The nine new brigades for the spring offensive – tanks

In the classified Joint Staff briefing slides, there was a listing of the ready status as of 28 February for nine new Ukrainian brigades. One of those was a reserve brigade that existed (at least on paper) when the war started. The other eight were new brigades. They are:

  1. 116th MBde (new unit),
  2. 47th MBde (new unit),
  3. 33rd Bde (reserve unit, mechanized?),
  4. 21st Bde (new unit, mechanized?),
  5. 32nd Bde (new unit, mechanized?),
  6. 37th Bde (new unit, mechanized? Not listed on militaryland.net),
  7. 118th MBde (new unit),
  8. 117th Bde (new unit, mechanized?),
  9. 82nd Air Assault Bde (new unit).

The charts do list the equipment being prepared for them. To summarize:

Tanks:

116th MBde: 13 x T-64 (UKR), 17 x Tanks (XXX) = 30

47th MBde: 28-T-55S (SLV) = 28

33rd Bde: 14 x Leopard 2A6 (DEU), 4 Leopard 2A4 (CAN), 14 Leopard 2A4 (POL) = 32 

21st Bde: 30 T-64 (UKR) = 30

32nd Bde: 10 x T-72 (NLD), 20 x Tanks (XXX) = 30

37th Bde: 14 x AMX-10 (FRA), 16 x Tanks (XXX) = 30

118th MBde:  28 x T-72 (POL) = 28

117th Bde: 31 x PT-91 (POL) = 31 (a PT-91 is a Polish upgrade of the T-72)

82nd Air Assault Bde: 14 x Challenger (GBR) = 14

 

The charts show the tank type and in parentheses the country they are from. So for example, the 33rd Bde is getting 14 Leopards from Germany, 4 from Canada and 14 from Poland. A Ukrainian tank brigade is nominally 31 tanks (3 companies of 10 and one command tank). 

I am assuming that if I have these documents, then the Russian FSB also has them. I gather they are still officially classified. Will address other AFVs and artillery in subsequent posts.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1455

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