That's not fair
We spend billions on spies (the Martini and Aston Martin bill alone) to try and get details of top secret Russian weapons, and these sneaky Ukrainians give them away for free.
Ukraine puts its Russian war trophies online for allies to pick apart
Russia’s equipment losses in Ukraine are about to become the world’s gain, as Kyiv has decided to hand out its intel on seized Russian battlefield assets to its international partners. And it has launched a new site to do so. Announced on Friday by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, the TrophyLab is being billed as a place for …
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Monday 22nd June 2026 19:10 GMT Catkin
A double loss
There are still countries who regrettably prop Russia up by buying arms from them. Hopefully this also helps damage their bottom line by revealing what they can expect for their money.
edit: just noticed the access criteria. Perhaps not directly but one can hope indirect reporting gets through to financial fence sitters.
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 04:31 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: A double loss
Assuming the overlap between el-reg and both Perun and theChieftain youtube channels is 100%, but if anyone hasn't seen Captured Russian Equipment in Ukraine
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 08:51 GMT John F Jennings
Re: A double loss
Actually, its an excellent tractor.
After WWII, old tanks (t34, t20, Sherman, Renault FT-17's were extensively lightened and used as heavy tractors. Vickkers (heavy engineering firm) in the UK actually had a business converting the surplus, which were sold for a fraction of the price of a new regular tractor.
With a t72lightened and with a hydraulic pack fitted, you have around 1,000 HP engine and a machine capable of respectable pulling power. A t55 at 500HP would likely be easier on diesel though. Relatively simple engines and field serviceable. rarely done more than a few hundred miles....
Swords into plowshares literally.
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Friday 26th June 2026 10:22 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: I quite fancy a MiG.
On the ground it's still a good way dealing with foxes
So is a small black cat with serious attitude [1]. And her food bill is smaller than trying to procure armaments and munitions for a MiG..
[1] As the not-kittens-any-more young cats are discovering. The black and white boy and the little tabby female still get the Glare of Death followed by the Paw of Vengeance if they don't get out of the way. The other one, being an all-black [2], laid-back male has crossed the toleration threshold. She's now showing him all the fun you can have in the local fields about a mile away from the house. We *hope* it's not so she can get him confused and leave him there..
[2] Well - he's got a little white flash on his chest and a little white bikini patch on his stomach. *Just* manages to sneak into the 'acceptable coat colour' category. He's also twice her size, even though he's only just a year old. So we reckon he's her Donk. ("I don't need a gun, I have a Donk")
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Monday 22nd June 2026 22:40 GMT Tim Chuma
Just use OSINT
To be sure the governments already have AI bots scraping all the open source intelligence sources.
There are people who do a bang-up job actually fronting up for paid satellite imagery and counting.
Actually the "Lost Armour" blog is how I found out how many Bushmasters have been lost when Perun put it in one of his videos.
I am behind on the Perun power point presentations but will watch the one this week about Iran, it is almost an hour but saves having to read and watch a lot of smaller videos.
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 07:04 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Works both ways
Russia's allies getting to inspect western supplied kit.
More than likely China would have sent in teams to work with the Russians to collect and send back whatever is available.
Icon: special ops Blackhawk that had to be abandoned during the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. Whilst it was intentionally set on fire, news reports at the time mentioned Chinese agents in the area soon after to retrieve parts that survived the fire, being especially interested in the stealth material/coating
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 11:54 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Works both ways
Fruit and Nutcase,
This is one reason that Western countries have been so reluctant to give Ukraine their latest kit. They've got fully state of the art air defence and artillery - which don't go on the front line. But we've only given them older model tanks and IFVs, old F-16s, older models of AMRAAM - and not the good stuff like Meteor (to be fair that would have required different aircraft or a lot of work, neither the Mirage or older F-16s have a good enough radar to fully use it).
Even in missiles, Britain and France have donated Storm Shadow / SCALP - but, older ones, and the replacement is in testing and should be starting to arrive in the next couple of years. The Germans don't want to share their Taurus, which isn't a twenty year old design.
It's complex, because obviously cost is also a factor, plus some politician's massive fears of escalation. But I think not wanting to give the Russians access to our latest and greatest is also a big worry with donations.
People are less worried by sharing the shiniest drone tech, partly because Ukraine are responsible for quite a bit of it. And partly because nobody expects today's state-of-the-art drone to still be state-of-the-art in a year's time.
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 13:02 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Works both ways
People are less worried by sharing the shiniest drone tech, partly because Ukraine are responsible for quite a bit of it. And partly because nobody expects today's state-of-the-art drone to still be state-of-the-art in a year's time.
But the reality is that a lot of 'Ukrainian' drone tech isn't actually Ukrainian, but stuff like this-
https://www.techradar.com/pro/ex-google-ceo-is-key-to-ukraines-most-formidable-drone-weapon-to-date-usd5000-hornet-can-carry-5kg-of-explosives-on-a-200km-one-way-trip
A former Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has quietly become the essential link between Silicon Valley thinking and Ukraine’s most lethal unmanned strike asset.
He launched Project Eagle, which later became Perennial, with the explicit goal of building a drone that costs less than a used car yet travels farther than most missiles.
The result is the Hornet, a $5000 unmanned aircraft that carries 5kg of explosives across 200 km in a one-way configuration designed for maximum range rather than recovery.
New, state-of-the-art AI drone, but has been captured, dissected and a comprehensive teardown published with the code on GitHub. Makes a change from War Thunder forums I guess. But allows Russia, China, Iran, DPRK and anyone Russia decides to share more details with to develop clones, or ways to jam & counter them.
So some latest & greatest tech is being donated to Ukraine, and thence Russia. Other stuff, less so, but that's always been the case with export variants being dumbed down to some extent. Kinda why Russia hasn't been using their Armatas or Su-57, but that's also a quantity thing, especially as it can still churn out a lot of older tanks & AFVs that are good enough for government work. Plus boring details like how much of the stuff in this database is actually new & interesting given a lot of 'Russian' tank & vehicle design used to be done in Kharkiv, and former Soviet states ended up with large inventories of the kit that's still being used.
But also post-1991, Russia did some modernisation, which included updates like Thales FCS. That's been shut down due to sanctions, but intelligence types can probably get some value analysing supply chains to figure out where components are coming from. Which probably isn't very surprising, ie Russian and Chinese factories.
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 14:48 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Works both ways
Jellied Eel,
Are the Russians even producing T-14 Armatas? I've seen the suggestions that they've got several tens (maybe even as many as 50?) SU-57s - and they're in low-rate production now. So out of prototyping. But I was under the impression the Armata had never left the prototype stage? So they couldn't send it, even if they wanted to.
I believe an SU-57 has shot down one of its own stealth drones near the front lines in Ukraine, presumably to stop it going there and being dissected. But I've not seen any other news of SU-57 being used. And it it was operational, then it really does make sense to use it. There's some juicy targets that would definitely be a lot easier to hit with a plane with any decent level of stealth. Of course it also has the above-mentioned flying wing stealth drone, which might be the actual weapon the Russians would want to risk in Ukraine's air defence network. But there ought to be sufficient gain to make it worth using that technology, even where the T-90's they're making are probably good enough for what tanks get used for in Ukraine.
BTW - I hadn't seen your War Thunder joke, before I made pretty much the same one below. Oops.
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 19:22 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Works both ways
Are the Russians even producing T-14 Armatas? I've seen the suggestions that they've got several tens (maybe even as many as 50?) SU-57s - and they're in low-rate production now. So out of prototyping. But I was under the impression the Armata had never left the prototype stage? So they couldn't send it, even if they wanted to.
Don't know. There were some reports of Armatas (tank and IFV) prowling around the edges in relative safety, but nothing major. Also heard that Russia may have decided to pause production in favor of churning out lots of T-72 and existing vehicles instead. Might also be the same with aircraft, ie focusing on Su-27s instead of Su-57s because they're being used to drop FABs and Russia doesn't really need to risk Su-57s. Challenge at the moment is Russia's producing more T-90s than err.. We're producing Challengers, Leopards, Abrams
Of course it also has the above-mentioned flying wing stealth drone, which might be the actual weapon the Russians would want to risk in Ukraine's air defence network.
I don't think they'd need to. So Russia's been busy blowing up power & petrol stations, warehouse and those don't move fast or need to be ambushed. Ukraine's GBAD and aircraft might, but Russia's regular ISR & attack drones have some datalink capability and swarms hunt for Patriots, IRIS-Ts etc when they expose themselves. So how much need there is for stealth. But flying wings was something I was thinking about earlier, ie why Russia and Iran using delta wing drones, but Ukraine's long-range drones are basically Mathias Rust-style monowinged light aircraft. Not exactly sophisticated, or hard to make, but that's probably the point. Lots of plans for light aircraft available, easier for woodworkers to manufacture. Ukraine would probably benefit more from something stealthier, but then the cost and complexity would increase.
BTW - I hadn't seen your War Thunder joke, before I made pretty much the same one below. Oops.
It's worth repeating. Want to know the T-14 armor configuration? Just post on WT that the hitboxes are wrong, and wait. I dabbled with WT years ago, but no idea if the T-14 is in game or not. But kind of the gamification of warfare, ie recruiting gamers who can drive controllers and have memorised where the weak spots are.
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Friday 26th June 2026 10:31 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Works both ways
Are the Russians even producing T-14 Armatas?
I seem to recall reading an article about Russian production of advanced weaponry and one of the senior commanders lamenting that there were still too many components that Russia used to source from the West. Now that they couldn't, their production was severely limited and will remain so until they can somehow reverse-engineer them or develop local equivalents.
It may well include the T-14 Armata
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 13:14 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Boot on the other foot?
Would we try to block it?
Probably. Most military stuff is Classified, so publication would be illegal under assorted Official Secrets Act(s). Also might be happening with the Hornet drone teardown being memory holed. Russians can post it because they're not their Official Secrets, anyone in the West might find themselves being extradited to Leavenworth, if they post or repost it.
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 14:33 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Boot on the other foot?
I wonder what would happen if <<insert enemy country here>> decided to publish details of what they had found about <<insert allied country here>> military hardware and secrets on the public internet.
You don't need to ask. It hasn't been blocked. I think you'll find it's called War Thunder...
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 15:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
What?
Russia’s gains in Ukraine have been largely erased outside of the Russian-annexed but contested Crimean peninsula, where it has focused most of its energy of late.
Russia currently occupies just under 20% of pre-2014 Ukrainian territory. That's 100% of Crimea (27,000 km2), 100% of Luhansk Oblast (26,500 km2), 80% of Donetsk Oblast (21,000 km2), 75% of Zaporizhzhia Oblast (20,500 km2), 70% of Kherson Oblast (20,500 km2) plus bits and pieces of various oblasts which amount to roughly (2,000 km2).
Nobody wins by misrepresenting the reality of the war in Ukraine. Even the BBC, which has for the last few months pushed the narrative that Ukraine has turned the tide against Russia, has recently been forced to admit that the situation on the battlefield is far from rosy.
Russian troops have infiltrated the strategic city of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine and are now trying to surround it. Kostyantynivka is a gateway to the rest of the Donbas region. If it falls, Russian forces would be able push towards Ukraine's last remaining strongholds in the east, the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and move closer to seizing Donbas completely, one of the Kremlin's key objectives in this war.
The situation has become a "major crisis", a Ukrainian drone pilot warns.
Delivering supplies has become extremely difficult, with land routes constantly targeted and big logistical drones regularly intercepted.
The fall of Kostyantynivka "is a matter of time", says Ukrainian frontline monitoring project DeepState.
Once that happens, logistical operations in the area will be more complicated and even remaining in Kramatorsk will become "extremely dangerous", it reports.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9w2g0ewk95o
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Tuesday 23rd June 2026 19:42 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: What?
Even the BBC, which has for the last few months pushed the narrative that Ukraine has turned the tide against Russia, has recently been forced to admit that the situation on the battlefield is far from rosy.
They're currently busy reminding people that summer is warm, and water can be dangerous. Red Alert! Red Alert!
But also get too much of their misinformation from the Nuland/Kagan Institute for the Promotion of War, who aren't exactly neutral and unbiased. But the logic, such as it is, is that because Russia occupies less than the 2022 show of force, it's losing. Which has a couple of half-truths, ie reframing Ukraine's 2014 civil war as a 2014 Russia-Ukraine war, which was never the case. Might be more relevant to look at gains made (or lost) by DP& LPR forces in Donbas between 2014 & 2022, and to date.
But the biggest mistake is trying to frame this as a conflict of conquest, when it's one of attrition. If/when the UAF collapses, Russia can take as much territory as it wants because Ukraine will have nobody to defend it, and drones can't hold territory. Plus the mappers tend to get a bit excited when flags appear and claim this is somehow proof of conquest. Russian MoD tends to be more cautious, but consensus seems to be that Kostyantynivka has pretty much fallen.
Once that happens, logistical operations in the area will be more complicated and even remaining in Kramatorsk will become "extremely dangerous",
Bit of an understatement given the number of drones from both sides makes the situation really f'ng dangerous. Plus Russia probably has enveloped the city and has fire control over supply routes.. And over the last couple of days has been attacking bridges over the Dnipr.
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