Russian tanks how many?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Has any English speaker dig through lostarmor.info and sort out if there is anything valuable there and post it?
 
This is from April so Oryx may have improved his methods since then. Shouldn't be many pics taken by Russians as their forces (supposedly) have quite tight rules about troops carrying or using mobile phones.

Oryx's source is social media - people send them pictures. Their audience is very pro-Ukrainian and adheres to the "blackout policy." As near as I can tell, their method is: (1) reverse image search; (2) vehicle ID plus context clues; and (3) attribution from source.

This source of intel means that there is a baked-in "psyop bias" due to the blackout. That audience will do everything they can to maximize Russian loss claims, including self-claims. Also, most civilians cannot distinguish military equipment let alone tell which side it's on.

Which directly ties into their methods. As my data shows, Oryx is more reliable as a source when dealing with vehicles only used by Russia, where they can make a determination on vehicle ID alone without using psyop-tainted source attribution.

When dealing with distinctively Russian-only vehicles (such as the T-72B3-2016, BMP-3, and T-80U), Oryx is probably only making a 25-30% overclaim. When dealing with old Soviet vehicles also used by Ukraine, Oryx is quite unreliable and a 50% overclaim is probably the floor.

Also, Oryx's capture claims are generally dubious. In my opinion, most of their capture claims are "intact knock-outs" and could not be easily put back into Ukrainian service. This can be checked - there's only a handful of videos of such.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
They only lost 5,937 KIAs, however another 20,000 fell out of a hospital window.

I don't think the numbers posted by either side should be taken seriously, but one other thing to note is that the Russians will inevitably only quote losses of military personnel - this will likely exclude the D/LPR militias, Wagner, Ministry of the Interior, and National Guard. They are not unique in this regard; the US lost more PMC personnel in Iraq than army IIRC, allowing the casualty figures to be presented as much lower for military personnel.

Has Russia ever listed any figures for vehicles losses? Have they ever given their estimate of Ukrainian vehicles losses? The ZSU posts a long list of Russia vehicles claimed as destroyed.
 
Forest Green said:
Oryx have a backlog too though, that should be noted. Not every destroyed Russian tank has been photographed.

Captured tanks may be knock-outs but still have value as regards spares.

But as regards propaganda and psyops, here is an interesting point with respect to claims:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572492000422948865
View: https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1572492000422948865
Click to expand...
At various times high ranking Ukrainians have said KIA are at 100-200 a day. That would imply KIA on the order of 20-35k. If a ratio of 1:4 KIA vs wounded is used that works out to 100k or so casualties.

Of course the same should be applied to Russian KIA of ~6k, implying 24k casualties - obviously excluding DPR/LPR and Wagner.
 
sienar said:
At various times high ranking Ukrainians have said KIA are at 100-200 a day. That would imply KIA on the order of 20-35k. If a ratio of 1:4 KIA vs wounded is used that works out to 100k or so casualties.

Of course the same should be applied to Russian KIA of ~6k, implying 24k casualties - obviously excluding DPR/LPR and Wagner.
Click to expand...
The 100-200 a day likely applies to both sides. Sometimes the stated KIAs can exceed 400 in a 24 hour period. There is no reason to assume such a large disparity between Russian and Ukrainian losses, the battle has been broadly level since early April, with a slight advantage to Russia and since the start of September it has turned the other way. The Russian KIA figure of 6k is a joke, I pity anyone who would believe that.

It's also possible that Russia counts DPR and LPR losses as 'Ukrainian losses', which is kind of true but extremely misleading.
 
Forest Green said:
Oryx have a backlog too though, that should be noted. Not every destroyed Russian tank has been photographed.

Captured tanks may be knock-outs but still have value as regards spares.

But as regards propaganda and psyops, here is an interesting point with respect to claims:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572492000422948865
View: https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1572492000422948865
Click to expand...

I think the claim here is 6000 Russian regulars have been killed. The rest are DPR, LPR and of course Wagner.
 
Forest Green said:
sienar said:
At various times high ranking Ukrainians have said KIA are at 100-200 a day. That would imply KIA on the order of 20-35k. If a ratio of 1:4 KIA vs wounded is used that works out to 100k or so casualties.

Of course the same should be applied to Russian KIA of ~6k, implying 24k casualties - obviously excluding DPR/LPR and Wagner.
Click to expand...
The 100-200 a day likely applies to both sides. Sometimes the stated KIAs can exceed 400 in a 24 hour period. There is no reason to assume such a large disparity between Russian and Ukrainian losses...
Click to expand...

No. Russia still enjoys a large advantage in long range artillery. The 200+ Ukrainians KIA per day are mainly dying under artillery.

Whether Ukrainian counter-battery efforts have been improved substantially by "Excalibur" and HIMARS is, I think, an open question.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Cjc
Forest Green said:
sienar said:
At various times high ranking Ukrainians have said KIA are at 100-200 a day. That would imply KIA on the order of 20-35k. If a ratio of 1:4 KIA vs wounded is used that works out to 100k or so casualties.

Of course the same should be applied to Russian KIA of ~6k, implying 24k casualties - obviously excluding DPR/LPR and Wagner.
Click to expand...
The 100-200 a day likely applies to both sides. Sometimes the stated KIAs can exceed 400 in a 24 hour period. There is no reason to assume such a large disparity between Russian and Ukrainian losses, the battle has been broadly level since early April, with a slight advantage to Russia and since the start of September it has turned the other way. The Russian KIA figure of 6k is a joke, I pity anyone who would believe that.

It's also possible that Russia counts DPR and LPR losses as 'Ukrainian losses', which is kind of true but extremely misleading.
Click to expand...
I don't think we know enough about casualty counts or what mechanism causes them on either side to really have any idea. I often wonder if even the Russian and Ukrainians have a clear idea of the their casualties.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cjc
jeffb said:
I think the claim here is 6000 Russian regulars have been killed. The rest are DPR, LPR and of course Wagner.
Click to expand...
Is that before or after 24/02/2022?

jeffb said:
No. Russia still enjoys a large advantage in long range artillery. The 200+ Ukrainians KIA per day are mainly dying under artillery.

Whether Ukrainian counter-battery efforts have been improved substantially by "Excalibur" and HIMARS is, I think, an open question.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say it has a range advantage unless you are counting SRBMs as artillery. It has a numerical advantage but Ukraine has a precision and intelligence advantage. The balance is reflected best by the position of the frontline. The tipping point was August. It's not just a matter of the Kharkiv oblast, there are three significant pockets in Kherson and another north of Lyman and two territorial gains in the Zaporizhzhia to Donetsk region.

liveuamap.com

Ukraine Interactive map - Ukraine Latest news on live map - liveuamap.com

Live Universal Awareness Map Liveuamap is a leading independent global news and information site dedicated to factual reporting of a variety of important topics including conflicts, human rights issues, protests, terrorism, weapons deployment, health matters, natural disasters, and weather...
liveuamap.com liveuamap.com
 
Last edited:
The fog of war is thick, and claims vary wildly from one side to the other. Oryx's data may be imperfect, but I think we can be certain that every photo of a wreck represents a destroyed vehicle, and although it may be unproven whose they were before destruction, and whether they have been seen before, this kind of data is the best we have.

As for the various claims of casualties, I believe none of them. Only time will tell when all this is over, and the families count the empty chairs at their dinner tables.
 
jeffb said:
Yah, serving US officer went through Oryx's first 3 or 4 months of claims and dismissed nearly half of them. Take them with a very large pinch of salt.
Click to expand...

jeffb said:
This is from April so Oryx may have improved his methods since then. Shouldn't be many pics taken by Russians as their forces (supposedly) have quite tight rules about troops carrying or using mobile phones.

Oryx's source is social media - people send them pictures. Their audience is very pro-Ukrainian and adheres to the "blackout policy." As near as I can tell, their method is: (1) reverse image search; (2) vehicle ID plus context clues; and (3) attribution from source.

This source of intel means that there is a baked-in "psyop bias" due to the blackout. That audience will do everything they can to maximize Russian loss claims, including self-claims. Also, most civilians cannot distinguish military equipment let alone tell which side it's on.

Which directly ties into their methods. As my data shows, Oryx is more reliable as a source when dealing with vehicles only used by Russia, where they can make a determination on vehicle ID alone without using psyop-tainted source attribution.

When dealing with distinctively Russian-only vehicles (such as the T-72B3-2016, BMP-3, and T-80U), Oryx is probably only making a 25-30% overclaim. When dealing with old Soviet vehicles also used by Ukraine, Oryx is quite unreliable and a 50% overclaim is probably the floor.

Also, Oryx's capture claims are generally dubious. In my opinion, most of their capture claims are "intact knock-outs" and could not be easily put back into Ukrainian service. This can be checked - there's only a handful of videos of such.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I know exactly who you’re referring to and quoting here, a discharged Army O-2 who goes by the Twitter handle Armchair Warlord, and let’s just say that his grasp on reality is tenuous at best, especially with his metal gymnastics of the collapse of Russian lines in Kharkiv in the past few weeks. His absurd takes have resulted in him making his tweets private.

I certainly don’t consider tallies by the Oryx site to be flawless, but they provide a fairly decent “order of magnitude” estimate. The individuals who maintain them have their personal biases, as we all do, but they are generally pretty thorough and at times have audited and corrected their own work and removed duplicates.
 
Last edited:
icyplanetnhc (Steve) said:
let’s just say that his grasp on reality is tenuous at best, especially with his metal gymnastics of the collapse of Russian lines in Kharkiv in the past few weeks. His absurd takes have resulted in him making his tweets private.
Click to expand...

An avalanche of personal abuse is what's caused him to take his tweets private (well before the current Kharkiv counter offensive started) because a lot of people simply can't (or won't) view the subject dispassionately and lash out in much the same way you've done above. There is a tidal wave of pro-Ukraine and pro-NATO propaganda out there right now which tends to be pretty damn nasty and very personal.

There wasn't anything particularly controversial about anything he was saying, even the current counter offensive, it just wasn't supportive of Ukraine's position or chances. Oryx's count was a simple matter of looking at the pictures provided by Oryx's "sources" and pointing out that many of them simply weren't what they claimed to be or lacked evidence that they were what they claimed to be. It's just simple obvious stuff that's perfectly reasonable if you aren't looking through the "Slava Ukrainia" filter. Oryx was getting sent pictures of tanks claimed as captures with no indications that they were captured at all and just adding them to the count. It was largely "trust me bro" bullshit.

Maybe start by saying more honestly that you don't like what he writes because he, among others, keep pointing out that militarily, Ukraine is pretty much toast at this point. That despite a large numerical and ISR superiority over the Russians, Ukraine has lost ~20% of their country, 80% of the income generating regions of their country and a large proportion of the 200,000 strong NATO trained army they've been building up since 2015. And now there's a very real chance they've lost them permanently.

Quite frankly, they'd have collapsed weeks if not months ago if not for the massive support from the US and NATO.

Ukrainian sources have claimed that the current Kharkiv counter-offensive has cost them 10,000 men so far plus an unknown amount of equipment. Figures of more than 6,000 (iirc) for the series of disastrous "counter offensives" in the Kherson region. The Russians haven't lost anywhere near that many attempting to defend those areas.

Recent reports I've seen claim that the current Kharkiv counter-offensive is made up of two-thirds foreign fighters and one third Ukrainian conscripts, that's how well Ukraine is doing.
 
In case anyone has missed it. Covert Cabal has done another excellent video on Russian tank strength using new satellite imagery, specifically concentrating on how many tanks have been removed from storage...

He also proves that figures from Think Tanks that have been wrong for years on Russian tank strength are now updating their figures based on his research....because they copied a mistake he made, that he now corrects...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNNoaRp5lz0
 

And this is why we don't discuss the war because it inevitably descends into this sort of horseshit.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom