- Ukraine has too few armored vehicles and too few infantry
- Heavy losses, slower deliveries, and uneven recruitment mean brigades go into combat with sometimes half their allotted infantry and vehicles
- The infantry shortage above all is arguably the main reason Ukraine fights with drones and ground robots wherever it can
The shortfall in infantry, above all, is arguably why Ukraine has built its way of war around drones and ground robots.
The trickle of old and new vehicles slowly filling out the ranks of the Ukrainian army's newly formed 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade is a worrying reminder that Ukraine, despite its recent successes on the battlefield, is still struggling to fully equip its ground combat brigades.
The factors are myriad. Foreign donations of surplus equipment have slowed. Ukraine purchases some new equipment on its own but relies on foreign financing for the rest. Sometimes the financing is slow to come together; sometimes the manufacturer is slow to deliver.
Meanwhile, losses on the battlefield—and losses to accidents and wear and tear—relentlessly pile up. In that sense, Ukraine's equipment losses mirror its human losses. Bleeding people and machines, the Ukrainian armed forces can't quite keep all their combat formations fully staffed and fully mechanized.
Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps took the lessons of the failed 2023 counteroffensive into Operation Vivaldi. It fought small, and won.
Case in point: the Ukrainian army's 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade. Observer Stevius has closely tracked the "poor" brigade as it has inducted whatever vehicles the army can scrounge for the unit's front-line battalions. The skeletal brigade stood up last year but still isn't ready for action.
Stevius has noted, in service with the 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade: BTR-60 and M-113 armored personnel carriers with their roots in the 1960s; T-72B, T-72EA, and T-72AV tanks originally built in the 1970s plus a few somewhat newer T-64BV tanks; and, finally, factory-fresh 2S22 howitzers.
The tanks in particular represent "a fairly heterogeneous mix," Stevius wrote. The brigade is piecing together a single tank battalion, which should have 31 tanks at full strength, with whatever unassigned tanks are lying around.
Eclectic mix
If there were 31 free T-72Bs—or 31 free T-72EAs and T-72AVs or T-64BVs—the 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade would surely use just one tank model, thus simplifying training and maintenance. But there apparently aren't 31 free tanks of any of the four types. The brigade has no choice but to mix and match as it adds fighting hardware.
The issue is endemic. According to the open-source tracker Oryx, which counts only losses it can see in photos and videos, the Ukrainians have lost nearly 1,500 tanks and around 6,900 other armored vehicles. After those losses, the Ukrainians can't fully equip every armored, mechanized, and motorized battalion with the 31 vehicles it's supposed to have.
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Exactly how big the vehicle shortage is can be hard to assess. Before the wider war kicked off nearly five years ago, the Ukrainians had at least 3,200 tanks and other armored vehicles, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. And we know how many vehicles Ukraine's allies have delivered: around 15,000. Let's assume the Ukrainians have also pulled, from long-term storage, as many vehicles as they had in active use in 2022.
| Ukraine's tanks and other armored vehicles | Roughly |
|---|---|
| In service before the full-scale invasion | 3,200 |
| Pulled from storage (assumed: as many again) | 3,200 |
| Delivered by allies | 15,000 |
| Lost (visually confirmed only) | −8,340 |
| Left | 13,000 |
| Needed: 150 brigades × at least 120 vehicles | 18,000 |
Around 13,000 tanks and other armored vehicles should be enough to equip each of around 150 ground combat brigades with around 90 vehicles. That's three battalions' worth. But most brigades have four or more tank, mechanized, and motorized battalions requiring at least 120 vehicles.
Worse, we can assume Ukrainian losses are higher than analysts have visually tallied. And we can also assume many vehicles have escaped battle damage but worn out from overuse. All that is to say, it wouldn't be shocking if there are Ukrainian brigades out there with fewer than 50 armored vehicles. In vehicular terms, they're practically battalions, not brigades.
People are in short supply, too. It's unclear how many infantry the 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade has, but it's safe to assume it has a lot of unfilled billets. "Ukraine faces manpower shortage and still does not have a single brigade that is fully manned," analyst Giorgi Revishvili wrote in June.
On paper, the Ukrainian armed forces should have a couple hundred thousand infantry. But amid uneven recruitment, public resistance to conscription, and heavy losses—the UALosses project has counted nearly 190,000 Ukrainian troops killed, missing, or captured since February 2022—most units are now chronically under-strength.
Ukraine's infantry shortage is so deep and enduring that it's arguably the main driver of the Ukrainian ground forces' doctrine and technology—the reason, in other words, that Ukraine deploys drones and ground robots wherever possible. The same robots must also fill in for the thousands of armored vehicles that Ukraine needs, but simply doesn't have.
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