It is time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Cassander, long-time commenter here, is looking for a managerial data science/product management role, preferably in aerospace. Email tint.michael@gmail if you have suggestions or leads.
Overhauls are Falklands Part 3, Coastal Defenses Part 3, Coastal Defenses Part 8, On the Border of Land and Sea, and for 2024, Distributed Maritime Operations, Military Spaceflight Parts seven and eight and Air Attack on Ships Part 5.
Comments
I have propsal for funny article. Imagine you were named Secretary of Defense and you need to redisign US fleet. You can buy only designs that already exist or are already built in the US or in the west, but you can americanize them. What would you procure and how would the US navy look like after 10 years.
Having watched the latest Perun video about the new 3.5% spending for NATO members, I suggest a variant on the above: what should the European Union navy be?
(EU because more interesting problem when you leave out US, Canadian, and RN designs.)
FREMM seems to be the best Eurofrigate/destroyer so concentrate on that for new construction.
Of course a realistic EU Navy would inherit all the ships of the members so in this case the first question is, what should be scraped?
Europe is close enough to a potential enemy to justify diesel submarines and the EU is big enough to even be able to support having two submarine fleets so probably don't scrap any submarines.
@StupidBro
I'm not sure that would be funny, but it might be interesting. (Spoiler: Type 31 is getting a lot of love in this scenario.)
@Hugh Fisher
I was going to suggest going for APAR/Standard as the baseline air defense system, but realized that if we're trying for a sovereign EU system, then you're definitely going Aster/PAAMS. I'd probably push for an air-defense version of the FREMM to get more capability there, and maybe even look into missile defense, given what we've seen of that lately.
Other than that, we're rolling out StanFlex everywhere.
@Hugh Fisher
As someone who has far better knowledge os EU security situation than that of US, the problem is what is actually European defense objective. Americans always try to understand European navies by US eye, but Europe alwys was in very different geopolitical position than the US.
EU basically do not have conventional military adversaries. Russia is now for 3 years trying to conquer a country that do not have military before war and Turkey is still extremely militarily weak against France, Italy and Greece. The military question is not really: Can Europe defend Estonia? Can Europe defend Greek islands? it is more like: Can Europe defend Estonia if in France Le Pen is in charge and in Germany AfD. So the only countries that do have reason to increase military spending (apart of paper increase) are Eastern european countries and Greece.
The only thing that Europe needs (especially Germany, Italy and Poland) is nukes, lot of nukes. And the problem is not money, I have read in German newspapers that 500 warheads, 128 missiles and 8 SSBNs would cost Germany probably less than UKs Drednought program, especially if France would help. The reason is far more political (Internal and External).
And here we come to the navy, because the real thing is: What actually EU wants? Before the Trump second term there was mutual understanding that if war in Pacific begun, Europe would not joined the fight directly but would help in inderect way. European navies would help protect US coastline, protect supply convoys, France and Italy would instead of US deploy their carriers to Middle east etc. And that was reason why US did not built lighter armed ships (like FREMM, Type-23, modern minehunters etc.). If hot war ever came up it was European responsibility to handle low intensity operations like protect US backyard, protect supply convoys and temporarily substitute US naval presence, so US could send all their ships into the war.
The thing is the Europe helping US is high unlikely now and also in the future no matter of who the president would be, because the trust was broken and it will not be regained after one election. There are also problems that Europe has with Asian reaction (especially South korean reaction) to Ukraine war, so there is now no chance that Europe (except maybe UK) would help anyone against China in any way. The pro-US camp (Poland, Netherlands, Sweden, Czechia, Italy) is still strong enough to block things lifting the ban on arms sales to China and selling Baracuda nuclear submarines, Aster missiles, MU90 torpedoes and Captor 4 sonars. But military assistance is excluded.
So, what to do with European navies now, after Trump? All the countries with the real naval power are exactly on the opposite side of the globe. And Europe will not go to war there. Every naval power in close proximity (except the US) can be swept off the surface by European navies within a week. So after the "back up navy for US" mission have ended all European navies find themselve very overqualified. There are some interestin projects, like Thaon di Revel OPVs (OPVs against pirates with balistic missiles) but there is no threat of conventional naval war for Europe.
@bean
Type-31 frigate is nice design, their main job was basically to be bloody cheap and they are. The problem that was shown in Red sea is that even ships for low-intensity operations should have higher air-defense and some ASW capability. So I would say that for instance Absalon or Thaon di Revel are far better suited for Type-31 job and for the same price.
"Russia is now for 3 years trying to conquer a country that do not have military before war"
Wait, what now? Ukraine, before the present war kicked off, had more tanks and artillery in front-line service than Britain, France, and Germany combined. Ukraine's army was widely dismissed on the grounds that it had performed so poorly in the 2014-2015 conflict, but it was always large and heavily armed, and the experience of 2014-2015 had motivated Ukraine to up their game, with major gains in training, leadership, and morale.
@John Schilling
Every eastern European country have (or had before R-U war) thousands of T-72 etc. in stockpiles and if they had mandatory military service they had them in "active duty". To say that Ukraine have stronger Army than Britain is like to say that North Korea is military stronger than the US, because they have more tanks.
Ukraine did not have basically any air force (MiG-29 do not count as air force), any modern land forces and any capabilities of combining their forces. They basically won the first stage of the war with Russian incompetence and with all the Russian military technology just being junk.
Everyone in Europe knew how incompetent was Ukrainian army, everyone was shocked that Russian army was even more. If the invasion was done by western armies it would be real 3 days operation.
@Stupidbro
While I don't disagree with your broad analysis of the European defense problem in the age when the US is showing itself to be an unreliable ally (sorry about that), Russia as that much of a paper tiger matches nothing else I've ever seen.
That seems like an oddly specific view that again I have never seen anywhere else. Yes, I'd take an F-16 over a MiG-29, but I wouldn't view the MiG-29 as something that "doesn't count".
I don't think this is actually true. There's been effectively no ASW activity in the Red Sea, and giving decent capability there trades off hard against being cheap. As for air defense, the CAMM system should be plenty for self-defense against everything being slung around the Red Sea that isn't a ballistic missile. And I'm not sure it couldn't get that capability with some work, at least against the short-range stuff being used there. Performance-wise the missile looks to be capable of matching Iron Dome, although the software obviously isn't there now. And even leaving that aside, there's the fact that ballistic missiles open the door to different countermeasures. By nature, they're easy to detect early and have a very limited engagement area, unlike a cruise missile. Gaming this out in CMO, a Type 31 with a nearby Burke to provide missile alerting was pretty much always able to get out of the seeker basket. There's some risk in that, but if that's too much, then you just make sure the Burke is between the cheap ship and the launch site. This works a lot less well for countering cruise missiles, which you mostly can't detect until they clear the horizon.
I will grant you equal or greater suitability. But claiming the same price is nonsense. Absalon was bought 20 years ago, so any pricing data is basically useless for figuring out what we're doing now. (That said, the Abaslon is also on my list to take a hard look at.) And Thaon di Revel costs twice as much as a Type 31 on a first pass, even assuming we're looking at the same costs, which we might not be, because these are different countries, and any comparison across countries tends to work badly.
If I were going to explain why the European Union needed a big navy and should pay for it, I would justify it on the grounds that European climate / environmental security is a global issue, not local. It's in the EU interest for the oceans everywhere to remain unpolluted, for fishing fleets not to empty out entire marine ecosystems. And moving on to land, much of which is within easy reach of the ocean, it's in the EU interest for other nations / states to not be massive pollution generators.
The stereotype is that Trump's USA won't care about any of this, so the EU needs to step in. (Please, US readers, note that I said this was a stereotype, not reality.)
And if this happens to create powerful navies that the Russians and Chinese have to worry about, well that helps the USA as well.
Question about the stability and load bearing capacity of the Independence class LCS.
The US Marines have experimented with parking an MLRS launcher on the deck of an amphib. I'm wondering, could the same be done for the trimaran class LCS? How about an Avenger SAM battery?
I'm assuming that while modern missiles are good at correcting course, the extra stability of the trimaran hull would help. But maybe not? And I'm assuming that a flight deck that can take a big helo can also cope with wheeled artillery/missile launchers, but again maybe not? (Or am I under-estimating, and it could take an M1 Abrams?)
@High Fisher
I find somehow funny that the EU would go to war with the China or the US over enviroment.
And Europe already has very powerful navies that would destroy the Russian and Turkish one very quickly. And the problem with China is that it is located exactly on the opposite part of the globe than the EU. So why to bother with preparing for naval war with them now, when we are not first tier US ally?
@StupidBro: "Every eastern European country have (or had before R-U war) thousands of T-72 etc."
This is simply false. According to my sources (IISS cross-checked with Wikipedia: In 2019 all of Eastern Europe combined, except for Poland and Ukraine, had a total of 774 T-72 or similar main battle tanks. That's active duty and reserve combined. Poland had 611, including their homebrew PT-91, and an additional 247 Leopard IIs - more and better tanks that all of the rest of Eastern Europe combined.
Ukraine, had 1,205 T-72, -64, and -80 main battle tanks in reserve stockpiles, and an additional 854 in active service, all recently upgraded and mostly assigned to the Ukrainian Army's twelve active-duty (not reserve) tank or mechanized infantry brigades. So, more tanks than all of Eastern Europe combined. Or Western Europe, unless we're counting Greece this week.
I can run through the numbers for Ukraine's artillery park or integrated air defense system or whatnot; they'll all come out about the same.
Ukraine absolutely had a for-real big-boy army standing ready at the start of 2022. An army almost certainly far more powerful than that of the country you're speaking from. I'm not sure who told you otherwise, but they were mistaken and you're repeating that mistake
@bean
It is interestin how much people from the west overestimate Russian technology. I was born in a country that operated MiG-29 and I can say one thing: MiG-29 do not count as air force. It is worse fighter jet ever created.
A) It is unmaintainable. F-35 is reliable and easy to maintain plane in comparison to MiG-29. Especially in electronics. For example: You need to "calibrate" radar of MiG-29 after each flight and you need to dismantle whole frontal part of the plane for it. In most air forces that used them about 10% were operational. B) The electronics (when it is by some accident working) is like really terrible. They are unable to localize small planes near ground, to see a missile is basically unthinkable. C) It is basically completely useless at night or bad weather.
To be fair I do not know what is MiG-29 for. It is not capable of BVR combat, it is bad at air-to-air combat, it can not localize thinks close to the ground, it can not attack things on the ground except with unguided bombs. Sorry, but that can not be counted as air force.
I would say that situation in Red sea have shown that even non-state actors can have modern weapons (like balistic missiles) and that you will need for your ships to have some basic capabilities in AAW and even some very basic ASW capabilities. And Type-31 is built, but not fitted with Mk41 VLS and towed sonar, even it should be some light CAPTAS 1/2 or just anti-torpedo array.
Absalon is mother design of Iver Huitfield and Type-31. It has, stanflexes, sonars, CIWS and most importantly huge mission bay, because it is also logistic ship. And it is really the most perfect ship you can have now as a patrol frigate.
I personally think that the "do it perfectly, or do not do it all" in western navies have to end. Nowadays, the western ships either have the best sonars, best ASW capabilities, or do not have them at all, but now there could be Houthis with Iran supplied midget submarines attacking civilian tankers, and your patrol frigates should be capable of handling this, not Type-26. CAPTAS 4 and full ASW capabilities of Type-26 are bloody cheap, but some basic CAPTAS 1 sonar and 4 torpedo tubes are not.
The same thing is with AAW, patrol frigates do not have to have extremely high-level air defense, but they need to be prepared for operation where dozens of drones would be launched and they need to have at least capability to carry lot of cheap air defense missiles (CAMM is cheaper than Shahed). Nice thing about Italian Patrol frigates (they call them OPVs) is that they also gave them some very basic BMD capability, it basically looks like they predicted crisis in Red sea when they design these ships.
So in my humble opinion, the Stanflexes will be necessary and some basic ASW too.
@John Schilling
The problem with these numbers is that they are wikipedia numbers. And that is probably based on active duty and reserves tanks of the army. But there also were hundreds of T-72s and BVPs owned by state companies, or very often private companies, who tried to sell them everywhere over the world. Czechoslovakian republic had 4500 tanks, and there was not a single one scrapped, so either they were sold to someone in Africa, or were sent to Ukraine, or some (state) company still have them.
Ukraine had pretty standard numbers of military equipment for eastern european country (except S-300 and Tochka systems), the only reason why it looked far bigger on wikipedia was because they still had mandatory military service so all these things were officially in reserves. I do not know how tank storaging works in the western Europe, but there were 3600 Leopard 2s (and 5800 Leopard 1s) built and I guess they also did not scrapp them (Leopards 2 definitely not) so they will have them somewhere.
@StupidBro: My numbers are not "wikipedia numbers", and I thought I was pretty clear that wikipedia was a secondary source for me. You, for your part, have provided no numbers and no sources, just your arrogant overconfidence that even though you self-admittedly don't know how this works the numbers must be thousands because, I guess that feels right to you based on some vague impression you formed somewhere?
You know less than nothing, and I need to stop engaging with you before I say something I'll regret.
@Hugh Fisher
Re the stability on the Independence, the best answer I have is to take a look at weights and what is already there. A HIMARS weighs about 36 klbs. MTOW for an MH-60 is in the region of 22 klbs, and an Independence can carry two. So you could definitely replace the helicopters with a HIMARS. And an Avenger is much lighter, so that wouldn't be a problem, although it's not clear why you'd want that, because Stinger is a lot less powerful than the RAM they already carry.
@StupidBro
I am extremely bearish on Russian technology. I have still never heard "the MiG-29 is the worst fighter jet ever". And given your tendency to make unsupported and unsupportable assertions, I'm going to take this with a lot of salt until you point me at something to back it up.
I completely agree on basic AAW, and have referred to the Type 31 as the "minimum viable warship" even before 2023, on the basis of Mason in 2016. Less sure about the ASW aspect, because ballistic missiles are easier to export and easier to use than submarines, so we can't assume that having one will give you the other.
I am much less sure this would actually work than you are. Midget submarines are notoriously slow and short-legged, and I can't think of a single time they've been used against ships in the open sea. But I certainly have no problem with fitting a StanFlex slot that can take a VDS or a minehunting sonar. That's obviously a good idea.
I am skeptical of this. CMO (who is generally quite good, although I will admit not perfect) says the actual ships are fitted for but not with the missiles, and even the version with missiles didn't show any notable BMD capability when I tested it. That is exactly the sort of thing that Wiki will get wrong fairly frequently, and I'd like a source on this one that makes that actual claim about the ships.
More broadly, I am with Schilling on your general performance here. You are making unsubstantiated claims, and standing behind them even when someone does the research and cites his sources. This is bad behavior, and I'd ask you not to do so.
@John Shilling
Yes, I am from Czech republic, I began my career in czech military sector, but I do not know how it works and you do. And your numbers are "wikipedia numbers", they are numbers that someone read in some czech defence review and so they wrote it. Because it is easy.
In whole Europe the old tanks and armoured vehicles are usually not kept in reserve, but in some private/state companies (because it is cheaper and bureocratically easier). And in eastern Europe there is huge web of state and semiprivate companies who owns the weapons from Warsav pact era. And there is reason for that.
For instance there was a massive scandal in 2017 (which you can read in english speaking sources), that Czech republic is sending weapons to Azerbaijan even there is EU ban on sending weapons there. But they were not reserve Czech weapons, you would not find them on Wikipedia in section reserves of the Czech army. The weapons are kept operational in czech military facilities next to czech reserves, owned by company whose majority owner is czech MoD, maintained by state company. But they are not Czech military. And this is common everywhere in EU, especially eastern part. But Germany also never scrapped any of their Leopard 1s.
@bean
The problem with my sources is that my main source is ATM (Army technical magazine) which is prestigious military journal in central europe (I had there even two articles on SEAD long ago). It do not have internet version and is not in english it goes by month in paper, but they will send it around Europe if you have subsription. I also read some polish, french and english sources, or my former colleagues.
Usually for fraction of things you can read on European militaries in european sources can be also find in English speaking ones (e.g. there are far more scandals on eastern european EU members selling military equipment to countries they should not, I have mentioned Czech-Azerbaijani case because you can find it in english speaking press). And with all the respect for Janes, even second tier French source is usually far better on information about Italian navy than they are.
So long story short, when we get to european military I may have sometimes very different informations, but they are sometimes even public knowledge. E. g. everyone Czech republic would tell you that czech army had more than 30 T-72s, which was shown by number of T-72 that spawned at Ukraine. Also everyone in czech air force would tell you that MiG-29 were horrible, so horrible, that Czech air force even went for MiG-21 (the information, that MiG-29 was decomissioned for MiG-21 you can even find english source, because Czech MoD has this page in english: https://www.mo.gov.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=6372).
I can think of several reasons why you'd get rid of the MiG-29 first that aren't just "it was completely horrible". First, they were new (delivered in the last 4 years), and, yes, harder to maintain then other planes in inventory, both due to lack of experience and greater sophistication. Second, the Cold War just ended, and the main reason you need fighters is to go up and yell at airliners, at least for a few years, so a MiG-21 is fine. Third, it's a Russian airframe, and support might be kind of hard to get. And the Czech handling of this is nearly unique. Slovakia retired theirs a couple years ago, and Poland and Bulgaria still operate a few. If it was really that bad, I would expect it to have taken a lot less than 30 years for other countries to retire them.
There's a reason it's known as "frightening slips" in a lot of the naval community. I'm not blindly taking their word for stuff, but I have been doing this for a lot of years, and you're saying things that do not match anything I've ever heard anywhere.
@bean
Poland is different, because they completely change the avionics of MiG-29 (It is still terible, but not as terrible as original). In Slovakia, never more than 3 out of their 24 (later 12) were operational at the time. (e. g. in this article https://spravy.pravda.sk/domace/clanok/527514-podla-gajdosa-nehoda-stihacky-neohrozuje-suverenitu-nasho-vzdusneho-priestoru/ ) and basically nothing was working (e. g. article https://sita.sk/stihacky-mig-29-ktore-strazia-slovensky-vzdusny-priestor-maju-casto-poruchy-nedokazu-plnit-ulohy/ ). MiG-29 has a malfunction on average every 40 MINUTES! (e. g. https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/ybHFIWG/je-rozhodnute-slovensko-da-ukrajine-svoje-stihacky-mig-29/ )
And if you say that it was because they did not maintain them properly, they were completely maintained by Russians and RSK MiG (https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/517812/udrzia-sa-na-slovenskom-nebi-ruske-migy/ ). And this terrible was MiG-29 from the begining, but the aircraft were completely new, so Slovakians had belived it would get better, but Czech generals were at exchanges in Soviet union, so they knew the Soviet MiG-29 forces were the same disaster, even they were operating them for couple years.
But this beautifully shows that "I have never seen this information" problem, because there are really basically no information about it in english-speaking sources, but "MiG-29 do not count as air force" is pretty common knowledge and you find hundreds of articles on how much terrible they are. But this is extremely common, that english speaking sources are basically completely wrong on most of european militaries, especially the eastern ones.
And if you want to know source for huge stockpiles of military vehicles that czech companies have, e. g. there is article about them by czech tv: https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/clanek/domaci/sklady-jsou-plne-nepotrebne-techniky-armada-je-zredukuje-286934 and if you ask why we do not know how many tanks we have, there is article on one of the companies (Excalibur army) again selling "illegally" (the question marks are here because state-owned VOP did also participate) hundreds of old BVPs to Iraq and there is beautifull spider graph of corporate structure of this company and its subsidiaries ( https://hlidacipes.org/zasah-na-obrane-zbrojari-z-excalibur-army-a-pavouk-jejich-vztahu/ ). After seeing this, you will probably understand why we do not know how many tanks we have. Again, this is common knowledge in eastern europe, but you can not find it at any english-speaking sources, and then you go with like really absurd informations like that there were 700 tanks in eastern europe...
You are not helping your case here.
Look, I get that it's fun to belittle the Anglophones for not having access to local knowledge, but we do know a thing or two here, and what you are saying simply does not make sense.
First, the MiG-29. The East Germans brought some into their marriage with West Germany, and American pilots were able to fly it. I'm not going to bother tracking down the reports, but I've seen references to them and they were not "these are total garbage". And I don't think that your articles are strong disproof of that, unless the Slovak press is massively better than anywhere else at defense issues. There may be hundreds of articles about how bad the MiG-29 is, but there are probably thousands about how bad the F-35 is, and I know that's wrong.
Second, number of tanks. The number of tanks somewhere is a definitional issue, and you are insisting on an extremely stupid definition. There's a military museum 15 minutes from my house with a dozen tanks parked outside. But that does not make the Remington Park area any sort of military power. Nor would the possession of thousands of old tanks by Czech companies really matter to the balance of military power. What matters is how many tanks can be fielded as part of useful military units in a relatively short period of time. The actual number for that is either going to be around the official numbers that John found, or much lower. Exactly what happened to the tanks of the Western Military District might be interesting as an academic matter, but it is basically irrelevant to the number we should care about.
More broadly, you are not conducting yourself in accordance with the standards I want here, and I'm done spending time dealing with you until you do.
Is it a hyperbole or your actual claim? Because it is clearly false.
Is it a hyperbole or your actual claim? Because it is clearly false.
Is it a hyperbole or your actual claim? Because it is clearly false.
Is it a hyperbole or your actual claim? Because as far as I know it is false. Where Slovakia, Estonia, Poland has this thousands of tanks?
even if all these things are true, "can not be counted as air force" is overstating things
someone flying 3 armed TB2 has an air force
maybe shitty one and soon to be destroyed but still air force if someone disagrees, I wonder whether they would still disagree after their house is bombed by three armed TB2
where are these private companies owning hundreds of T-72s?
Can you list few of them?
@StupidBro
In general it is unclear to me whether you are extremely uninformed and overconfident.
Or are you making hyperbole so extreme that it makes impossible to understand what your actual claims. Have you meant by "MiG-29 do not count as air force" that it is not a great plane? That it should be abandoned ASAP? That it is worse than TB2 at all tasks? That it is as useful as biplanes?
Or are you simply trolling and deliberately making useless comments and are proud how much time you wasted?
If you are trying to communicate I would advise to not use hyperbole that makes your comments clearly false.
@Mateusz Konieczny
Of course, it is hyperbole. Yes, Ukraine had army. Yes, if you have one Tucano you have air force technically. These are hyperbolies. It is about the point, they really did not have working army like France, Poland, Turkey etc. and it should be very easy for any advanced military to conquer them pretty quickly.
The same hyprebole: Mexico basically do not have army. Northrop F-5 does not count as Air force. It would be very suprising if the US was trying to conquer Mexico for three years in conventional war.
I know companies in Czech republic. Important is to say that they had these weapons before Russo-Ukrainian war. There is Excalibur army that had hundreds and hundreds tanks at Přelouč and Šternberk (you could see them from outside). Then there were hundreds of tanks in Polička, I think it is STV Group. Then Tatra has lot of tabks of czechoslovakian army. Then there is state owned VOP which had lot of old Soviet armoured vehicles. And then there are dozents of smaller companies, that had their armoured vehicles even in Poland and Slovaki (e. g. Real trade praha).
Only in these three colations you would had find over 1000 armoured vehicles (mostly T-72s and some T-55s), but these are only the main sites. The RM-70 send to Azerbaijan were famously from czech military storage, and for instance 250 BVPs for Iraq were in some other storages (and there was complicated things with Sweden).
At least the well known storages were completely depleted within a year after Russo-Ukrainian war started, probably sent to Ukranian army and for spare parts, or maybe relocated to some less known locations.
@bean
"There may be hundreds of articles about how bad the MiG-29 is, but there are probably thousands about how bad the F-35 is, and I know that’s wrong."
By this there can not be bad fighter jet, because there is some bad press about F-35. But the things about MiG-29 are not some military blogposts, these are military documents and official government statements. I am pretty sure, that the US president on press conference never said "F-35 is fully operational in Soviet union for 20 years, in the US it is fully operational for 11 years and only 3 can even take off at the time. (https://mybystrica.sme.sk/c/1607718/prezident-schuster-s-hrozou-zistil-ze-mame-len-tri-letuschopne-stihacky-mig-29.html) and again they were fully maintained by RSK MiG. The article about malfunction every 40 minutes is only quotation of official Slovakian documents on F-16 purchase.
The same thing is with American pilot saying they are not terrible. Yeah but you can find interviews with Peter Gregor who is commander of Slovakian fighter squadroon and he is saying a bit different things. So if he is saying that it is "good plane" I think he means more "good to pilot plane", because Russian fighters had always been highly manouverable, but it kinda do not change the problems with their radar that people who operate them face.
To the number of tanks. Yes, I completely understand that that there are different states in which the tanks can be stored. And this was actually what was my comment about. The thing I was referencing with "wikipedia numbers" is that it is wikipedia style to just take some definition (in this case "tanks in reserves") and compare it between countries where it means completely differnt things. Reserves in Ukraine or Russia are definitely not something you can field quickly.
In Czech Republic the armoured vehicles (and I know this is the same in Slovakia and Hungary, different in Poland) in official reserve are only the ones for de-preservation (so capable to field in days). The tanks which would need refurbishment are usually owned by some state or private company and MoD have right to rebuy them back (and even with this there are some exception, because many rocket launchers and old air defense system had to be still kept preserved even if the private company owned them).
So what was my point was that if you want to take reserve numbers for Russia and Ukraine the equivalent numbers in Eastern europe there are definitely not their reserve numbers, they are far far higher. And I am not sure, but I thing I have read somewhere that even 3 years after the war the Ukraine is still refurbishing its reserves.