Weapons manufacturer Uralvagonzavod has manufactured a dozen high-tech BMP-T Terminator combat cars for the Russian military.
This spring, most, if all, heavily armed tracked BMP-Ts traveled to eastern Ukraine and joined the Russian army’s 90th Tank Division fighting in Luhansk Oblast.
They have been at the center of the fighting along what is one of the most dangerous fronts in Russia’s more than 10-month war against Ukraine. “In the spring and early summer, those machines were controlled to go out on their own,” Starshe Eddy wrote. , one of the main Telegram channels for experts of the Russian army.
The Terminators were attacked at least once and spent time in a repair depot. But it turns out that all complex vehicles have survived. This week, the pro-Kremlin media company ANNA News visited the Terminator company on the front line near Svatove.
The fact that the Ukrainians have not yet managed to shoot down a single BMP-T, which external analysts can confirm, testifies to the thick armor and heavy weaponry of this type. But it is also conceivable that Russian commanders are especially wary of ultra-rare vehicles.
After all, they are the spoiled children of the media. ANNA is the only media operation presented by BMP-T. Russia Today also followed the Terminator company.
After wasting more than 8,000 fashionable cars in Ukraine, the Russian military turned to 50-year-old T-62 tanks stored long-term.
In an army that increasingly resembles the Soviet army of the mid-Cold War, BMP-Ts are special cases. High-tech and very rugged where other Russian cars are low-tech and vulnerable.
Cancelling one of their BMP-T would be embarrassing for the Russians. Which is a clever explanation for why Ukrainians are looking for vehicles even harder to attack.
The five-person BMP-T is a unique vehicle type. It is not a tank with a larger gun of giant caliber. It is not an infantry fighting vehicle with a compartment for a squad of soldiers. No, the BMP-T is anything. between. A tanker vehicle.
The 48-ton BMP-T has a turret with two 30-millimeter guns and a quadruple launcher for anti-tank missiles. Its armored cover—an aggregate of steel, composite armor, and reactive armor—is that of a tank.
In Russian doctrine, Terminator tanks escort them from infantry. The need is obvious. Ukrainian infantry carrying man-portable anti-tank missiles destroyed thousands of Russian vehicles.
Of course, you shouldn’t bring a multimillion-dollar BMP-T into your tanks. Most armies surround their tanks with dismounted infantry to combat enemy infantry that threatens tanks. But the Russian military didn’t have enough trained infantry before wasting tens of thousands of its most productive infantrymen in Ukraine. Now the infantry shortage is even worse.
A handful of BMP-T in a single corporation cannot protect the entire Russian tank corps. The BMP-T cannot even protect the entire 90th Tank Division. will have an effect on the campaign,” the UK Ministry of Defence predicted in May.
BMP-T is smart at two things at opposite ends of the military’s activity spectrum. A dozen BMP-Ts can make a tank battalion win a small tactical fight. And they can also assign the Russian military a symbol of technological sophistication in the data space. .
For the BMP-T to be in the middle of the spectrum (operations), the Russian military would have to win and deploy several hundred vehicles.
“It is imaginable and mandatory to manufacture them in smart numbers,” Starshe Eddy wrote in reference to the BMP-T. It is true that further acquisition of BMP-T is mandatory. It is not true that it is imaginable.
The Russian military cannot BMP-T. No when the Russian economy is contracting and the Kremlin is struggling to repair the vehicle losses of an entire army.
Therefore, the BMP-T will remain a rarity with a much greater impact on the media than on the battlefield.