I saw an article over at the hedge today concerning Russian ammo depletion in the Ukraine. Now I do know from some of the very few US military contacts that I still have that US munitions have been getting noticeably slim according to some current serving reports since last Summer, or so I read second hand accounts that claimed to be from those current serving type sources anyway. So ya second hand but it doesn't effect my question.
The original article claimed the Russians are using 40 year old ammo and there remained large amounts of duds littering the ground all around The Ukraine battlefields. Not to mention many instances of no fire rounds too.
Now I admit my experience with such matters is kinda dated. In fact I am pretty sure the 109 pictured above is not only a couple A-designations beyond anything I ever crewed on or around but I am also pretty sure it never had a 548 following behind it ever.
Still I am pretty sure I can vividly remember pulling out powder canisters that were at least 25 years old and tagged as such with the metal wire tags in the 1980's. Not so sure about the actual dates on the 155 rounds mind you as I am not even sure where the dates are marked on those things as they were heavy enough I never turned one over in my hands and looked but there were plenty of very old PD and VT fuses too.
I do however remember like it was yesterday humping starlight rounds at fort Sill one night in the early to mid 80's that came with cardboard sleeves that were clearly marked in red that had a date of 1959. I remember because I had to use my little top secret white pin light to actually read the cardboard sleeve after we had pulled the tail on a slew of them and I couldn't read the writing with the red filter on. Some of them were duds, either the round or the fuse or the little chutes on em did not open after the shell burst.
I also know some of the old guys would claim they had been pulling the tails on the little brass 105 shells armed with WWII powder bags inside well into the 70's. It also seems to me that as long as the powder at least was kept in the vacuum storage cylinders it should pretty much keep forever.
Of course I know nothing about the other type of ammo and it's storage but I am pretty sure the Russian armor can't be much more than 25 years for the T-90M's I would think. As far as missiles and such or MLRS type ammo I haven't a clue.
My last question, which I don't imagine anyone can really answer is would replacing out old ammo really be more cost beneficial if the expense had to actually be paid for up front?
My gut tells me it wouldn't or we probably wouldn't see so many old T64's running around either.
My guess is we won't really know until there is more data on the matter and less bias to go with it.
Here is the original article if you are interested - Russia reaching out as it burns through 40 year old ammo
Keep resisting everyone!!!
Reports of old Russian artillery "exploding" in the tube. No way to tell if it was propellant, projectile, or fuse or some thing else like a corroded bore. The Russians are shooting a lot, it is hard to identify "occasional" events.
ReplyDeleteYour memory is correct.
ReplyDeleteWe were shooting 155mm and 105mm rounds in the '80s that had been canned since the '50s and '60s, and it worked just fine. Another 10 years, stored properly, would have been no problem either.
The problems with Russian ammo are two-fold:
Problem #1
There's no such thing as quality control, especially when reporting failure shoots the whistle-blower in the foot, so pencil-whipping reports is endemic there. Everyone lies, no one rocks the boat.
So the stuff is crap from the get-go, with spotty quality, and no one finds out until they try to use it. Like this year.
Problem #2
Even if they made a good batch 10-20-30-40 years ago, storage from then until now is also problematic. When half your army is drunk, and the other half is selling everything that isn't nailed down (and also prying up everything that is) to get more money to buy food, or more vodka, proper storage is largely mythical as well.
Not sealed right, not stored right, not climate controlled, not humidity controlled, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
Combine the two, and problems are built in at every phase.
If, every time you hear "Russian Army", you think "People's Turd World Militia Of Trashcanistan or Sh*tholia", you'll be on the right track.
What's notable is the dwindling of Russian artillery fire. In June and July, everyone was running around like headless chickens, going on about how Ukraine was being outshot 10:1 by Russia.
The problem then was, the Ukes were getting one-shot and two-shot hits on Russian armor, APCs, and artillery pieces, using drones for real-time arty spotting and corrections. The Russians were spraying and praying, and hitting minute-of-city, to little effect besides turning rubles into noise and shrapnel.
But for months now, nobody is telling us how Russia is outshooting Ukraine, because counter-battery, or any artillery at all, is notable by its absence. All they've got left are surface-to-surface and cruise missiles, and it's gotten so bad, they've taken nuclear-capable cruise missiles, pulled off the nukes, and replaced them with concrete dummy warheads, and shot the missiles as pure impact weapons.
They can't replace those, because they can't get parts to build more.
They're not out of ammunition, but every day they shoot less, and use up more, none of which they can replace.
QED
Time will tell Aesop, time will tell. BTW if my history reminds me during WW2 when ammo was ah, FRESHLY made duds were also common enough.
ReplyDeleteUkraine "we're WINNING" send MORE AMMO, Weapons, Troops from Poland and MOAR MONEY to pay for all my countries bills.
PS It' still 10% for the Big guy plus others.
Maybe the many dud bombs *still* being dug up in Europe might ring a bell?
and sometimes they still go BANG.
DeleteThe reality is you see more Russian ammo dumped is twofold. First they're firing 10 times per day than Ukraine does. Hence by any measure you'll have a greater number of failures and mechanical failures of the artillery guns too.
ReplyDeleteSecondly they have so much ammo from logistical support coming in they're not bothering to collect stuff they've stacked. Which is dumb but people are lazy.
Watch any footage from either side and there's no shortage of bang from the Russians.
In contrast the Brits have sent105mm guns and ammo as they've nothing else they dare let go. Their cupboard is bare. We can make roughly 20,000 155mm rounds a month. Ukraine fires more than that in a week. We're back to industrial level warfare and the west doesn't have the capacity or even the resources in the scale that we had in the 60s
Thank you everyone for commenting. I have little experience with arty round under long term storage as after my first stretch I stayed in the Artillery I was never assigned to a battery after that.
ReplyDeleteI am still interested in the economics of how older stored rounds would payoff with bang for the buck but a lot of that would be determined by the type of gun(s) being used etc.
Good to hear the opinions and experience everyone had though so again thank you!!!
Hrrrrmmmmmmm... this kind of misinfo comes to us via the Usual Suspects all the time.
ReplyDelete"the Russians are stupid and incompetent and don't know what they're doing!"
"The Russians are firing so many rounds the barrels on their guns are washing out!"
"The Russians are running out of shells! They're running out of computer chips for their micro processor based smart weapons"
Etc etc ad nauseum. And every night, the bombs fall on all the Uke cities, and Zelensky pleads for billions of dollars and bail outs. Bakmeht is now being referred to as a 'meat grinder' by the Ukes, Odessa has now fallen. If the Russian shelling has reduced in some areas, it is because there is very little worth shooting at.
In point of fact... common sense tells us that the Russians would most likely have expended their older stuff first. The REALLY old stuff will have been sold to third world
Contrary to the self proclaimed experts - the Russians are a direct military peer to the US. When they started this thing they made sure they were ready for it. Not only are their reserves far larger than we expected - their supply lines are superior too. Ammunition and materiel manufacturing has ramped up to levels that cannot be matched by the USA or Europe. Their manufacturing will only improve too. In historical terms... Zelensky and Biden have awoken a sleeping giant.
I've personally fired thousands of rounds of ammo in small arms that is easily 60+ years old. Propellants are nothing new in old style weapons. properly stored, they will last indefinitely. The primer compounds are the weak link and nobody really knows what the shelf life is
Which way are the battle lines moving since August?
DeleteBTW, It's December now.
Is the secret Russian plan to draw the Ukrainians in all the way to the Russian pre-war border, and lose Crimea, and then try a 2014 do-over, with only 2/3rds of the army and 1/2 the tanks as the last time they tried this?
They aren't buying Iranian drones because they're fat on artillery shells. Puzzle it out for yourself.
Filthie - All good points!!!
DeleteFelix Dzerzhinsky is Aesop's most recent stealth screen name.
ReplyDeleteGiven Aesop is quite literate and aware of history it's INTERESTING he chose this name.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (Polish: Feliks Dzierżyński [ˈfɛliɡz d͡ʑɛrˈʐɨj̃skʲi];[a] Russian: Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский;[b] 11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877 – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and official, born into Polish nobility. From 1917 until his death in 1926, Dzerzhinsky led the first two Soviet state-security organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing a secret police for the post-revolutionary Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror[2][3][4] and decossackization.[5][6]
Dear Aesop is using the name of a noted Leader of the Cheka and betrayer of the pro-tsar (Patriot) Cossacks using a false flag "Pro-Tsar groups to betray and destroy the Cossacks (AKA decossackization) as well as the Red Terror campaign where random attacks across Russia and Europe against "Enemies of the Revolution" were carried out with terrorist attacks.
Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Russian: Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, tr. Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, IPA: [fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə]), abbreviated as VChK (Russian: ВЧК, IPA: [vɛ tɕe ˈka]), and commonly known as Cheka (Russian: Чека, IPA: [tɕɪˈka]; from the initialism ЧК, ChK), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations. Established on December 5 (Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom,[1] it came under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat-turned-Bolshevik.[2][3] By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the RSFSR at the oblast, guberniya, raion, uyezd, and volost levels.
Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, i.e., "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, torture, and executions without trial.
In 1921, the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. They policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, put down rebellions and riots by workers and peasants, and mutinies in the Red Army.
CHARMING Choice Aesop. Care to explain? A rattlesnake's warning of your nature to Pro-Republic Patriots perhaps? Very ODD for someone with an Anti-Russian ALL the time public attitude.
Maybe you view us as Cossacks to be betrayed and destroyed?