The authors of the Polish Defense24 asked themselves a quite valid question: what stockpiles of multiple launch rocket systems does the russian army have at the disposal. Moreover, the bet on the deconservation of the MLRS may have its advantages in relation to the "removal from storage" of barrel artillery systems. For example, rocket launchers have a greater destructive power and the wear of their guided launchers is slower than the wear of barrels in "classic" artillery.
But on the other hand, in order to take out these systems of storage, russians will have to actively cannibalize other units, as the russian defense industry did not produce new MLRS before the full-scale war. It was only about the modernization of the BM-21 Grad to the Tornado-G standard, and the experimental modernization of the Uragan system to the Uragan-1M standard.
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So, when the authors of Defence24 try to estimate the stockpiles of rocket artillery, they use exactly the same figures that simultaneously appear in Military Balance 2016 and Military Balance 2021. Namely, that the russian army supposedly has in storage about 2 thousand BM-21 Grad systems, about 400 units of the 9P138 Grad-1, about 700 units of the BM-27 Uragan and even 100 units of the BM-13, known as Katyusha.
But these stated figures should be questioned for at least two reasons. Firstly, if according to Military Balance 2016 the russian army had about 850 units of the MLRS, then according to Military Balance 2021 there are already about 1,100 units of the MLRS. Such an increase by almost a third could only happen if a certain number of systems were taken out of conservation.
Next, russian occupiers already in April-May 2022 began to remove their multiple launch rocket systems from preservation. For example, in April, as Defense Express informed, russians took from storage at least 20 units of the Uragan systems, in May they did the same with several dozen Grad-1 systems. But even after that, in the summer of 2022, there were videos in open source showing russians were taking these remover MLRS from storage to the front line. Accordingly, the invaders now have in storage a much smaller number than 3,300 multiple launch rocket systems.
Accordingly, when the Kremlin plans to continue the war, they expect that the units of deployed mobs will be able to receive hundreds of the BM-21 Grad and Uragan systems. But it is quite possible that the maximum "reserves" that are available for them are dozens of Grad-1 and even Katyusha systems.
And what is more, russians themselves do not see any problem in this. Once their propagandists are already promoting the WWII-era D-1 howitzers as a "victory" and "Stalin’s quality".
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