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New "signals" about the arms crisis that Russia has during its war against Ukraine

appear in the open sources. In particular, the occupiers were forced to transfer to 12-hour

working day several leading enterprises of their military industrial complex. The

reason is "personnel hunger". Russian "defense" lacks about 20 thousand qualified producers.

According to estimates of the Commander-in-Chief of the AFU Zaluzhnyi, the enemy can prepare up to

200 thousand recruits for the next offensive. To fully provide them with enough equipment,

the Russian military industry will have to work hard for several years in a row.

And this despite the fact that now for the Russians the maximum

plan is to modernize about 800 T-62 tanks in the next 3 years.

In turn, the Pentagon assessed that the Russian army is running out of stocks of conditioned

ammunition, or to be more precise, shells with a shelf life of not more than 40 years.

This news is a sign of indirect "shell starvation" of the Russians. Because they will have to use

obsolete ammunition more and more often, even from World War II. Which might not work at all,

or on the contrary - explode when shot in the barrel and send to hell all the staff of the gun.

A legitimate question arises - how do the invaders

plan to fight further if they now have such problems with weapons?

A possible answer to this question can be found in the history of World War II.

As in 2022 partial mobilization did not give the occupiers the desired

«operational density» of manpower per kilometre of front, and in 1943 for the Kremlin there was

a problem that the replenishment was not enough to staff units by staff.

Therefore, for example, even in the second half of 1943, the German Wehrmacht Army Corps could

have more "bayonets" than the Soviet Combined Arms Army. And it seems that now, in 2022,

Russians have switched to the tactics of "small groups" during the siege of Bakhmut, including

because the existing "marching replenishment" of recruits is not enough to staff units of the level

of "company-battalion-regiment" because of the large losses.

The massive use of artillery is considered a feature of

the "Soviet" style of warfare. According to some estimates,

during World War II the Soviet army spent up to 15 million shells of all types.

But at the same time, Kremlin propagandists on behalf of their military commanders and

then complained that because of the destroyed logistics, it was difficult to deliver enough

projectiles to the front line, although then M142 HIMARS and the project did not exist.

Therefore, it was necessary to leave the situation by the formula "high density

of barrels on 1 km of front + intense but short-lived fire".

This often led to situations in the spirit of "discovering new targets of the enemy,

but there is nothing to shoot because the daily limit of shells is exhausted".

The described situation in the sky over the fighting orders

can be called "interpenetration". That is, neither side has an advantage in the air,

aviation from both sides could enter the enemy’s battle lines at a small depth to

hit targets near the front, while bearing inevitable losses. In some ways this does

resemble the tactics of the Russian "air suicide bombers" in the battles of Fall-Winter 2022.

In fact, everything described above is essentially similar to the manner of action of the occupiers

near Bahmut. Yes, the enemy did manage to improve its tactics during the battles for this city.

But if such a method of action has a limited effect only in battles for one large population

center, the occupiers are unlikely to succeed if they want to transfer such experience to

larger-scale combat operations. This gives reason for optimism to the Defense Forces of Ukraine.