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A little note from Pravda

By The Armorer on April 6, 2005 | | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (1)

Provided as translated by Pravda. New vehicle in the Russian armored force. Interesting look and concept.

Update: CAPT H provides the following (it is *so nice* to have a research assistant, I just wish he was prettier and made better coffee):

Was first seen in 1999

Was inspired by (copied from).

This is better.

And for heavy MOUT.

Russia's new defense machine, the Terminator, marks new generation of Russian weaponry 03/16/2005 12:49

The capacity of the new tank support vehicle doubles the efficiency of six armored vehicles and 40 soldiers

The Russia army is taking a new military vehicle in the arsenal - the Terminator. Such a strange name has been given to the new tank support vehicle. At the end of 2004, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was talking about new generations of the Russian arms that were planned to be added to the arsenal in 2005, he was talking about the Terminator too.

Specialists of the Ural Transport Machine-Building Design Bureau developed the new machine - the enterprise is a division of Uralvagonzavod, which is Russia's largest tank-maker.

Military specialists say that the capacity of the new tank support vehicle doubles the efficiency of six armored vehicles and 40 soldiers. Testing procedures for the latest development of the Russian defense industry are about to be over, a spokesman for the defense ministry's administration for armored vehicles, Nikolai Kovalev said.

"The use of the new machine in a tank battalion will add up to 30 percent of efficiency to the detachment. The tank support vehicle is capable of firing at three targets on a battlefield simultaneously," General Kovalev said.
The concept to develop the new tank support machine for the Russian army appeared from life experience itself. The storming of the Chechen capital of Grozny on January 1, 1995 resulted in a tragedy for the Russian federal forces. Chechen gunmen destroyed hundreds of Russian tanks and other armored vehicles in narrow streets and quarters of the city.

Russian military specialists were originally going to solve the tank support problem with the help of self-propelled antiaircraft systems known as Shilka. Four 23-millimeter guns could provide appropriate defense and fire efficiency. However, Shilka systems are not armored because they were not developed for offensive actions. In addition, Shilka does not have the most important quality at this point - it cannot destroy tanks.

The new vehicle is capable of overcoming three-meter ditches and breaching 1.5-meter walls.

Specialists of the US Armed Forces are also working on the question to develop a new armored vehicle to replace a not very successful M-2 Bradly machine.
Spokesmen for the Israeli Defense Ministry evinced interest in the new Russian tank support machine during a military technological show in the city of Nizhni Tagil. Israeli officials said that they would like to conclude a contract with Russia to acquire new machines for their Merkava tanks that were used for scouring procedures in Palestinian settlements. They later said, however, that Israeli specialists would be able to develop a similar machine themselves.

The new Russian machine as the latest military technological development is not regulated with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). The Terminator is a vehicle of a new class. The CFE Treaty stipulates certain restrictions for the number of units of weaponry in Europe.

Russia has a right to have 6,350 tanks and 11,280 armored vehicles on its territory. These terms are acceptable for Russia - they provide the necessary numeral parity with the armed forces of European NATO members. In connection with the conflict situation in the Caucasus, Russian diplomats were going to ask European authorities for certain concessions. The appearance of the Terminator makes such an intention useless, because the class of the new machine is not mentioned in legal documents of the CFE Treaty. Terminator is neither a tank, nor an armored vehicle. These peculiarities will inevitably lead to numerous discussions as far as the Terminator's class is concerned. Russia has a right to use as many Terminators as needed in the Caucasus until European authorities introduce certain amendments to the CFE Treaty. It is noteworthy, though, that the Russian treasury might not be able to handle this issue.

"Specialists of the US Armed Forces are also working on the question to develop a new armored vehicle to replace a not very successful M-2 Bradly machine. [emphasis mine, misspellings theirs] "

Heh. Wanna dance, Ivan?


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Ignore doctrine fine; not your lessons learned from CDR Salamander on April 7, 2005 3:08 PM

"One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine." -- From a Russian military document " Personally, I think excessive reliance... Read More

33 Comments

By Were-Kitten on April 6, 2005 9:31 AM
I am diggin' that new tank. I don't know anything about them, but it looks so purty....
 
By Boquisucio on April 6, 2005 9:40 AM
That looks like an ONTOS on Steroids.
 
By Heartless Libertarian on April 6, 2005 9:58 AM
"Tank support vehicle." OK, but what can it actually do? How big is it? What's the crew? Does it carry infantry? What I can see- Weaponry: Looks like some sort of autocannon, 40mm-ish, plus 4 ready rockets or missiles on the turret. Maybe some sort of MG in a RWS that I can't see. Optics: Looks like a CITS up high on the turret-nice feature, you can look around while in full defilade. Turret is at the read, which indicates a front mounted engine, most likely. I don't see where any dismount infantry would ride or exit the vehicle. And isn't infantry about the best tank support? Actually, in urban situations, tanks are infantry support.
 
By Neffi on April 6, 2005 9:59 AM
heh- '...not a tank, nor an armored vehicle...' I see Pravda has the same problem with civilian journalists as the US media.
 
By John of Argghhh!!! on April 6, 2005 10:04 AM
Just another target, fellas, just another target.
 
By Neffi on April 6, 2005 10:28 AM
"Gunner! Battle sight! New type of military vehicle classification sorta-AFV type thingy! Ah Helk, just put a sabot through it..."
 
By SangerM on April 6, 2005 10:39 AM
PRAVDA = TRUTH Sounds like more x-communist propaganda practice to me... Not a tank, not an armored vehicle? Lessee: tracks, armor, turret, lots of guns and rocket launchers (amy even be an ADA missile launcher on the sides) Looks a lot like a bradley wanna-be to me (not bad considering the bradley is a failed design)... And although the Israelis may have been interested, it was probably to determine that once again the Russians haven't built something they have to worry about... Sheesh... This is the same publication that once declared the US Boy Scouts was a paramilitary organization working for the defense department... phoo-ey!
 
By J.M. Heinrichs on April 6, 2005 11:49 AM
It's called a BTR-T, and was first shown at Omsk in 1999. The prototype was built on a T-55 chassis, and appeared to be 'inpired' by the Israeli Achzarit. At previous exhibitions, the Russians began showing a variety of special purpose vehicles on tank chassis, so a version of the BTR-T on a T-72/T-90 chassis is to be expected. Note that while the BTR-T resembles an Achzarit, it does lack certain of the operationally useful features of the latter. Cheers JMH
 
By Blake Kirk on April 6, 2005 12:57 PM
I'd have to guess it's designed to do long-range direct-fire support for armor in the attack with the missiles, and close-range anti-infantry support for armor in restrictive terrain with the autocannon. Which latter role is stupid. The way you support armor in restrictive terrain like cities and swamps and narrow mountain passes is to not send them in at all unless your dismounted infantry needs them for support. (BTW: did anyone else see that we are FINALLY putting a telephone handset on the rear fender of the Abrams so that the grunts on the ground can actually talk to the treadheads inside the big can?) I doubt the Russians' new toy will stand up well to 120mm sabot, or even to M900 105mm sabot.
 
By Heartless Libertarian on April 6, 2005 12:58 PM
One thing I do remember from Bradley gunnery...always kill the funny looking vehilces first. That never made the engineers and FOs feel too good...
 
By John of Argghhh!!! on April 6, 2005 1:30 PM
That's certainly more informative than the Pravda article, John. Blake - while I agree with most of your points, tanks in cities properly supported is gaining support out of OIF. HL- Yeah, there's a reason I always kept my 4 antennae tied as low as I could on my M113. Then we made the M981 FISTV look like a TOW vehicle - even to the point of painting block spots on the G/VLLD housing so it *wouldn't* look like a FISTV... That's like painting a Danish Leopard II to look like a German Leopard II, for some reason it's supposed to be less threatening or something. Then along come the Brads, and my FISTers (I'm long since operating out of the BDE TOC or Cdrs Bradley) who are running around in a unique vehicle... that ITV with antennae. Yep. Know what you mean. Because it's exactly what I taught my FOs to do, too... if you're shooting Copperhead, shoot the funny looking vehicles, the tanks will take care of the tanks.
 
By CDR Salamander on April 6, 2005 2:00 PM
Yep, nice new target....... if you have a wing full of Mavericks, but I wouldn't want to running around on the deck and have this thing drive around the corner. ....but not as scary as saying "....not very successful M-2.." on this blog. I think that is even more dangerous than saying something about Canada... Lets see who they export it to.
 
By John of Argghhh!!! on April 6, 2005 2:11 PM
Like I said, "Wanna Dance, Ivan?" Of course, in your case, Commander, you could just drop those Dell Notebooks on 'em, eh?
 
By Were-Kitten on April 6, 2005 2:22 PM
I may think it's purty, but that doesn't mean I don't want you guys to blow it up! I am also waiting to see who they sell the suckers to. *just a clarification*
 
By J.M. Heinrichs on April 6, 2005 2:29 PM
1. Looks aren't everything, see: "GUNNER". 2. If I offered you "Guatamala Huila", you would ask if that was "Real Java". http://www.murchies.com/ Cheers JMH
 
By John of Argghhh!!! on April 6, 2005 2:31 PM
Um, kitten - blowing things up, it's, it's, it's what we *do*!
 
By John of Argghhh!!! on April 6, 2005 2:33 PM
Um, John, not so - Army coffee isn't real. It's just an adrenal stimulant. This morning it was Mayan Black Onyx for brekkers at the Castle. We grind our own. We are way too lazy to roast - but we *do* grind! As for pretty - well, we're still holding out there.
 
By Heartless Libertarian on April 6, 2005 3:48 PM
John-don't forget that the M981 was a funny looking vehicle that's SLOWER than all the vehicles in the companies that they were supporting. My CO just told them to find a spot where they could see the OBJ and stay hull down.
 
By John of Argghhh!!! on April 6, 2005 4:00 PM
Yep. Couldn't use the targeting head while moving anyway - and raising and stowing takes a lot longer than the TOW box/GVLLD mount on the Bradley FIST.
 
By Sgt. B. on April 6, 2005 6:07 PM
*drooling* Look, Papa! TOW-chow! (Ran hybrid heavy-gun/TOW-2B section as last combat unit in the Corps, trained to kill all things armored, tracked or otherwise...) They STILL ain't built anything short of an MBT that Momma Duece won't eat for lunch!
 
By Sgt. B. on April 6, 2005 6:10 PM
We had something called an M198... I think it's that mucking huge 155 mm artillery piece that the 10th and 11th Marines use... What was the old 105mm self-propelled howizter?
 
By J.M. Heinrichs on April 6, 2005 7:42 PM
M108, kid brother to the M109; or were you thinking further back? Cheers JMH
 
By Blake Kirk on April 7, 2005 12:07 AM
+++ Blake - while I agree with most of your points, tanks in cities properly supported is gaining support out of OIF. +++ The key point of this observation of course being the phrase "properly supported." That means tanks mixed with infantry or other clued-in dismounts (19D cav scouts, combat engineers, MP's, etc.) From personal experience I can tell you that having the tanks show up at the edge of the KZ for your close anti-armor ambush with a platoon or two of competent dismounts just frankly sucks. OTOH, for a good example of how not to do it, ref the Russian debacles a while back with tanks and no dismounts in the capital city of Chechnya, the name of which city I'm misremembering right now. I didn't mean to suggest that tanks are never useful in cities, (I know better than that,) but rather that they ought not to be sent into urban areas alone. BTW, I was infantry for the 10 years I spent on active duty in the Army, (82d and 101st,) mostly in TOW platoons, then went into the Army Reserve and spent 14 years doing the Armor thing with the M60A3TTS, then with the M1, then with the M1A1. I've played both sides of the street on this one. And i'd like to observe that I really miss the broad selection of ammunition we had for M68 105mm cannon on the M60 and early M1's. HEP is just the thing for those pesky fighing positions inside masonry structures...
 
By cw4billt on April 7, 2005 1:20 AM
Nice to see they modified TUNGUSKA into something that isn't designed to blow us fling-wing types out of existence. 30mm, water-cooled jackets, looks like AT-6 in lieu of SA-16.
 
By J.M. Heinrichs on April 7, 2005 7:54 AM
More information here: Terminator. Its real Name is the BMPT. More photos here. Cheers JMH
 
By CDR Salamander on April 7, 2005 8:05 AM
BK, Hey, I know I am just a squid, but +++ Blake - while I agree with most of your points, tanks in cities properly supported is gaining support out of OIF. +++ The key point of this observation of course being the phrase "properly supported." That means tanks mixed with infantry or other clued-in dismounts.. Didn't Rommel and Patton already learn and publish those lessons? On top, funny, that (!) only now they are looking at putting a phone on the M1 MBT so the guys on the deck can talk to the folks in the target...err...tank; isn't that another "relearned lesson?" I know the M48 had one, did the M60? None of this is new, and many these issues were already learned in Vietnam, or heck, early 2001. Hey, I'm way out of my comfort zone....now lets talk about taking the MK13 launchers off the FF(noG)-7s... ;)
 
By John of Argghhh! on April 7, 2005 8:27 AM
CDR Salamander... we didn't put 'phones on the M1 because we weren't gonna fight like that in cities any more... and there was the little problem of *we always* put them on the rear of the beast - and the M1, is, well, *warm* there. Ergo, since we couldn't put them on the back, and we weren't going to fight in cities (we're enlightened, and look at Grozny, too!) it was apparently a tough leap to say, hmmm, put 'em on the side. Of course, as the Marines discovered with their add-on phone, in city fighting, they do tend to get *ground off* while pivot-steering your way through narrow streets choked with debris... nonetheless, all your points are taken. Reality is, I think - it's an artifact of peacetime training and Cold War inertia. Because we have so much mandatory crap that fills the training schedules to make sure that people think correctly, feel good about themselves, and have ethics (lead by example, anyone?) and we got so branch/formation stovepiped in the Cold War and beyond - and we were *very* comfortable training in that venue, that, despite the 'lunatic fringe' we eschewed city fighting. Hell, we hardly had any places to do it competently. Funny how a war focuses you. It is, as the Generals are wont to say, "A Vision Thing." And our senior leaders dropped the ball, because they were as target fixated as the rest of the mainstream Army. The Mech infantry didn't dismount much, the Heavy Force didn't like training in cities, and the Light guys couldn't get anyone Heavy to come play with them - and it's not like the signs weren't there, the Heavy-Light rotations at the NTC during the late 80's early 90's when I was O/C'ing there showed that Heavy Force commanders were generally clueless in the integration and application of the Light guys, and vice versa... You fight as you train. Then, when you actually fight, you start to train as you fight, witness the seismic shift in the training topography at the big Combat Training Centers (with the least adaptation needed at Fort Polk, the greatest at Fort Irwin and BCTP) as well as the Posts, Camps, and Stations where combat elements trained. And some things are just timeless. Even though we try to stock the training centers with people who were recently in the fight, people recently out of the centers gripe about not being prepared for what they face. That is a multi-level problem. Some of it is there is just so much time, and they *were* prepared for a lot what they face, but what you remember after getting into a firefight isn't what you knew or did well, but what surprised you. There are limitations on time. Then there is diversity of experience. Just having a combat patch isn't the full answer. The experience of 4th ID troops in OIF was vastly different from 3rd ID. And time lag. The war, and combat are in real-time, with both sides adapting under severe evolutionary pressure. The training base is hard-pressed to keep up, much less get ahead of the game. We do it much better than we did in previous wars. But it will *never* be enough, nor will it *ever* much exceed the 70% solution, based on the way diminishing returns applies to effort beyond 70%. But ya hafta keep plugging away at it.
 
By CDR Salamander on April 7, 2005 9:49 AM
John, I heard a Lt. Col. the other day talking about relearning urban fighting with tanks and he talked along the lines of what you posted above. I'm paraphrasing here but he said something to the effect, "We spent all this time practicing as if we had some open terrain to move around in. The thing is, these things like cities keep popping up in our perfect maneuver warfare world. Too hard to model, we are used to going around them (bypass and haul a55), so we just didn't train to fight in them. We do now though." That's fair. Man, I am out of my comfort zone, but I think I might post on the subject above at my site later working in the "lessons relearned" theory. Goodness knows we do that enough in the Navy, just no one is shooting at us right now, so it isn't making the news. Cheers! Phibian
 
By Blake Kirk on April 7, 2005 11:19 AM
+++ The Mech infantry didn't dismount much, the Heavy Force didn't like training in cities, and the Light guys couldn't get anyone Heavy to come play with them - and it's not like the signs weren't there, the Heavy-Light rotations at the NTC during the late 80's early 90's when I was O/C'ing there showed that Heavy Force commanders were generally clueless in the integration and application of the Light guys, and vice versa... +++ Oh, gods... ...please do not remind me of those days. I did a rotation to NTC in late 1985 as part of 1-187 Inf out of the 101st to do a light/heavy rotation with a brigade from what was then the 24th Mech out of Fort Stewart. What between an idiot battalion commander trying to salvage his career after a you-might-want-to-consider-falling-on-your-sword efficiency report from our previous brigade commander and a clueless brigade commander from Stewart, we got a real trouncing from the OPFOR guys at Irwin. He11, they were spending more time in our rear areas than we were. And you know, the last time I looked, dismounted crunchies were just nowhere near as fast travelling cross-country as people in tracked vehicles. So what on earth ever made anyone think that we could fight a covering force battle against the equivalent of a Red Army tank brigade? There's something about the institutional mindset in the US Army that makes it damned near impossible to retain lessons learned in the heat of battle. Our guys over in Iraq and Afghanistan have been having to pay with sweat and blood to learn precisely the same lessons about **HOW** you have to fight an insurgency that their father learned through sweat and blood in Vietnam. And some people keep making the same assumption: that the insurgents, because they are Arabs and relatively poor, must also be stupid. That sort of thinking gets soldiers killed. When I was at Mosul with the 101st in early 2004, one of our QRF's captured some home-built multiple-rocket launchers that had just been used to shell the airport. (They mangaged to bracket the replacement detatchment without actually hitting it: 3 or four minor wounds from fragments, nobody killed, thank God.) The DISCOM S-2 NCOIC ventured the opinion that these things weren't very sophisticated. I had to point out to him that they were certainly crudely built, but that they were NOT unsophisticated. Durn things were set up to fire 6-10 57mm aircraft rockets each, were designed to collapse and fold so that they would fit in the trunk of a Toyota, they had a simple mechanism to permit multiple elevation settings, and the firing circuit boxes had custom-made printed circuit boards. As several reporters have pointed out of late, there's something very Darwinian about being and insurgent: the slow and the stupid get weeded out fairly rapidly. I think I've still got a few digital photos of these things lying around. If anyone wanted to see them I could forward them for posting. I took the durn pictures after all, so there aren't any copyright issues or anything
 
By Heartless Libertarian on April 7, 2005 12:40 PM
And the Army in Vietnam had to relearn counter guerilla lessons, after having fought guerilla wars in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, and against Indian tribes in the latter half of the 19th. And here at Ft Jackson, my Bde commander pounds the "the bad guys aren't stupid" bit into our heads all the time. Especially on the IED front.
 
By SangerM on April 7, 2005 3:55 PM
You know, I don't think it's that the Army has to relearn the art of war, so much as it has to relearn the hate in war.... A successful Counter-insurgency requires you to assume that the enemy is EVERYWHERE, and therefore, you have to be ready to fight and kill all the time. You also have to be willing to accept that the enemy will use 'unfair' methods, and even cruel methods to kill you, as in children with grenades, bombs near schools, etc. Every American warfighting generation--STARTING WITH ANDREW JACKSON has had to learn these, just as the British had to learn about Americans in the early revolutionary war years. My step father was a Marine Raider in WWII, he fought bad guys who fought dirty. I have acquaintances who fought in Korea, and friends who fought in Vietnam, most of whom also talk about the bad guys fighting "dirty." Now we have so-called insurgents fighting dirty in Iraq and we act surprised. Again, the issue is not that the Army has to learn how to fight, it's that Americans have to learn to fight to win... I know that's simplistic, but I recently finished a good book titled An Army At Dawn, about how badly the American Army sucked in North Africa, and how it got better, though it nearly got its a$$ kicked off the continent. Amazingly, the things in that book read like the lessons the Army has had to learn fighting the modern insurgents, not in the details, but in the attitudes of us and them. We figger it'll be easy, they figger it'll be tough. Fortunately, most of our enemies also need to re-learn things, like the fact that the US Army doesn't get beat in the field, it just gets madder and meaner and more lethal as it remembers what it's there for. We didn't lose the Vietnam War militarily, and Ridgeway only stopped at the 38th parallel because the North Koreans sued for peace when they realized they were about to get their a$$ stomped a second time. And so on... Just as Bin Laden and Hussein have learned, and all the thousands of _dead_ insurgents, we will win. It's just a matter of getting mad enough to do so. Frankly, with every IED, the enemy just hastens his demise... ~SangerM
 
By CDR Salamander on April 8, 2005 11:30 PM
Oh, and speading or WWII armor, whodathunk the Germans at AT ATs? http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/2208/EasternFront.jpg Yep this guy has way too much time on his hands. http://p094.ezboard.com/fkidrobotfrm23.showMessage?topicID=128.topic I like the action shot with the Waffen SS in the Eastern Front the best. http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/5930/march.jpg (oh, admit it. You're a Star Wars geek)
 
By John of Argghhhh!!! on April 9, 2005 11:58 AM
Even better'n that... I'm going to make it a post...