Apparently, Ukrainian drones pushed through and started a chain reaction.
Explosions reportedly continued for hours, and authorities evacuated nearby settlements. Initial reports indicate that the site, previously protected by one of Russia’s densest air defense networks, suffered catastrophic damage.
I hace no idea how serious a blow this is. Can anyone provide any sense of magnitude for these 264 000 tons of munitions? Like how big a chunk of total ammunition stockpile woukd this be? How big is it compared to current manufacturing rate?
It’s not that easy to calculate as “munitions” can be anything from artillery shells to ballistic missiles.
If we assume it’s mostly/all artillery shells, it’s roughly one month of production. Russia currently produces 250.000 units of artillery shells per month if everything goes right. Russia uses roughly 10.000 of them per day, so it would be almost one months worth of combat.
If the stockpile contained more of glide bombs and ballistic missiles, the damage is even worse because they are significantly more expensive to produce.
But a unit of artillery shell doesn’t weigh a ton.
It feels like I’ve read how Russia have taken massive losses every day for over two years now. In my book, if you take “massive losses” every day for two years that would mean there’s basically nothing left. I get that there daily numbers probably are massive by comparison, but still.
Haven’t checked numbers recently but it’s at or nearing a million killed and wounded. Not a great number but they have plenty more.
They have people sure, but the logistics to feed and arm them? That I’m not sure