It is extremely difficult to melt down the armor of a tank or armored personnel carrier to make other weapons—there are no such furnaces in Ukrainian workshops. But in Europe, alloy steel scrap is expensive. Experts have calculated that foreign companies can invest up to 4.5 billion euros in processing the resource that lies on the roads or “decorates” the gardens of Ukrainians.
Damaged military equipment of the Russian Army is stored at metal depots or on the side of roads. If you collect all the destroyed equipment from the beginning of the war, and these are tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, airplanes and missiles, after processing it into scrap metal, you will get 1 million tons, the head of the expert and scientific council of the Ukrainian Association of Secondary Metals, Alexander Sheiko, estimated in an interview with the BBC radio station.
If you sell the T-72 tank for scrap metal, one ton in Ukraine will cost about 6,000 hryvnia, and the tank itself weighs up to 45 tons. And in European countries the price rises to 2-3 thousand euros per ton. Cutting armor requires special equipment, since it is made of high-alloy steel, in which nickel, chromium and molybdenum are added.
“We have counted about 4.5 billion euros of potential investments that could be made by foreign companies in the processing of this scrap,” says Alexander Sheiko.
Donors of spare parts - how the Ukrainian Armed Forces use tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other trophies
Completely destroyed equipment of the Russian Armed Forces is used as museum exhibits, for example, on Mikhailovskaya Square in the center of Kyiv. In addition to tanks, the exhibition displays the Msta-S howitzer and the Pantsir anti-aircraft missile system, destroyed by Ukrainian defenders.
Captured and damaged Russian trophies are divided into three categories. The first has minor damage, such copies are restored by repair teams of Ukrainian Armed Forces units, Nikolai Salamakha, an armored vehicle expert and retired tank forces officer, tells Focus.
Armor factories also send their specialists for inspection and repair. The second category of trophies requires more serious repairs and if they are registered, the Central Armored Directorate within the Armed Forces of Ukraine sends them to factories or repair regiments.
“The third category is unsuitable for repair, and is used as a donor of spare parts. They remove surviving components and assemblies to repair other captured vehicles of the same class. In a month it is realistic to repair about 1/4 of the amount of enemy equipment that appears, and half in about 3 months. Up to a third of military trophies end up in workshops in a condition unsuitable for repair,” the specialist explained.
Is it possible to make a new weapon out of a burnt out tank?
Melting down military armor to make other weapons, a new tank or armored personnel carrier is a complex business. According to specialists, metallurgical enterprises of Ukraine are at risk in a full-scale war and will not undertake such things. The enterprises do not have furnaces for melting high-alloy steel with a capacity of 10 to 100 tons.
No one will be engaged in the resale of military metal to EU countries in conditions of hostilities. The command’s first task now is to find weapons and ammunition, the expert says.
Director of the steelmaking department of the Arcelor Mittal Kryvyi Rih metallurgical enterprise, Dmitry Terekhov, in communication with the Air Force, said that military scrap metal from destroyed equipment for metallurgical production is not very interesting.
“The high costs of processing military scrap do not allow it to be freely sold on the market,” he briefly noted.
Alexander Sheiko adds that another problem in handling burnt equipment of the RF Armed Forces is the registration of ownership rights. Trophies could be assigned to territorial communities, military units or people in whose gardens it stands. Another unresolved and important issue is the danger of mining or the presence of ammunition in armored personnel carriers or tanks.
