Under the sanctions regime, missiles are a non-renewable resource for Russia. At the same time, in Moscow, because of the bureaucracy, they themselves probably do not know how many such weapons they have in their warehouses.
The vast majority of Russian missiles were produced during the Soviet period, when all activity in their relationship was classified. This was reported to channel 24 by military expert Sergei Grabsky.
“Polarity” of the problem
The expert noted that in Under the conditions of the missile threat from Russia for Ukraine, there are both positive and negative.
The positive part of the answer is that missiles are a finite resource, and today Russia cannot fully fulfill the needs of its armed forces to spend these resources. The bad news is that I'm afraid that the Russians themselves don't know how many of these missiles they have,” the specialist explained.
According to him, the missiles in service with Russia have been produced since the mid-1950s. For this reason, they have always had a lot of bureaucratic procedures in determining the categories of application, types and preservation classes.
“We can find completely different information about cruise missiles, which in the days of the USSR belonged to the highest secrecy, because missiles were used or intended to be used in the event of the use of nuclear weapons. There may be many of them, another thing is how many of them are ready for use,” Grabsky added.
Number of missiles still decreasing
The expert stressed that it is necessary to critically evaluate the information from different countries on the statistics of the use of missiles by Russians.
“The Americans say that 45 percent have already been spent, other sources – more than half. August 24 showed that the Russians from 189 demonstration flights made about 60 strikes. This is only a third, which indicates a decrease in arsenals,” the expert believes.
According to him, another evidence of the shortage of certain types of air missiles is that the occupiers have changed their approaches to strikes. In particular, airstrikes are increasingly being observed from the waters of the Black and Caspian Seas, and not from Belarus or the border regions, as was the case before.
Russia is not ready and did not prepare for the kind of war it received in Ukraine. It cannot build up on an industrial scale the required number of such types of weapons. Therefore, over time, we will observe a decrease in the intensity of strikes, but it should be understood that the use of old weapons is not directed against the military, but against civilians,” Grabsky concluded.
Russian missile stocks: what is known
- According to the Main Directorate of Intelligence, Russia used up at least 55% of the stockpile of missiles they had before the full-scale invasion.
- Military expert Ivan Kirichevski assured that, unfortunately, verified data on the exact number of missiles in Russia is practically nowhere to be found. However, there are certain details indicating that the infidels have significantly reduced their stocks of missiles.
- According to military expert Denis Popovich, the Russian army has an acute shortage of precision-guided missiles and high-tech systems. Today, Russia still cannot replenish its stocks of the latest weapons due to the lack of foreign parts.
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