war.Every nation lacks enough facilities to rebore artillery barrels at anything approaching their wearing out rate. The newest M777A2 155mm gun lasts 4,000 effective full charges. Older M777 and newer Russian guns last 2,000 rounds. According to Perun, older Soviet guns vary from 1000 to 1,500 EFC for their lifetime. And no one knows how many EFC Russian frontline or "reserve" barrels had through them before the latest Russian invasion kicked off.The Russians shooting 45,000 shells in a day means 22 and a half new guns are burned out at 2,000 EFC a barrel. Suppose instead the average EFC rate left on available Russian barrels was 1,000. That means 45 barrels are shot out.Nadin Brzezinski's article in medium-dot- com says the following on that score: "“The barrels wear out quickly, faster than the factory parameters, because either the steel is worthless, or they are made with a violation of technology.
There is almost nothing to replace them now, because there are few new trunks. Near Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, at some point, one of the three guns worked for us. And it looks like it will get worse in the future,” says the Russian artilleryman."This Russian artilleryman concern over sub-production standard barrels may explain some of the visuals we are seeing of exploded Russian guns in Ukraine.

 

The Russians shooting 45,000 shells in a day means 22 and a half new guns are burned out at 2,000 EFC a barrel. Suppose instead the average EFC rate left on available Russian barrels was 1,000. That means 45 barrels are shot out...in a day. One of the Cold War 'gray beards' I correspond with mentioned that a lot of the cited Russian 'strategic reserve' of military kit is mythological as they burned out barrel liners on tens of thousands of tank guns and artillery pieces during the Chechen wars and ended up with massive yards full of derelict armour and guns needing deep overhauls. Gun barrels were only part of this, there were lots of burned out engines, transmissions and wrecked suspensions. So, what has all of this to do with Russian artillery ammunition storage? In a word, context. It turns out there are online open resources that give the world snapshots of the Soviet Union June 1989 & Russian 2013 ammunition storage and how badly degraded they are.This document gives a total artillery ammunition storage of 6 million metric tons of packaged ammunition allocated as follows: 3 million tons to the Western Theater, 1 million tons to the Southern Theater and 2 million to the Far Eastern Theater.The Western TMO Post-1989 territory missing from USSR vs current Russian storage capacity list (3 Million MT) Warsaw Pact nations Albania Bulgaria Czechoslovakia East Germany Hungary Poland Romania Ex-USSR Moldova Estonia Latvia Lithuania Ukraine 

Armenia Georgia Azerbaijan 

Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Uzbekistan Turkmenistan

 

Just eyeballing the lists of states & independent territories missing from the 1989 Eastern bloc, about 3 million tons of USSR Artillery ammunition storage capacity is missing from the current Russian borders. That is still a huge capacity and is twice what the USA had in 1990 per General Gus Pagonis's memoir that was called "Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War" He mentioned 1.6 million short tons of artillery ammo, of which he moved 600K tons toSaudi Arabia & returned 400k tons back.n the early 2010's the world was having a huge problem with Cold War surplus Soviet manufactured ammunition. It was blowing up...everywhere.So in March 2013 Nikolay Parshin, the Head of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Defence Ministry, announced a program to build 500 climate controlled concretebunkers to store 3.6 million tons of Russian ammunition, with 2.16 million tons to be disposed in 2013. None of this happened. All the money and materials were stolen and depot kept exploding. The American Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) established hazard criteria for Soviet and other ammunition world wide.

 

Plus The Russian Army lives & dies by railway logistics. The 42nd Combined Army Army on the Westbank of the Dnieper is cut off from rail delivered fuel & ammunition. This is a Ukrainian Army delivered Stalingrad in the making with the 42nd CAA in the role of the Nazi 6th Army.