The average life expectancy for a Russian soldier in Ukraine is between 20-30 minutes, CIA director John Ratcliffe said. Speaking at a defense summit in Pennsylvania, he attributed the deadly conditions for Vladimir Putin’s forces to Ukraine’s combat drones equipped with AI. “What I would say is, our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine,” Ratcliffe said. “So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit, right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes.” “And that’s because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines. And it’s why we’re now four and a half years into that conflict,” Ratcliffe added. Ukraine said this month that Russia has lost about 1.4 million soldiers since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, with over 1,000 of the Kremlin’s troops killed or wounded almost every day. In May, Ukraine’s defense ministry said it was killing roughly 200 Russian soldiers for every kilometer of territory that Moscow claimed.
If this statement was true, and Russia was striving to have just 10,000 troops in the battlefield at all times. In the past 6 months Russia would have lost 126 million soldiers.
Given that the population of Russia is 140 millions and that they likely deploy more than 10,000 soldiers at a time, this statement makes no sense.
What makes you think they’re pushing 10k people past their trenches at all times?
This statement is about the battlefield. The area between fortifications. Given a M777 howitzer has a range of 21-40 km based on type of shell.
If we go by the most extreme expectations, then the battlefield will be at least 10 kms wide - As both sides will keep artillery a bit further back to protect them against enemy artillery fire.
To get the expert infantry badge in the US army, a soldier needs to be able to march with full equipment at 6.33 km an hour. It’s fair to assume the Russian soldiers running into their death aren’t spotting full equipment. So if we’re setting it a bit high they might be able to move 5 km during the 30 minute expected kill time.
The numbers are similar for the other side of this fight. It means the only way to push the battle lines is by using equipment
I believed the battlefield included trenches as well. Is that not the case?
I would assume fortified positions do not count as battlefield
Can you explain the math?
If you have 10,000 soldiers and on average the life expectancy is of 30 minutes then in 30 minutes you will have no soldiers because they all died. This is of course not the case, but works out if you average it out over a longer period.
This means Russia has to send 10,000 new troops every 30 minutes. That is 48 full replacements of their standing army every day.
48 x 10,000 = 480,000
480,000 x 30 x 6 = 86 millions
Sorry I had made some mistake in the previous calculation, still a huge number though.
The question is probably how they define “on the battlefield” (Where does the battlefield start?)
I have no idea, I interpret it as people deployed.
There’s also the possibility that they refer to soldiers actively attacking a Ukrainian position, which would be a strange way to word it. But in that case it wouldn’t be so surprising: I can believe you have about half an hour to live when you’re rushing towards machine guns.
Where do you get the 10000 troop number per 30 minutes? Seems absurdly high. I’d personally put it somewhere between 10-25
If they have 10,000 soldiers on the battlefield and the average life expectancy of a soldier is 30 minutes then on average they will lose 10,000 soldiers every 30 minutes.
If the life expectancy of a soldier is 30 minutes then I’d expect that on average their whole standing army will be dead in 30 minutes.
It is an absurdly high number, just like it is absurd to say that average life expectancy on the front is 30 minutes.
You didn’t answer my question and I’m starting to think you really don’t understand the numbers or this article
It’s an arbitrary guess.
What’s the correct understanding of the numbers?
When a foot soldier gets to an active conflict zone, on average they get hit (not necessarily killed, casualty is also wounded) every 30 minutes. This does not count in drone operators, logistics, etc., but the most dangerous job in the army - front lines. If you see some of the footage from the front, then this does not seem that extreme. That’s why it’s called meatgrinder
What is the main unit?
A soldier? So soldiers stay for 6 hours and are hit 12 times and all wounds are just flesh wounds and they stay until they are fatally shot after 3 month?
A hit every 30 minutes otherwise means 48 hits per day, 48 wounded or dead soldiers. 48 soldiers of what?
All soldiers? Russia has 48 casualities per day?
A company of 130 people loses 48 per day?
A battalion of 500 people loses 48 per day
A regiment of 1500 people loses 48 per day?
The only number I got from the article is the following.
The rest is made up data to show such number is absurd. Other numbers may be correct.
You can’t prove something being absurd with made-up data, especially when that made-up number not correlating with real life numbers, which like I said before, to me looks like somewhere between 10 and 25, not 10000, which is also made-up, but at least to me it actually makes sense. Your number does not.
There are between 10 and 25 Russians deployed in the battlefield? Feels like in that case a Ukrainian soldier could easily slip by more or less anywhere and get anywhere they wish in Russia.
Frontline is 12,000 kilometers, with 25 soldiers in the battlefield that is 480 kilometers between each soldier in the battlefield.
Ukraine publishes the number of Russian casualties every day (both wounded and killed) and it’s usually between 600 and 1000. Not every soldier on the “battlefield” is used as assault infantry on the frontline.
The statement says that as soon as a soldier gets to the battlefield they have a life expectancy of 20/30 minutes.
I’m not using these calculations to extrapolate the number of deaths in Russia, I’m using it to prove the statement makes no sense.
I don’t know why it is not correct, but the number is too high for the statement to be correct.
Yeah, and in medieval times everyone only lived to 30 and then just died… /s
No, but you’d expect that every 30 years the number of deaths is the same as the world population.
I did point out this does not work unless averages over longer periods of time. 6 months is in my opinion quite long when compared to 30 minutes.
If you have any actual critique of the maths I’m showing, please bring it up and we may discuss that.
Only if population size is stable, births equal deaths, age distribution is stable and so on. Otherwise it doesn’t really add up. The point is: Average doesn’t mean their entire army is gone in 30 minutes. Some make it 2 minutes, others may survive for several months.
Yes, I do understand statistics. Do you?
Sure, things will likely drift a little bit away from the average. Moreover the average is just an estimate.
However, assuming the average as correct and the population more or less stable that is the number you get. Let’s add a 20% margins for variable effects, that is still 70 million deaths.
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