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19 May 2022

How Many Vehicles Did Russia Have Initially?

A Washington Post article lays out the number of military vehicles and logistic supply vehicles that a typical Russian military unit of 700-900 soldiers called a battalion tactical group would have, which I have extrapolated to a 150,000 soldier force with 800 soldiers per unit (188 units) and the mid-range of any variable number of vehicles of a particular type.

My intent to provide a rough baseline of what kind of military equipment the Russian invasion force had in the first place from which to compare its losses. 

With these assumptions it suggests that there were 22,654 vehicles in the entire original Russian invasion force, broken down roughly as follows (with a comparison to my previous post for losses per Oryx except as noted, which is a minimum since it includes only photographically documented and expert reviewed losses):

* 1,880 tanks (664 lost; 1,200 lost per Ukraine)
* 3,008 artillery vehicles  (110 lost)
* 7,520 armored infantry fighting vehicles (705 lost)
* 1,128 armored personnel carriers (110 lost) 
* 9,118 other vehicles (948 lost).

The breakdown of the 9,118 other vehicles is:

* 1,880 air defense vehicles
* 376 electronic signal jammers
* 940 vehicles with drones
* 376 recovery vehicles (i.e. military grade tow trucks for tanks, etc.)
* 658 medical trucks
* 564 food trucks
* 376 mobile kitchen trucks
* 940 water trucks
* 2,068 fuel trucks
* 940 trucks with engineers and their supplies (such as bridging and mine removal equipment). 

Thus, about 1/3rd to 2/3rd of the tanks, 4% of the artillery vehicles, and about 10% of the remaining vehicles have been documented as lost.

The lower percentages for artillery vehicles may reflect their distance from Ukrainian forces in the battle, resulting in fewer being destroyed and those that are destroyed being harder to document. The lower percentage of non-tanks may reflect less interest in documenting those less notable achievements than destroying tanks, or may reflect a priority that has been placed on destroying the most powerful opposing force weapons systems first. 

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