At the end of the year, all walks of life have begun their year-end inventory for 2023, and Russia, which is at war, is no exception.
In a recent summary of Russian officials, they revealed that throughout 2023, relevant Russian military-industrial enterprises produced and delivered 1,530 tanks.
In addition to so many tanks, the Russian military-industrial complex has delivered more than 2,500 armored vehicles to the Russian army, which can be seen in the military-industrial production capacity in wartime.
There are many analysts who believe that after nearly two years of war, the originally decaying Russian military industry began to recover under the wartime production state and a steady stream of army orders, is there any truth to such a statement?
Russia's military industry is in two major difficulties
Unlike the military industry of many countries in the world, the Russian military industry does not lack the technology of traditional equipment.
The huge and powerful military industry of the Soviet era has a considerable accumulation of technology, and some technologies are still in the advanced ranks after a few decades.
The Russian military industry does not lack technical information, what do they lack?Lack of money, lack of people.
Only with sufficient funds can the Russian army place orders for the purchase of equipment from the military industry, and can all kinds of technical data and design drawings be transformed into real ** equipment.
Moreover, the rich technological accumulation during the Soviet period cannot fully meet the needs of the Russian military industry now. Many new technologies and equipment that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union still have to be developed by Russia itself, which also requires funding.
Lack of money is the most well-known problem of the Russian military industry. However, compared with the lack of money, the problem of lack of people is even more serious.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's military industry personnel experienced a serious cut-off, and a large number of outstanding Soviet designers, engineers, and skilled workers were lost.
Without excellent designers and engineers, it is difficult to develop advanced new products, without enough skilled workers, it is difficult for products to become physical products from drawings, and the quality of products is difficult to guarantee.
Before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Russia's military industry has been facing several serious problems: slow research and development of new equipment, insufficient production capacity of mature equipment, and unstable equipment quality level.
In the early days of the war, these problems also plagued Russia, so much so that when the war situation was unfavorable last year, Russia had to take out a lot of old equipment from its stockpile, which was completely inconsistent with Russia's status as a military power.
So, how did Russia use the war to temper its military industry, so as to achieve a comprehensive recovery of the military industry and increase production capacity?
War is an opportunity for Russia
War is both a crisis and an opportunity for development for a country.
In this Russia-Ukraine war, Russia handled it very well, they seized the opportunity at the beginning of the war, quickly advanced the battlefield to the hinterland of Ukraine, and inflicted heavy losses on the elite troops of the eastern cluster of the Ukrainian army in a short period of time.
Although this stick was weak in follow-up, which caused the Russian army to retreat on a large scale many times after that, it directly destroyed the ability of the Ukrainian army to attack the Russian mainland, so that the flames of war were always burning on the territory of Ukraine.
Therefore, no matter how lively the front line is, Russia's domestic military industry has never been hit, and its production capacity has not been damaged. In this way, Russia will be able to take advantage of the large demand for first-class equipment brought about by the war to drive the development of the domestic military industry.
At the same time, because Russia is in a state of war, it can give priority to spending funds on the war, which solves the problem of lack of money, one of the two major problems of the Russian military industry.
With money and orders from the army, it is no longer difficult to develop the Russian military-industrial complex and train skilled workers.
From the second half of last year, we can see a series of reports in Russia mentioning that Russia has recruited more workers to produce ** equipment.
First simple suicide drones, then various artillery missiles, and then Russian tank production lines were also expanded. After more than a year of tempering, the Russian military industry has trained a large number of relatively skilled workers.
This is the basis for the significant increase in the production capacity of the Russian military industry this year, and the more skilled workers on the production line, the higher the production efficiency will be, which is manifested in higher production capacity.
The improvement of worker proficiency can also ensure the best quality of production. In the past, there have always been big problems with the quality of production of ** equipment in Russia because of the human factor, but now it seems that it has been improved.
After this large number of skilled workers are trained, the Russian military industry will benefit from it for the next 10 to 20 years. It can be said that this large number of people is the greatest benefit that this war has brought to the Russian military-industrial industry.
The Russian military-industrial complex is recovering
Let's go back to the Russian army's tank production, the advanced tanks of the Russian army before the war were mainly T72B3, T80BVM and T90 tanks, which also exposed a series of shortcomings as the war progressed.
The Russian army believes that the biggest disadvantage of these tanks is the lack of ability to defend against drones, and the performance of fire control equipment is not easy to use.
So Russia first launched the T72B4 tank, and then began the mass production of the T90M tank. The former can be upgraded with old tanks, while the latter is a completely new one.
Russia has said that they can produce 200 T90M tanks a month, but at the moment this should only be a theoretical figure, and the 1,530 tanks delivered by Russia this year include many upgraded and improved models.
This is only a small part of the Russian military industry production this year, they have produced at least 10 million shells of various calibers this year, and the Ukrainian front line reports that the Russian army fires 30,000 to 50,000 shells per day.
The output of Russian fighter jets is also increasing, the output of Su-30, Su-35 and other fighters basically made up for last year's losses, and the output of Su-57 fighters has successfully doubled, from 4 to 8 a year.
Just now, the third Project 22350 frigate of the Russian Navy was commissioned, and Putin personally attended the commissioning ceremony.
This 5,000-ton frigate is currently the most advanced warship in Russia, and it is the first Project 22350 frigate equipped with domestic power in Russia, which means that Russia has finally solved the last problem of mass production of this type of frigate.
After the tempering of the war, the Russian military industry began to recover significantly, and progress has been made faster than before in most fields, and Russia has gained significantly in this war.
When the war is over, the revived Russian military industry will provide a strong main force for the Russian army, and we may see a significantly different Russian army.