BMPT "Terminator"

The BMPT is supposed to operate with tanks in places where infantry outside the vehicle would be just too vulnerable to enemy snipers or fire.

The purpose of the bow guns is to enable the vehicle to effectively engage three targets at one time... the bow gunners can engage enemy snipers or MG positions or anti armour teams, while the main gunner with 30mm cannon can engage gun positions and light vehicles and aircraft, while the missiles can engage enemy weapons out to 6km or so.

Remember this vehicle operates with tanks so enemy tanks are not the problem, it is infantry and air and ground light targets in numbers that this vehicle is intended to deal with.

Air burst 30mm cannon rounds would be rather useful for enemy troops behind walls etc, or air targets like drones.

The best equivalent would be the T-35 which from memory had three turrets... the big central one with a short barrel 76.2mm gun for use against bunkers or groups of enemy troops or light structures, while the two side turrets had machine guns for dealing with enemy infantry. As the vehicle approached enemy lines the big gun  would deal with enemy guns that could defeat the vehicle while the mgs dealt with enemy troops... obviously coordination in a modern vehicle should be much better.

Ideally a T-14 based BMPT will have three crew in the hull front and no one in the turret... allowing more weapons of different types and much larger volumes of ammo to be carried, but essentially the BMP armament is designed for use against enemy infantry and light vehicles including enemy equivalent BMPs with anti tank missiles for emergency self defence. A BMPT needs similar weaponry really but without the troop capacity, which could be used for more ammo.

           By that logic why aren't tanks equipped with hull mounted MGs? Also wierd that you would even mention the T-35 as an equivalent, because it was an abject failure, not only due to mechanical flaws, but the ever present problem of crew coordination and safety. I bet they didnt add an extra 2 hatches on the BMPT for the extra 2 crewmen, therefore making them far more vulnerable to be barbequed in case of a fire. The lack of an extra escape hatch was one of the reasons hull gunners on T-34s were the most likely to die, and by the end of WW2 T-34-85ss would often be driven by 4 crewmen. Unless those bow MGs are gonna be controled by some kind of AI, it is a 1930s level mindset to add 2 more crew members for some dinky MGs. Real life isnt WH40k

By that logic why aren't tanks equipped with hull mounted MGs?

If tanks operated without infantry support they would have all sorts of MGs bristling out of them in all directions.

Look at early tank designs and many had machine guns pointing out the front and rear of turrets as well as hull mounted weapons too and roof mounted guns as well.

Tanks evolved into vehicles to hunt and kill enemy armoured vehicles, while APCs and later IFVs... or BTRs and BMPs were evolved to carry around troops so they had the machine gunner infantry and also mounted machine guns and cannons for engaging multiple enemy targets.

Also wierd that you would even mention the T-35 as an equivalent, because it was an abject failure, not only due to mechanical flaws, but the ever present problem of crew coordination and safety.

That was a mistake, I was actually meaning the T-28. The T-35 was supposed to be an anti tank tank AND an infantry support tank so it had to have five turrets with 45mm anti tank guns and rifle calibre machine guns and a short barrel 76.2mm gun.

The T-28 just had the short 76.2mm gun for hard points and structures and two machine gun turrets for enemy infantry and soft vehicles.

In a COIN type situation the machine guns will be raking enemy positions and exposed enemy troops while the heavier gun will be used against bunkers and trenches and buildings as well as groups of infantry or enemy guns or light vehicles.

In that case it would be useful with a T-34 where the T-34 could then deal with enemy tanks and would no longer need to worry about enemy infantry or anti tank guns.

The T-28 is too slow and too lightly armoured to operate with the T-34 of course but if it was made smaller and with better armour and a much better engine you could put the 76.2mm gun of the T-34 into the T-28 and use a high velocity 57mm gun in the T-34 so the T-28 deals with infantry and obstacles and everything the T-34 used to use HE rounds against and anything with armour including Panthers, the T-34 with a high velocity 57mm gun could deal with at useful distances from any angle.

That would be a case where the T-28 was acting like infantry support... but obviously communication and optics and commanding such vehicles was beyond the technology of the time so the T-34 got the heavier calibre gun that was more general purpose and it essentially became a main battle tank.

I bet they didnt add an extra 2 hatches on the BMPT for the extra 2 crewmen, therefore making them far more vulnerable to be barbequed in case of a fire.

The T-72 based BMPT has five crew hatches... three in the hull front and two in the turret.

The lack of an extra escape hatch was one of the reasons hull gunners on T-34s were the most likely to die, and by the end of WW2 T-34-85ss would often be driven by 4 crewmen.

The main problem was the hatches were too small and when they fixed that with the supersized main hatch on the turret the hatch became too heavy for one man to lift.

Much later vehicles had similar problems.

Unless those bow MGs are gonna be controled by some kind of AI, it is a 1930s level mindset to add 2 more crew members for some dinky MGs. Real life isnt WH40k

Interesting you think that a man controlling a machine gun getting orders and target cues from the tank commander is something from the 1930s.

Having crew manning machine guns that can shoot threats close to the tank is actually a good idea... it is normally not done these days because the space either side of the driver under the heaviest armour of the hull is usually taken by tank calibre main rounds.

You will find external remote weapon stations appearing on armoured vehicles... I guess they are stupid backward wastes of time too maybe?

The thing is, its extremely expensive to introduce another line of vehicles, but even more difficult to integrate one with its own distinct new CONOPS into the operational doctrine. For it to make perfect sense, the BMPT has to absolutely introduce a new capability that the other AFVs it is slated to fight with simply don't have or rather to complement their existing weaknesses with the BMPT's strengths. Tell me, apart from a different weapons suite and maybe additional 2 engagement channels, what sets the BMPT apart from the tanks its supposed to support? Not much, I'll tell you.

They are going through the process of developing at least four possibly five different vehicle families... Armata, Kurganets, Boomerang, Tyhoon, and probably a DT-30 based dual chassis vehicle family of arctic types with probably 27 distinct different vehicle role/platforms EACH.

It is a simple fact of armoured warfare that a tank is not great at fighting infantry... it is optimised for fighting other tanks and armoured vehicles. That is why tanks operate with BMPs and BTRs as they each provide the other mutual support.

The BMPT concept is for use in situations where infantry are of little to no use... perhaps the enemy have excellent snipers and lots of machine guns and ATGM teams or whatever.

It makes no sense to use standard BTRs and BMPs in such a situation because their troops become ineffective and vulnerable if the vehicles armour is defeated.

The purpose of the BMPT therefore is overwhelming fire power against predominantly infantry targets... in the past that was Shilka or Tunguska with enormous rates of fire automatic cannon to obliterate enemy positions from standoff distances of 1.5-2km range so their thin armour was not a problem.

The BMPT therefore adopted the requirement for tank level armour so it could operate with the tanks, but obviously thinks like self awareness and fire power are important... you need gunfire detection systems so if sniper fire or anti tank rockets start coming in you can return fire... optical and audio sensors therefore would be critical to find the source of incoming enemy fire, but multiple sources would require the ability to fire in multiple directions at once... but you want a human looking through the optics and firing the grenade launcher lest you start firing on a kid playing with fire works or who just happens to be in line of sight near the position the snipers shot came from... AI is just not perfect enough yet.

The BMPT's weapons suite is almost the exact opposite, t

The BMPT might be used to suppress areas or locations... but often it could just call in artillery or HE tank fire to do so...

Located enemy infantry positions can be obliterated with a 57mm HE round of 7kgs of HE per shot... especially an airburst that explodes inside the room the fire is coming from.

in fact a BMPT does absolutely nothing towards preventing ambushes, and a crafty enemy can always target the BMPT vehicles first in any case leaving the whole unit devoid of vehicles apart from the soft-skinned IFVs that can respond effectively.

But a BMPT is as hard to deal with as a MBT because it is carrying the same armour and ERA and APS etc etc... in situations where a BMPT is needed there wont be any soft skinned vehicles... that is the point... only armata divisions will have armata based BMPTs... any other division will have kurganets or boomerang or typhoon or DT-30 based vehicles which is not really a proper BMPT.

There are even MBT upgrades being looked into that integrate a 30 mm autocannon to the MBT's arsenal that would give the tanks the same engagement capabilities against targets unreachable by their main guns.

That just replicates the capability of the BMPs it will be operating with already... in a western force that makes sense because their BMPs are not as well armoured as the MBTs, but for Russia in an Armata force the BMP and the MBT are the same vehicle with unmanned turrets...

The bow grenade launchers also could not reach that high up either, nor could they efficiently contribute to the firefight being locked in a small firing sector with little wiggle in any direction

The limited field of fire could be solved simply by the fact that when the commander orders a bow gunner to engage a target he can also order the driver to turn the vehicle in a suitable direction to allow that target to be engaged... or for two targets to be engaged by both bow gunners while the gunner in the turret can engage a third target in any direction using the turret.

Another feature is that the bow gunners should have displays in front of them so they could check the sides and rear of the vehicle for security to ensure no enemy troops sneak up on the vehicle.

They could also control drones and operate them around the vehicle looking for targets or threats behind obstacles cameras on the vehicle have no line of sight to.

In any case, if you really want to spoil ambushes we have just the thing for that - COTS drones providing tactical top cover. There, I just saved you billions in rubles and tons of headaches.

A BMPT is a vehicle that can be used in multiple different ways... its purpose is not set in stone. You could use it as it was conceptually intended... instead of BMPs and BTRs to support tank operations defeating threats tanks are not so ideal for dealing with. You could use it in forces that include BMPs and BTRs as a vehicle specialising in taking out enemy ATGM teams and drones. In some COIN operations where the enemy has no armour at all you could use it with BMPs and BTRs so you don't need to send tanks into the theatre. You can use it for convoy protection or for airfield defence or to defend an HQ or Comm centre together with SAMs in case a ground force is used instead of air power.

You could sit it on a boat or a train carriage to defend a ship or train from ground or air attack...

The BMPT for the Armata divisions will likely be based on the T-15 so there will be plenty of rear hull space where the troop of ten soldiers will be sitting... you could use the BMPT version with screens for operating remote weapon stations on the rear hull with grenade launchers that can fire 360 degrees in above 45 degree angle fire and perhaps 180 degrees of direct fire... you could have two rear mounted grenade launchers with Kord coaxials to cover sides and rear with a raised but unmanned turret to also give 360 degree fire zones over top... the raised turret designed to give 20 degree gun depression all round too which would be handy. So that would be two crew in the rear controlling two rear mounted gun turrets so two more controlling land or air UAVs collecting information for the division it operates with and the rest of the hull space filled with ammo.

limb wrote:I bet they didnt add an extra 2 hatches on the BMPT for the extra 2 crewmen

Have you even looked at a BMPT?

It just so happens to have 5 hatches, 3 in the hull and 2 in the turret.

The only two problems it has are its insufficient armour and inefficient weapons.

Isos wrote:Technically speaking all the weight lost on the turret can be added as armour on sides and on the front.

Now if only they would do that, preferably with a resilient form of NERA so that it could last longer against multiple infantry rocket attacks.

Since it's not designed to fight tanks but infantry, its weapons are very good.

Yes but it could still do with some rocket pods and a powerful explosive weapon, they could remove the one 30mm cannon, add a 160mm mortar and add some hardpoints for S-8 rocket pods or the Uran-9's Smell racks so that it could have more options for purging urban environments.

Isos wrote:Technically speaking all the weight lost on the turret can be added as armour on sides and on the front. ...

Which was supposed to be the first thing they should have done (and they said they would) but instead they just swapped main gun with 30mm and called it a day

A scam by UVZ, plain and simple

I've heard it bandied around quite a bit but reading about the experiences of soldiers who had to fight without tank support it seems the consensus is they'd rather have the unwieldy tank with them than not.

Not a good reason to have a tank there though... Russian infantry have BTR or BMP support which means they have rather better fire support than most western infantry units even without tank or artillery support.

Infantry assaults usually occur when the troops are dropped off by their BMPs or BTRs and the vehicles retire to provide overwatch... anything that opens fire on the troops moving forward gets plastered with 30mm cannon fire or 30mm grenade fire or 100mm HE rounds or missiles.

Not sure what more a 125mm gun really brings to that party except if a Leopard II rolls out of the village...

Thing is, its absolutely not true at all. If you think about it most firefights devolve into mini battles of position with one side trying to pin their enemy in place using fires and angling to get in a position where his enemy would be exposed to deliver the coup de grace.

Most Russian infantry units have all sorts of shoulder fired weapons to deal with all sorts of fixed positions and are supported by vehicles with serious HE potential like the 100mm guns on the BMP-3s for example.

Russian forces also always include tanks and a significant percentage of ammo in Russian tanks is HE FRAG and currently airburst fuses are used as standard on many tank types too.

So you can't really say that the tank is poor at dealing with infantry just because its optimized to defeat its own type first and foremost.

A tank is poor at dealing with infantry otherwise you could just have armoured formations that only had tanks and no troops or BMPs or any other support.

Tanks used on their own often get wiped out because infantry swarm all over them and they are not able to deal with large numbers of targets at once... especially soft targets.

But bring a tank into the mix and you get to skip that and you can just go straight to blasting their positions flat. In most cases just hearing the rumbling of tracks is enough to let the other side know that its their cue to leave the battlefield altogether. So you can't really say that the tank is poor at dealing with infantry just because its optimized to defeat its own type first and foremost.

When the enemy is well supplied with anti armour rockets and missiles the sound of a tank engine just means a nice big target with all the enemy soldiers inside with poor situational awareness and not shooting at me.

If the BMPT has to call in the artillery or the tanks to do the killing for it, then why even have it in the first place? Any soldier with a battlefield tracker can do the same job.

I don't know... maybe a forward observer in a vehicle with long range high res night and all weather optics with modern capable communications systems and tank level protection and mobility might be a bit safer than someone on their own.

With a BMPT a tank force can move faster and don't need to worry about lighter vehicles getting picked off first because they are not lighter.

Thing is a 125 mm HE shell would have around 3 kg of high explosive charge alone (the 7 kg for the 57 mm might be for the whole round by the way), plus 20 kg of metal.

The BMPT operates with tanks... not instead of them... and can call in artillery or air strikes of their shells are not getting the job done.

The 7kgs is the weight equivalent of the 57mm grenade round in HE. Looking at the cross section of a 125mm HE round I would think there is more than 3kgs of HE in there and certainly not 20kgs of metal.

Where a 57 mm shell would poke rather tiny holes in the wall and cause casualties in a room, a 125 mm shell would tear a torso sized hole in the wall that a quick follow-up shot can develop into an alternate entry point, absolutely devastate anything and everyone in the room even those (un)lucky enough to be behind furniture, and give everyone in the adjacent rooms severe concussions and internal injuries if not outright kill them from the blast force alone. A 125 mm shell would also defeat most hastily erected fortifications without much issue and even hesco bastions that can stop autocannon shells all day long can be levelled with slight ammo expenditure on part of the 125.

I understand the 125mm HE shell is heavier, but a 57mm grenade round is not nothing either and at 120 rounds per minute you could easily fire a burst of half a dozen rounds with rather more HE content than the number of 125mm rounds you could fire in the same amount of time (ie one).

The Armata line of vehicles would have the least use for any BMPT type vehicle, while the concept is unworkable for the lighter chassis types. See what I said about the BMPT complicating doctrine?

Not at all... the entire purpose of the BMPT is for use when the enemy has abundant anti armour weapons and lighter vehicles just would not survive... essentially the Armata division is a division of BMPT type vehicles.

If you are using lighter vehicles then BMPs and BTRs would be used instead.

Exactly - and it already achieves 90% of what the BMPT is supposed to do, a bad flag.

Not at all. The concept of the BMPT was a recognition that BMPs are too light and vulnerable to operate in hostile urban areas. In situations where the terrain is wide open and flat like the Steppe or desert enemy forces can be seen at ranges that make small arms redundant so it is another place where a BMPT might replace infantry because mounted machine guns and grenade launchers can engage enemy infantry at extended ranges where their return fire in small arms would be totally ineffective against any sort of armour.

The enemy would just have to take that limitation into account when planning where to site themselves in for an ambush. Find the widest angle that the BMPT can observe from the likely lanes of advance, then position two ambush teams where they aren't covered within that angle. Coincidentally that would put these teams at optimal spots to target the sides of the vehicle, whichever way the BMPT elects to turn to.

Yeah... ideal... if they send one BMPT that has its communications removed from a unit that has stopped using drones.

In an ambush all the vehicles can open fire in return and not just BMPTs will be firing at the ambushers... a UAV might detect the heat signature of the ambushing forces and call in an artillery strike from a nearby Grad unit to soften it up a bit...

The MBT and the BMPT simply have far too much of an overlap in capability for the BMPT to make sense.

They will be based on the same Armata vehicle base eventually, but the BMPT will be most critical in current conventional units where it offers a fire power vehicle that can't be taken out easily like BMPs can.

I don't understand why you don't get this.... a T-14 is designed to engage enemy armour with a backup ability to engage most other things. The BMPT is designed to engage everything except enemy armour... the fact that it has two 30mm cannon should be a clue...

It has to provide a capability that the tank as the primary direct LOS fires provider does not have,

It does. The 125mm gun is good for heavy structures and bunkers and fortified positions but lots of troops that are not bunched up in a heap are not such an easy target for the 125mm gun, while a burst of 20-30 rounds of 30mm HE rounds will spread shrapnel over a rather wide area and punch through light cover rather easily out to about 4km.

If it can be replicated by a simple modification of the parent tank then its simply a frivolous expenditure of resources that's simply detrimental to the overall effort. The key is to standardize and simplify, not overcomplicate and overspecialize.

Your tanks will be focussed on engaging enemy tanks and heavy armour including new HATO BMPs because they are getting close to the weight of T-90s and will require a 125mm anti armour round to deal with. The BMPTs on the other hand will be focussing on everything else.

Putting a 30mm cannon or 40mm grenade launcher on a tank is distracting it from its main purpose and further burdening the tank commander with a whole range of new targets that a BMP should be dealing with instead.

The BMPT will be present if the BMP is absent because of the level of anti armour capacity of the enemy.

Technically speaking all the weight lost on the turret can be added as armour on sides and on the front.

The turret front armour is the heaviest armour on a tank so not needing that and not having that means side and front armour for the hull can be massively increased making the vehicle vastly better protected.

What is really missing is APS systems and decent ERA systems and proper turrets that allow better arcs of fire for the front bow weapons.

I think grenade launchers are better than machine guns... I think it has been proven in combat that a burst of 3-4 grenades spreads shrapnel around the point of aim that no human could dodge and a burst of 50-100 rounds at ranges beyond 1,000m will not be as effective in spreading damage and injuries as the thousands of grenade fragments from 3-4 grenades exploding around the point of aim out to 2km.

The new 40mm grenades out to 2.5km and more explosive and fragmentation.

Yes but it could still do with some rocket pods and a powerful explosive weapon, they could remove the one 30mm cannon, add a 160mm mortar and add some hardpoints for S-8 rocket pods or the Uran-9's Smell racks so that it could have more options for purging urban environments.

I agree to a point... I would replace the two separate 30mm cannon with a single long barrel GSh-30-2 gun as fitted to the Hind and the Su-25... it has excellent rate of fire options which could be controlled using burst length.

A 160mm mortar would be too big.... 40kg HE rounds would be amazing but there will already be a mortar carrier vehicle in the unit anyway so that is redundant.

The new 57mm grenade launcher is interesting... huge HE grenade and APFSDS round that should penetrate HATO vehicles from the side or rear at decent ranges.

The idea of the rocket pods is good... Schmel rockets are relatively short range and a bit redundant with a 57mm HE round as an alternative.

40mm grenade launchers would be useful for lobbing grenades over cover.

A twin barrel 23mm cannon as fitted to the Hind would be potent with heavy HE projectiles as an option for a high fire power weapon with compact ammo you could carry a lot of rounds for. Already widely used in Il-76 rear gunner positions, aircraft carried gunpods and Hind chin turrets.

Which was supposed to be the first thing they should have done (and they said they would) but instead they just swapped main gun with 30mm and called it a day

A scam by UVZ, plain and simple

The whole concept of the BMPT becomes a little redundant with the advent of the Armata vehicle series... a T-15 with no troops and double ammo load will likely replace the entire concept... maybe with RWS with crew in the back to control them and perhaps some UAVs looking for targets....

The-thing-next-door wrote:

Isos wrote:Technically speaking all the weight lost on the turret can be added as armour on sides and on the front.

Now if only they would do that, preferably with a resilient form of NERA so that it could last longer against multiple infantry rocket attacks.

Since it's not designed to fight tanks but infantry, its weapons are very good.

Yes but it could still do with some rocket pods and a powerful explosive weapon, they could remove the one 30mm cannon, add a 160mm mortar and add some hardpoints for S-8 rocket pods or the Uran-9's Smell racks so that it could have more options for purging urban environments.

I agree and disagree with the 160mm mortar, and @garryb I think this would be a solution to the 160mm mortar being too big which it would be if u had all the other weapons on it. It's pretty simple you would design a separate vehicle armed with 160mm mortar enclosed in a turret, and maybe a single 14.5mm for protection, this would follow a few kilometres behind and once a BMPT or MBT spots a target or troops in an upper floor in a building the call in fire from 160mm mortar. As garryb says it would be too big with all the other weapons, the BMPT isn't designed to be a system that encompasses every aspect of the battlefield, and I would suggest a range of vehicles working together in various roles. And I think a 160mm mortar as suggested could be useful and if the BMPT had a built in laser designator the 160mm mortar firing laser guided round would be devastating as the mortar wouldn't be fast firing maybe 2-4 rounds a minute and having a max range of 8km it wouldn't necessarily need to be on a MBT chassis if firing from behind cover and a MT-LB or BMP-1 could be used as the chassis but I guess it wouldn't hurt using T-72 for added protection. So I would suggest a family of vehicles.

The thing is that the new Armata vehicle family are all MBT level armoured tracked vehicles, so the idea of a mortar carrier with tank level protection to operate with a BMPT is just all the vehicles in an Armata force.

The 160mm mortar suffers from being relatively close in calibre to the 152mm artillery they will be using with similar shell weight but much shorter range.

The standard mortar round used would likely be a 120mm, which could make up with rate of fire, ammo on board, and accuracy of rounds to compensate for 16kg HE rounds instead of the 40kg ones.

If you want a bigger calibre mortar for Armata then the 240mm Tulip is the obvious... but I rather suspect the 120mm mortars would be fine for most jobs... the 130kg HE rounds of the 240mm would be devastating, but most of the time probably also overkill too.

I would think having 240mm and even 203mm gun versions in an Armata vehicle range might make sense... the navy could use 152mm calibre Coalition for Destroyer sized ships and coastal artillery and develop a new even longer ranged 203mm gun for Armata forces on land and cruiser use at sea.

The problem is that they probably would not have much use for a 240mm mortar at sea so funding and improvement would be costs the Army would have to bear on its own.

The 120mm mortar is a proven effective system and I don't think they want to replace it.

NONA is popular in the VDV for its mobility and fire power.

It brings overwhelming firepower, the kind that wins firefights by default.

The BMP-3 has a 100mm rifled gun to fire HE rounds and Russian infantry forces and tank forces combine BMPs and BTRs with Tanks already.

I am suggesting that a new BMPT type fire power support vehicle would also be useful instead of tanks as well as instead of BMPs and BTRs in some situations.

The BMP-3 would not have the armor to survive close contact - a tank does.

In an Armata unit all vehicles have armata level protection. The whole point of the BMPT was to provide BMP/BTR support to a group of tanks in situations where BMPs and BTRs have armour that is too thin for them to last long.

The tank can get right in the thick of the action and with infantry to cover its blind spots and weak spots actually stands a very good chance of making it virtually unscathed.

If the enemy fire power is too strong to risk BMPs and BTRs how long will infantry survive?

Stick some more competent crews in the tanks and suddenly the problem is minimized if not disappears altogether.

The idea of the BMPT came from experience where using Shilka or Tunguska against enemy light forces was found to be very useful.... obviously tanks for use against tanks, but a fire power vehicle against infantry and ground positions... the obvious problem being that the light armour on Tunguska and Shilka is even less than on a BMP, so the requirement was tank level armour for the firepower tank support vehicles.

You might think you're clever trying to sneak in to plant charges on the tank and then the tank moves and suddenly you're painting the pavement with your guts and brains.

What you are saying is correct, but also be aware that just because the crew might see you, when previously before they didn't... they still have to shoot you to paint the streets with your internal parts... and most of the time their only chance might be to get the driver to drive over you... an ever present danger anyway with big heavy vehicles.

Properly supported and cooperating tanks should be able to see each other and clean away enemy troops with their machine guns.

Then just not make the accompanying IFVs lighter - make them the same weight class and enjoy the same levels of protection as the tanks.

That is what Armata is.

But for current units the BMPT is the replacement for BMPs and BTRs in locations where such thin skinned vehicles would not last long and infantry in the open would be killed too... ie an enemy with plenty of anti armour weapons and artillery...

No. My numbers for the 125 mm and 57 mm HE rounds are correct.

It doesn't matter... a BMPT with a 57mm grenade launcher is used against infantry targets... having 10 x 57mm rounds with HE would be far more effective at killing infantry that one big heavier round. In terms of killing power a 250kg cluster bomb kills and maims more people than a 500kg HE bomb... the 500kg bomb is vastly more powerful up close but its effect reduces with distance so at 100m it is not lethal at all. A 250kg cluster bomb might have 500 1kg HE frag bomblets that can be scattered around a 200m area and kill out to about 220m around the point of aim.

But my point remains the BMPT works together with Tanks when there is a threat of enemy armour... if there is no such threat then it makes more sense to leave behind the tanks and take BMPTs instead of tanks... but take BTRs and BMPs...

A heavy target that the 57mm gun can't deal with and you can use 120mm mortar or 152mm artillery.... or just guided anti tank missiles.

The way I understand it a large calibre shell is more efficient at demolishing stuff than a salvo of smaller calibre shells. For the mass of one .50 cal round you can get a lot more .22 rounds (exagerration) but if you try shooting a normal brick wall you'd find that while the former goes through without much issue the latter would be akin to chipping stone with a chisel with how little it damages the stuff.

That is very true, but if demolishing heavy structures is something you need to do then 152mm artillery makes sense or calling in Su-25 and Havoc attack aircraft makes more sense that blasing away with 125mm tank rounds.

A 3kg 57mm shell is hardly a little chisel.

But there wouldn't be a dedicated BMPT vehicle for the heavy formations. Its simply not needed.

It would be a T-15 with the squad of troops replaced with extra ammo for use where the situation makes troops in the open too vulnerable.

Out in the open the infantry don't matter much either. Pretty sure doctrine for both the Russians and NATO emphasize that infantry dismounts would not even leave their vehicles until prior to assaulting an enemy position, typically 300 m before.

Would depend on the terrain... open flat terrain would be suicide... delivering troops up to the edges of a built up area, or a location with dead ground allows enemy positions to be approached without being under constant fire... other wise just send in TOS and light up the first 300m of the urban area to clean them out and drop the troops there to fight house to house moving forward...

But a tank can do that too. More importantly why are we designing vehicles for the worst case scenario anyway, isn't it more productive to have it that the ambush doesn't happen in the first place. Isn't that why the emphasis on UAVs and UGVs for forward recon?

The main gun on a tank is powerful, but one shot every 6-8 seconds does not scream to the ambushers get your head down or you will lose it.

In comparison a couple of 30mm cannons opening up or a 57mm grenade launcher lobbing 3kg bombs in their direction at 120 rounds per minute or faster is more effective at blunting the ambush.

And I don't understand why you insist on there being a dichotomy when the introduction of the family of vehicles concept provides IFVs and APCs with nearly the same spectrum of capabilities as the BMPT, but sharing none of the previous vehicles of the type's weak armor protection relative to the tanks.

A fire power vehicle to support tank or other operations makes sense... right now because BMPs and BTRs don't have the armour to do the job so a T-90 based BMPT makes sense in some situations. In the future there wont be BMPTs in the lighter vehicle families as such but a firepower vehicle optimised for engaging infantry and soft targets still makes sense... essentially a T-15 with no troops but extra ammo. The US played with such a vehicle in a version of the Bradley called the M3 or something that had 50% more ammo than the original vehicle and no troops. Such a vehicle would be useful against an enemy taht is not well equipped with anti armour weapons and in fact has no tanks... in that case the B-11 Kurganets BMP and the K-17 Boomerang BMP could similarly have no troops and have extra ammo and be used as a fire support vehicle for dealing with enemy infantry where tank based support is not needed.

They might have some tanks but not as many as normal and the tanks they don't have could be replaced by firepower vehicles BMPTs instead.

As it is, there is no programmable fuzing option for the 30 mm yet, so breastworks are pretty safe places to be in as the shells would just sail right past up.

Yes there is... laser command detonated rounds. More precise than ANIET.

There aren't many situations where the enemy exceeds the amount of firing channels available to a tank platoon in the first place. Tanks can also dispatch their targets awfully quick.

Not really sure you can say that really... very few enemy forces in COIN operations or WWIII scenarios will willingly take on a much superior force in an ambush or attack... normally you give yourself a bit of an advantage before opening fire and then withdrawing.

Modern warfare is more digital and communications will be much better but there wont be an all powerful god like commander pointing out targets for each tank to engage... in practise each tank will observe a sector for targets to engage, which might result in one or two tanks having most of the targets attacking them... obviously they can communicate for other tanks to support them in engaging the targets but most other tanks would need to watch flanks and rear incase the enemy have ATGM teams trying to get some nice juicy rear and side shots...

A T-14 with a 57mm grenade launcher firing at 120-240 rpm should be able to deal with all sorts of threats with single rounds or short bursts... they also have Bulat supersonic anti armour missiles and Kornet anti armour missiles to reach out and touch and as I keep saying artillery and air support should be on call too.

It could certainly be useful. Question is would that utility be enough to make it worth the while, bearing in mind other developments that could partially and in combination fully subsume much of the BMPT's capabilities?

The BMP-3 got a 100mm rifled gun optimised for firing a heavy HE round in direct fire mode and indirect fire mode because while the 73mm gun of the BMP-1 had become obsolete in the anti armour role, it was found that the HE round was useful.

Russian special forces found the SPG-9 recoilless rifle which is essentially the same weapon with an open rear end and rounds that use more propellent to be very useful too against a range of light targets with anti armour and HE rounds that they are upgrading it and keeping it in service.

In the case of the 73mm gun of the BMP-1 it lacks armour penetration but the HE round was useful so the BMP-1 and BMP-2 tended to be used together to compliment each other, though current upgrades to BMP-1 involve the replacement of the 73mm gun with a 30mm cannon.

The BMP-3 has a 100mm gun with better range and much more HE power than the 73mm rocket.

The replacement in the new generation BMPs is a 57mm grenade launcher with an APFSDS round... it has the advantages of being better at penetrating armour with a more powerful APFSDS round than could be fitted to a 30mm cannon, but also a HE round with rather more HE content, so in terms of a replacement it has more HE power than the 73mm gun... but not more than the 100mm of the BMP-3, and it has more armour penetration power than the 30mm APDS rounds.

It also carries Bulat and Kornet missiles which exceed the performance of Konkurs missiles from the BMP-1 and BMP-2 and the 100mm missiles of the BMP-3.

The weaponry of a BMP is to compliment the weaponry of a tank, so it is designed to engage targets a tank is not optimised to engage like infantry and infantry positions and aircraft/drones, but most also have anti tank missiles for self defence.

The BMPT benefits from HE fire power and high rate of fire weapons, but it will be operating with tanks so anti tank performance is not critical.

The Ataka missiles on the Terminator BMPT are for hitting point targets like ATGM teams beyond the 4km range of the 30mm cannon. They could also be used against drones or point threats out to 6-7km or so depending on the model.

The missiles would be the HE Frag warhead models generally because any armoured targets at 5km or so would be better engaged by the tanks they are operating with.

No they would still be a BMP/IFV or BTR/APC only heavier. Their primary objective would still be to deliver their assault squad payload to their objectives with close in support for the tanks as a strictly secondary role.

A BMPT has no troop capacity. A BMPT version of the Armata wont have a troop compartment... that space will be filled up with extra ammo most likely or possibly drone operators and rear deck roof mounted RWS with the "gunners" in the rear troop compartment.

The most resilient combat arm when operating in urban terrain are the infantry precisely because they can utilize the abundant adjacent structures for cover and concealment.

Their urban combat infantry will not be in normal tank or motor rifle units and will likely have exoskeletons with heavy body armour and special weapons and robot support vehicles.

Infantry are certainly the most difficult force to combat in an urban environment, but it is also a very high risk and high loss area too... something they want to change with new vehicles and new equipment and drones... not conventional forces...

Most APS can probably be used to clear infantry that come too close to the tank. In strictly emergency situations it could even be possible to call in artillery strikes - with shells set to detonate above ground of course, and all the apertures and hatches closed beforehand.

If enemy troops get amongst your tanks then something went seriously wrong, because the virtues of a tank is their excellent long range visibility and mobility and heavy armour and of course a powerful main gun... most of which are rendered useless if enemy troops can walk up and smear paint on your optics or pour fuel into your engine intake...

That much is true, but only against targets out in the open. Once they hunker down in prepared sites it makes rather more sense to have the shells that outright demolish most hastily erected structures and many pre-built ones.

Sounds like a job for artillery...

A mobile force is more likely to bypass heavily bunkered positions... use some troops and fire power to hold the enemy in position and bring up TOS or Coalition or Mi-28s and Su-25s and Kamovs...

The beauty of the 125 mm calibre is its just right. Its not too powerful that it would level buildings with a few well placed shots but its not too weak that it struggles to produce holes in walls either.

A tank or motor rifle div will have 120mm mortars too... including Vena type gun/mortars.

I don't think a shortage of fire power will be an issue with new Russian formations.

The TOS is reserved for the toughest targets. Due to ammo supply constraints its simply unfeasible to use them as liberally as you would tube artillery as preparatory fires.

How many heavy bunker sites do you think an enemy will have at its disposal?

If TOS is not available there is Grad, Uragan, and Smerch. And if they are not good enough there is Pion and Tulip.

Well its not really going to be used to suppress - more like destroy whatever heat signatures that pop-in the screen that isn't a friendly according to the BMS.

But it can only deal with one target at a time... selected by the commander and given to the gunner as his target... meanwhile the commander returns to looking for threats and targets while the tank deals with that one target, and the commander decides the order of dealing with other threats and targets.

Still in development. Possibly susceptible to smoke and dust.

My understanding is in limited use for operational testing.

Probably not perfect, but orders of magnitude cheaper than the alternative, which is a timing system which is inside the round and destroyed with each use but has to have a horrendous level of accuracy to be any use... which makes it expensive... and the ammo expensive.

With that in mind, its not that hard to see why the Russian army is too reluctant to take in the BMPT.

They are buying them... high fire power vehicles have a range of uses, even the Americans are introducing an equivalent except it is not tank based, it is wheeled.

In Afghanistan a twin 23mm cannon on the back of a flat bed truck, or lashed on the back of an APC, or just sending some ZSU-23-4 vehicles forward to hose down enemy infantry targets was useful.... even the Americans used 40mm duster vehicles that didn't even have enclosed turrets for anti ambush missions in Vietnam, and the ZSU-7-2 are also popular all over the world in enemy position suppression.

The Russian Army is not in a huge rush to buy enormous numbers because the two 30mm cannon armament is clunky and lacks range... newer replacement weapons are on the verge of service like the 57mm grenade launcher and various missile types.

The BMPT niche is just being tugged from all sides which makes it superfluous for an army that already enjoys the above mentioned stuff, and superfluous is a luxury not many army can afford.

They will end up making 27 different vehicles based on the Armata platform, and those same 27 types on the Kurganets and Boomerang platforms too, and likely for the Typhoon and the new DT-30 based vehicles perhaps another 27 each as well, but a BMPT, which is essentially an BMP with high fire power weapons and the troops replaced with more ammo is not a particularly hard or expensive vehicle to make or use.

@garryb I would say it's not worth spending money on converting the Pion or Tulip on to Armata platform, both systems have just had minor upgrades and the vehicles platform are more than sufficient and the vehicles won't need that level of protection as it's not going to get within range of ATGW etc.

I agree that the BMP-1 was still used along with BMP-2 to have a mix of weapons and when the BMP-3 came along it was clear that what was in mind with the design but just into one vehicle (30mm+100mm guns).

The BMPT was never meant to be a all type of weapons platform, and was used as a fire support and tank support only. But what we have seen with the Russians is a mix of weapons has always been what they aimed for. Hence after experience in Syria that a renewed interest in Pion, Tulip, Spg-9 cheap ATGW and rockets. When facing a long drawn war and facing an insurgency high tech high cost weapons won't work. U can't go around blasting buildings with Kornet all the time. Reading a few reports from on Syria, Spg-9 and sagger proved to be very useful, as did the T-55 100mm gun, all three are cheap and sufficient for taking out buildings, and ATGW sites and sniper nests. There is a video clip floating around where rebels fire ATGW in a heavily ruined building, next thing you see is Syrian forces engaging it with sagger, direct hit one of the rebels managed to get out of the building but wounded as u see other rebels drag him off. The sagger missiles cost less than $1000, and Spg-9 even less. And as was mentioned earlier the use of AA guns have always been useful in such conflict, a ZSU-57-2 would be devastating on a standard building.

Anyway it seems Russia has every aspect covered and even keep the 160mm mortar in service for mountain warfare. I strongly believe that all systems have there place. One of the reasons why I believe the 160mm I'd still useful is due to the low number of Tulip in device, and slow setup is likely an issue for a faster moving force, and of course there will be cases where 120mm isn't enough but the 240mm is too much, there is quite a bit difference in weight, and of course after the first round hits most troops will start to take cover, so sometimes getting the first hit with a heavy round will make s difference. And they still use the 82mm as it still had its uses and we have seen the automatic 82mm mortar system be revitalised, including anti armour rounds.

And I stand firm with my opinion that a mixture of weapons and systems will be the way forward I do see one calibre for all mentality. And it most likely why Russia hasn't went and ordered shitloads if BMPT because it's still a fairly niche system. Like the Belarusian 2T stalker fairly good idea (although I would have upgraded to 57mm gun, Kornet and verba)but still a niche aspect which armies could do without.

What would be better is a a T-72 or T-90 chassis with a variety of turrets, one with 120mm mortar + 14.5 or 12.7 gun, another with 160mm mortar +14.5mm or 12.7 gun. And the rest could be a mixture turret being armed with whatever u needed with s mix of guns 12.7-57mm, Inc AGS, and rockets, ATGW, Verba, etc and then u can add additional armour, ERA, soft and hard kill systems, basically build Ur own monster. You would then have whatever u needed and for whatever threat u need to deal with. You might not always have the use or means to call in Heli, Su-25, or even Tulip or Pion.

When I was on exercise we very rarely got what we requested, air support from jet aircraft and Heli was like hen's teeth, MLRS was the same, if you lucky u got 105mm lightgun or AS-90(rarely got), but majority of the time we only had 81mm mortar that was pretty much a given, the rest forget it. As they were always tasked elsewhere. It's one of the reasons I liked Russian and Soviet mentality they always had fire support, 122-152 towed guns, 2S1, etc and mortars from 82-240mm. And also in SP versions. The British army had nothing that was SP in mortars, only AS-90 was the only system we had, and not enough to go round.

To note BMP-1 with 73mm was used in the recent exercises in Crimea and it was right next to a BMP-2.

I would take the time to point out that the Russian situation at the moment is that they have 27 different types of vehicles in each division, whether that is a tank division or a motor rifle division or infantry division. Both divisions have tanks and both have infantry simply because tanks never work without infantry and infantry never work without tanks.

Some of those 27 different vehicles are related, because they don't have unique vehicle bases for each purpose, so for instance in a single division you might have BMP-1 or BMP-2 or BMP-3 BMPs used, but you might also have a dozen different other types of vehicles like engineer vehicles or ambulance or mine layer or recovery vehicle for other light vehicles... it could be an elint version or many other versions within the division.

It is the same with the BTR... there are different versions of APC, but also other vehicles used, and also MTLB vehicles are widely used too for different roles, but actually the family vehicles are a good idea but they also cause problems because they update so within one division you might only have BMP-3s for the BMP role, but the vehicles you have in other roles might include BMP-1 and BMP-2 types because there was no need to upgrade an engineer vehicle because it didn't improve its ability to do its job being a much more expensive BMP-3 model... this means despite having vehicle families of related vehicles you might still have 27 different types of engine and 27 different sets of wheels and tracks etc etc.

This came to a head in Chechnia where the BMPs with high elevating cannon fire could engage enemy in buildings whether in basements or two or three stories up or more, would be picked off first, leaving the tanks to be taken out at their leisure...

The idea behind the vehicle families was to massively reduce and simplify the logistics tail of a division because a division would have one engine type and one wheel type and one transmission type and one track type if applicable, and the ERA designed for these vehicles would be uniform in design etc etc.

Also with the same engine de-rated for the lighter vehicles mobility and protection would be more uniform across the vehicles, so you would never find half the vehicles can float across a river while the other half had to wait for bridging units or to set up snorkle equipment.

It is going to take time but gradually old vehicles will be replaced by new vehicles and new vehicles will come in to use.

Now this is all theory and has never been actually done in practice... the theory of having an Armata div with all Armata based vehicles might be excellent, or it might just be too expensive, or for instance they might decide that a Boomerang division needs a tank with heavier armour so instead of a Boomerang vehicle with a T-14 turret they might just use T-14 across the board as their new MBT... I rather think not, but it is possible.

What might happen is a lot of the lighter vehicles in all divisions like signals and ATGM and engineer and other vehicles that don't need heavy armour might be cheaper vehicles... Boomerang vehicles seem to be very well armoured for wheeled vehicles and are much much better protected than the old BTRs and BRDMs and the MTLBs... with APS and new ERA I would actually think the Boomerangs are probably better protected than any model BMP... except of course the BMPT which is not actually a BMP.

This means that if you replace all the vehicles in a division with Boomerangs the level of protection for the crews and troops will go up massively for everyone except those in tanks at the moment, and with better communication and optics and better support like drones and CAS aircraft and helicopters and artillery which they are all now able to call on, they are probably still better off.

I suspect the vast majority of their units will be Boomerangs because they will be cheaper to buy and much much cheaper to operate... they will have excellent... in fact amazing for armour mobility where the roads are good and with winches should be able to operate most other places well enough... there is road and there is firm ground and there is tough ground and there is shit that only a hovercraft is getting past... where the terrain is bad to terrible then Kurganets would be the choice being lighter and cheaper to operate than the Armata.

Armata will be hard core heavy tank and motor rifle forces, each district will have some but they wont be the majority of the force structure.

They will likely decide on what type of force each division is and start changing their equipment accordingly... so a division expecting centre of Europe combat in urban areas against HATO opponents will have their T-90s replaced with T-14s and their BMP-3s replaced with T-15s and their engineer vehicles replaced with T-16s and their MSTA artillery vehicles replaced with 2S35 Coalition and as new variants of Armata are tested and put into service they will replace existing vehicles in that force... for instance the previous Shturm-S vehicle that carried Shturm and Ataka ATGMs in an MTLB was replaced with Khrisantema also based on an MTLB chassis... probably a newer MTLB like the MTLBu, well that new Baikal vertical launch 15km range missile could be mounted in the rear of an Armata version of the T-15 with the engine at the front, three crew in the hull... no turret and a few dozen ready to launch missiles where the troop compartment is...

They will also make a command version of the Armata etc etc and as these new vehicles are developed and tested they will go into the suitable unit and allow older vehicles to retire.

It would make sense to leave the T-14 versions of the Boomerang and Kurganets till later on... it is just a case of fitting the T-14 turret to them and modifying them to fit other tank related equipment on board, but the T-90AM makes their introduction less urgent.

They may even decide to keep the T-90 tanks in the Kurganets and Boomerang divisions... that is a decision they need to make... and will likely be based on the performance of the Kurganets and Boomerang with the T-14 turret and equipped to be tanks.

Having said all that... how does the BMPT fit in?

It is a fire power vehicle that does not carry troops and has tank level armour so in an Armata div where every vehicle will eventually have tank level armour it is essentially potentially the air defence vehicle mixed with the BMP but without troops or radar.

They will be making lots of new vehicles but each vehicle type only needs to be developed once.... they don't need to develop an Armata tank and a Kurganets tank and a Boomerang tank and a Typhoon tank and a DT-30 two chassis tank... essentially everything developed for the Armata should be transferred to the other vehicles simply by using the T-14 tank turret on the other vehicles in the same way as the T-15 turret has already been seen on the Boomerang and Kurganets chassis... first with a 30mm cannon and currently with a 57mm grenade launcher. The Typhoon comes in four wheel and six wheel options and might just be too light for a 125mm gun let alone a 152mm upgrade, so they might use the Sprut 125mm low recoil gun in a T-14 turret or perhaps the 57mm gun that is to be used as an air defence vehicle could be fitted to a T-14 turret and put on a 6 wheel typhoon vehicle... Typhoons are for high mobility light units with excellent fire power... a 57mm high velocity gun might not hit as hard as a 125mm gun but will be able to carry more ammo and there should be a 120mm gun/mortar vehicle that can provide direct fire support too.

The firepower of the BMP is adequate for the task of supporting the MBT. A dedicated firepower vehicle is overkill.

If it was then why did they resort to using Shilkas and Tunguskas in the past.

And I'm tellling you not very many armies would be willing to part with accompanying infantry dismounts for their armor. The infantry, while fragile if used improperly, just offers that versatility that armor cannot provide.

I totally agree, they are much better equipped and protected with personal equipment and armour and they can be much harder to fight in an urban environment than enemy armour because they are near impossible to winkle out if they know what they are doing, but imagine fighting on flat open fields with no cover at all... covering open exposed terrain to get to trench lines or bunkers would be suicide... artillery preparation is going to create holes for some cover, but instead of sending infantry... why not send robots... your troops can watch from their positions and any enemy that opens fire can be engaged... if they stop opening fire then the robots could drive right up to their position and start butchering them... enemy fire and your troops can respond from the comfort of vehicles, and the robot can respond too... surround the position and then send vehicles with troops to enter bunkers and buildings to take them... or just use TOS.

Conversely in situations where there is not a peer enemy then the BMPT could be used for fire support instead of tanks, or together with tanks as a mobile reserve that could attack from a flank or behind the enemy while the troops attack with the support fire from BMPs and BTRs.

Conventional forces would still have to be relied upon to fight in urban environments. They would constitute the vast majority of your military for one, and strategic locations that are worth capturing or destroying are located in mostly urban zones or through such places in the first place.

I kinda get the feeling that Russia is not interested in capturing and holding cities hostile to their presence... liberator rather than conquerer...

They will happily send troops to the Crimea to keep the peace while the civilians sort their shit out and have a vote and decide what is what, but I don't think they want to invade all of the Ukraine and hold all the provinces against their will and force them to join the Russian Federation.

But again, that's only possible given the limits of situational awareness technology of the time. Tactics change in response to technological developments and vice versa, its only natural that how you use tanks would change as well.

And that is a huge problem... they are introducing new vehicle families with different capabilities, but all with dramatically improved communications and situational awareness including cameras and sensors on vehicles as well as drones they can tap into, and even the ability to easily call artillery or air strikes, which might have been possible before but would take so long to organise would not really be an option.

They might decide their artillery is so accurate and so on the ball that tanks no longer need to carry HE Frag as half their weapon payload... or they might fit 40mm grenade launchers to every vehicle with an external 600 round magazine in RWS for troops to operate...

Its alright to have artillery and aviation to reduce the fortified position, but mobile forces capable of doing this task on their own is even better.

But is that going to weigh them down and limit the other types of ammo they might need?

Mobile mortars can actually pretty much stand-in for BMPTs. They might lack the multi-channel fires capability available with the current BMPT but I'm willing to bet indirect fires are even rather more useful against most types of targets, especially with available extensive close-in drone recon and they fully complement the direct firepower of the MBT.

Looking at past experience, they have mortar platoons and have had them when they called up Shilkas and Tunguskas for the fire support role... I think a direct fire heavy automatic cannon just brings something a mortar does not.

Its not bunkers you have to worry about, its urban structures. Buildings made up of reinforced concrete that are sprawling in every urban center on the planet. If you have to roll in the heavy guns to pulverize these ubiquitous fortifications you are going to run out of ammunition very quickly.

I would think modern buildings would catch fire pretty easily and are designed to fight gravity for a century or two, but not the effects of combat...

When the Soviets got deep into Europe and found heavier stronger building structures of concrete or stone they just brought up 152mm and 203mm towed guns and just started firing in the direct fire role...

One target, with very high chance of first round extermination, and then its on to the next target immediately after the gun has reloaded, which can be in as little as 6 seconds, possibly less.

Meeting an enemy formation or a defensive line there might be dozens or hundreds of locations firing at you... it is the job of the tank commander to select which target the gunner fires at, so in combat he will be prioritising based on threat to his vehicle, so an RPG gunner 100m away might be top priority but he could deal with that using his sight mounted RWS machine gun... enemy tanks or ATGMs would be priorities, but inaddition to directing his gunner he would also be directing his driver to move from cover to cover so not too much of the tank is exposed to all enemy platforms at once.

Equally they are not on their own a method of sharing out targets so everyone doesn't fire at the same target allowing the others to fire at you with impunity would be important.

The tanks in the formation as well as BMPs could deal with a lot of targets at once if they are coordinated and cooperate.

The BMPT we have seen has bow gunners with grenade launchers while the main guns are essentially 30mm cannon, so it is not like it will be engaging 10 tanks or BMPs at once, but it does have the capacity for the Bow gunners to engage soft targets while the gunner deals with more substantial targets that 30mm grenade launchers can't deal with.

How many situations can you think of that absolutely requires the tank to engage 2 or more targets simultaneously that cannot be served by doing that in quick succession instead?

There were cases in WWII when Soviet forces were moving up and German forces were moving up and they suddenly found themselves face to face very very close together to the point where the vehicles merged and enemy targets were all around and plentiful.

Not suggesting that would be common but any ambush type scenario an enemy sets up will likely rely on getting your forces into a kill zone with lots of weapons with overlapping fire trying to destroy as many as they can as quickly as they can, and general response tactics is to launch as much fire power back at the ambushers and try to get out of the kill zone as fast as you can. In Vietnam, one response to an ambush is to fire a volley of RPG type weapons at the ambushers as you leave the kill zone as an example.

The BMPT is a fire power vehicle so would be useful for counter ambush roles as well as convoy escort or just being added to a normal division providing heavy fire power in an attack.

An electronic timed fuze is probably the cheapest next to the normal point detonating fuze. Its just a timer - you can fashion one out of strips of springy metal that's how unsophisticated it is.

Yes, I know, but for it to be useful in air burst ammo it needs to be extremely precise and accurate.

US plans for 20mm grenade launchers pivoted on the fact that they would be very effective because they would have air burst grenades.

The Grenade launcher itself was about 20K which is not that expensive, and included a laser rangefinder and a ballistic computer... at the time something impressive, but these days a cellphone has more processing power and a laser range finder for playing golf is good enough... the problem is the timer in the round... the laser rangefinder works out the precise distance to the target, the ballistic computer calculates the precise trajectory of the round in flight to impact the target. The precise flight time to hit the target can be calculated... the gunner then raises his sights a little so the point of aim is now 1m above the target and fires. The calculated flight time is passed to the round as it is fired via an induction coil around the muzzle... but the accuracy needs to be high.

The Video above showing the tank shell exploding a few metres in front of the target is impressive, but as most of the fragments go sideways if it had exploded directly above that target it would have obliterated it. If the target was troops huddled in a trench and not sticking their heads up they would have been safe from that shot.

With a laser initiated round you can track your shell with a laser range finder and when it is at exactly the same distance as the target send the laser pulse to set the round off direction above the target.

That level of precision from a timer would be thousands of dollars per timer making the ammo too expensive to use... which is why the programme stopped.

The timers were too expensive.... and too many failures, so it wasn't reliable.

The Russian model might have problems with dust and smoke... but the platform that sets off the round doesn't need to be the platform that fires the round... they could be initiated by drone or another platform.

The ANIET system is intended for air bursts amongst exposed enemy troops or soft targets... it will explode near a target and therefore have a good chance of getting some hits most of the time, but its timer isn't super accurate to make the rounds affordable and useable... the fuse attaches to a standard 125mm HE Frag shell... they could make it far more effective by using a base fuse and filling the nose with fragments that when the shell explodes go forward like a giant claymore mine spraying the area forward in an enormous cone of deadly fragments.

Of course the target could be an Apache helicopter hovering behind a tree thinking it is safe... the tank commander could lase the tree and add a dozen metres to the range and aim above the tree so the round detonates above the helicopter.... even the explosive blast would probably shatter the rotor blades and make it drop like a rock.

The point is that for air defence being able to fire a single 30mm shell burst of a dozen rounds and as the cloud of shells approaches a tiny drone or group of drones being able to detonate them in the air without then needing to contact the drone for them to explode massively increases the performance of any 30mm cannon against drones and small light targets... or even enemy troops on the ground rushing your base.

Instead of a laser they could use a radio wave or radar signal... frequency could be set as they are fired with the payload armed at 100m distance and you could track the rounds and as they approached the target boom... still cheaper than a timer.

That's really the case with most niche equipment and part of the reason why it would've only been really feasible in a bloated military that can throw resources at every problem as in the case of the Soviet army.

They are testing them in Syria... I am sure they will come away with ideas of what they might be useful for... any new BMPTs they introduce will be Armata or Kurganets or Boomerang or Typhoon or DT-30 based... they don't need to develop a whole new vehicle family for them...

High firepower vehicles, especially those designed with a suppression fires in mind, would present a significant logistical burden to the formation. Doubly so, because these vehicles are expected to fight in the frontlines and would compete with tanks and IFVs for very limited support.

You do understand Russian Divisions and their like already have Grad vehicles and air defence vehicles that also require reloading and massive ammo expenditure.

Hopefully these new vehicles will have modular ammo packs that can be fitted to the troop compartment of the BMP version that particular vehicle is based on so reloading is quick and easy.

Such vehicles would focus on specific targets only rather than plastering everything it sees immediately...

@garryb I would say it's not worth spending money on converting the Pion or Tulip on to Armata platform, both systems have just had minor upgrades and the vehicles platform are more than sufficient and the vehicles won't need that level of protection as it's not going to get within range of ATGW etc.

I should clarify that when I said bring forward Pion or Tulip that for the time being they would be the original models with standard ammo.

I think Coalition was a brilliant idea where navy and army pooled resources to produce a 152mm gun they can both use and I think it would be well worth doing the same with a 203mm gun as well... increased range and accuracy with a heavy shell would be useful for Army and Navy... the cruisers at sea as well as coastal defence could use very long range 203mm guns for naval gun support and other roles.

Eventually such a 203mm gun could be mounted on an Armata chassis, but it would be the sort of vehicle you only rolled out if you needed it with the 152mm gun and 120mm mortar with excellent accuracy and good range being good enough most of the time.

The BMPT was never meant to be a all type of weapons platform, and was used as a fire support and tank support only.

The vehicles the BMPT is replacing is the BTR-40 with two 14.5mm HMGs for air defence and ground fire support, which has been replaced in use by the BTR-152 with the 14.5mm HMGs and then ZU-23 twin 23mm cannon, and then ZSU-57-2 and then Shilka and then Tunguska over time.

The problem with each was while good in the air defence role... or at least adequate... their light armour made them vulnerable in the ground support role.

The BMPT is supposed to provide the fire power of an air defence vehicle with the armour of a tank.

The solution could be a T-90AM with its 125mm gun removed and replaced with a GSh-23-6 gatling gun and 5,000 rounds of ammo in one belt with a water cooling jacket, but it may be a T-14 with that set up too.

We have seen vehicles like the Terminator, but other vehicle prototypes have been shown including plastic models with 120mm gun/mortars plus gatling guns and grenade launchers...

But what we have seen with the Russians is a mix of weapons has always been what they aimed for. Hence after experience in Syria that a renewed interest in Pion, Tulip, Spg-9 cheap ATGW and rockets.

And that is important too, we can talk about theory and what works best, but there is nothing like real combat to remind you that D-30 122mm guns are useful and highly mobile, and that SPG-9s are very useful as well, while the heavier payload of things like 203mm guns and 240mm mortars are not commonly played with because they are heavier and more expensive and the ammo moves slower and is harder to handle and load, but on some real targets the extra weight will get the job done whereas lighter rounds just splatter on the surface.

When facing a long drawn war and facing an insurgency high tech high cost weapons won't work. U can't go around blasting buildings with Kornet all the time. Reading a few reports from on Syria, Spg-9 and sagger proved to be very useful, as did the T-55 100mm gun, all three are cheap and sufficient for taking out buildings, and ATGW sites and sniper nests.

Indeed... on one of the old threads about the BMPT I mentioned that the 30mm cannons are powerful, but for delivering HE on target sometimes a bigger shell is necessary... so the 100mm rifled gun of the BMP-3 made sense to me... then we saw that model with a 120mm gun/mortar that could fire 120mm mortar bombs as well as special 120mm shells and also the Gran guided missile for the 120mm mortar but also the Kitilov 122mm guided missile for teh 122mm artillery guns (D-30 towed and 2S1 self propelled vehicle). And it sounded more versatile.

Having the 100mm 2A80 would mean as many as 40 targets could be engaged with a decent HE round instead of the four Ataka missiles the Terminator carried...

It could also carry missiles too if needed.

But then I thought most divisions will have 120mm mortar carrier vehicles anyway, so something with a weapon that is a high rate of fire system might be good, and realised the Pantsir will have two twin barrel 30mm cannon with air burst ammo, and probably a 57mm calibre 2S38 air defence gun system as well...

The thing is that BMPs are generally well armed to fight infantry and soft targets, so they might decide they don't need BMPTs in their divisions... but then such a vehicle might be effective for convoy escort or anti ambush or even base defence... with air burst rounds it would be an effective and potent vehicle.

For convoy security the heavy armour could be less of a requirement and maybe a cheaper more mobile Boomerang based BMPT could be a solution eventually.

Anyway it seems Russia has every aspect covered and even keep the 160mm mortar in service for mountain warfare. I strongly believe that all systems have there place.

They are already paid for, and using the right tool for the job is something that distinguishes the professional from the amateur... usually measured in the number of trips to the hospital.

It is one thing to look at charts and Janes manuals about weapons and of course also getting the best and improving things, but there is nothing like real world experience where you find a D-30 gun is cheap and mobile and light and the 122mm rounds they deliver are rather accurate and effective, so you shouldn't be in a rush to replace then with SPA that costs many times more but can often be not much more mobile in some hard to reach areas.

The SPG-9 is another example.... where some forces use expensive Javelin missiles or Kornet missiles which aren't too expensive, but the SPG-9 fills a gap in terms of price and range... it can reach targets well beyond the useful range of RPGs and disposable rocket launchers... where if you didn't have it you would have to risk getting closer or waste a big heavy ATGM that can be rather expensive and wasteful... and ironically not always a lot more effective... a HE round from the SPG-9 would be more effective against a sniper position than a HEAT round.

and of course there will be cases where 120mm isn't enough but the 240mm is too much,

The 16kg round of the 120mm is a very useful and capable round but it is a big step to the 120kg 240mm round. The 160mm mortar with the 40kg bomb fills the gap in the way that the 152mm artillery with a 40-50kg bomb has actually replaced lighter rounds from 105mm in the west and 122mm in the east, but while the 105mms in the west are largely replaced the Russians seem to be sticking to towed 122mm, but also 120mm gun mortar systems too.... both tracked and towed.

And it most likely why Russia hasn't went and ordered shitloads if BMPT because it's still a fairly niche system.

I suspect they are still trying to find a use for it as you say... it is a hybrid between AA gun and BMP firepower setup.

What would be better is a a T-72 or T-90 chassis with a variety of turrets, one with 120mm mortar + 14.5 or 12.7 gun, another with 160mm mortar +14.5mm or 12.7 gun.

That old plastic model with the 120mm gun/mortar, but also the 6 barrel 23mm gatling and 57mm grenade launcher and machine guns was rather interesting, but then you realise in a normal armoured division there will be 120mm mortar carriers and air defence gun vehicles with 30mm and 57mm guns, as well as BMPs with 57mm guns, not to mention tube and rocket artillery and ATGMs on most vehicles too including BMPs, as well as a TOR regiment and a Panstir regiment, and likely Coalition and Havoc and Hokum support, not to mention Smerch and Iskander etc etc...

APFSDS rounds 3UBR-11 for 30 mm guns are now received in armament. They penetrate around 120 mm of armor at 1000 m distance. It loss less energy at distance than old 3UBR-8 APDS round, so it still have good penetration capabilities at 2000 m. New APFSDS and air burst ammunition made BMPT and other armored vehicles still very potent adversary and on global level.

2A42 gun have no problem using APFSDS round, I wonder if lighter 2A72 could. Those, which are fixed like on Uran-9 or on BMP-3, most probably could, question is for unfixed guns like on BTR-82A.

EKATERINBURG, July 7. / TASS /. Uralvagonzavod (UVZ, part of Rostec) has begun serial deliveries to the troops of the Terminator-2 tank support combat vehicle (BMPT). This was announced in an interview with TASS at the Innoprom international exhibition by the general director of the concern, Alexander Potapov.

"[Serial deliveries of BMPTs] have already begun. I can say quite clearly - on the whole, the vehicle has already shown itself and is finding its place in the coordinate system of the Russian armed forces," Potapov said.

BMPT "Terminator-2" is based on the chassis of the T-72 tank. The vehicle has 30mm automatic cannons guided by Ataka-T missiles and a coaxial 7.62mm PKTM machine gun. She develops a speed of up to 60 km / h. The Terminator 2 crew consists of three people.

The Innoprom International Industrial Exhibition is being held from 5 to 8 July in Yekaterinburg for the 11th time. According to the organizers, 23 large foreign delegations will visit the exhibition. The largest was brought by the partner of the exhibition - Italy.

Mostly expediency and convenience. Anti-air artillery batteries come standard with every division - with not much air threat to worry about why not make use of these vehicles anyhow? Of course in the beginning it was because there was no Soviet frontline AFV that have the vertical traverse range that could take on enemies at very high or very low points, but the latter BMP-2 and BMP-3 eventually would come into the picture to solve that issue.

They would certainly be factors but to take very thin skinned vehicles right up to the front line of combat to fire directly at enemy positions is not something you do on a whim... these are expensive vehicles and you wouldn't risk them just because you had some handy... it was their effects on target that made them the weapon of choice and you would need to be very careful with them to make sure you didn't lose them.

Even with BMP2 and BMP3 vehicles in Chechnia Tunguska vehicles were used in this way...

MBTs are still perfectly adequate fire support against insurgents while being perfectly suited against near-peer threats.

See now I think you are misusing the word perfectly... I would go with your previous statement and say they were there in service with these units... not anti aircraft, but anti heavy armour, but their fire power and optics and heavy protection means they can be quite useful as a direct fire fire support vehicle for front line troops.

In many cases something that can spew enormous amounts of much smaller calibre but still rather powerful cannon shells has been proven to be very useful... the Soviets and Russians using Shilkas and ZSU-57-2s and BTR-40s and Tunguskas and the Americans using Dusters and M163s in Vietnam and later on in a variety of conflicts they have moved those gatling guns to AC-47 and AC-130 gun ships...

Let's face it, most armies would rather go for the solution that's best against near peer threats even if its inferior against more immediate and available threats like insurgents. Non-peer threats are basically an afterthought to most armies .

Very true, but with their new vehicle families, including one that it totally tank based effectively they will already be getting air defence vehicles with tank level armour in the form of an Armata based Tunguska or Pantsir, or an Armata based 2S38 with a 57mm AA gun, while the T-15 will likely have a 57mm grenade launcher with APFSDS rounds and various missiles and could replace the rear troop compartment with more ammo to have a seperate BMPT like vehicle very easily enough.

Its still the Russian ground forces job to have the capability ready and available for when it is needed. What kind of an army would they be if they could not take and hold ground - any ground including urban areas for that matter?

I don't agree... from a political stand point there would be liberating an oppressed people and there will be killing the enemy... so walk in and protect the people of Crimea, or burn Kiev to the ground so it is no longer a threat to Russia. Note replace Kiev with London or Paris or Berlin or the capital cities of the Baltic states or Poland or indeed the US for that matter.

Case in point : the T-14 MBT. It wouldn't have been workable without the modern electronics powering vastly more sophisticated situational awareness and automation tools the Russians have only developed.

Very true... it is hard to over emphasise how important good camera coverage has to be to allow unmanned turrets, and the effects on the way the tank is used.

Previously with their position in the cupola of the turret it was the commanders job to find targets and threats and direct the gunner to engage targets and the driver to move the vehicle from place to place with the gunner being restricted to a narrow view forward of maybe 40-50 degrees, and the driver down in the hull with a relatively poor view ahead and no view to the sides.

With the new displays and camera systems and even drone camera angles the driver will not have to rely so much on the commander calling out obstacles and problems in front of them, and the commander can focus more on finding targets and threats, but even then with video processing software looking at the world in several different frequency ranges the onboard computer systems are going to be able to highlight potential targets from their target or heat signature or just the fact that they are moving, so that the commanders attention is drawn to targets and a zoomed in view can be used to identify targets at much greater ranges.

Of course when you can hit a stationary target at 5km and have your shots hit within a metre of the barrel of the target you also need to be able to find targets out in an enormous volume of space too.

Mortars are just as, if not more heavily used in urban warfare as fire support. They might not be as good in eviscerating enemy over open sights, but they could strike at enemies behind obstacles, something not very many AFVs can do.

The new 57mm grenade launchers and also the new Balkan 40mm grenade launchers will add to the indirect fire capability too... the upgraded BMP-2s all have 30mm grenade launchers too.

I would think the best solution is to not get ambushed in the first place.

Always, but an ambush can be quite quick and easy to set up and may in future consist of a remote gun system set to fire at anything that moves like in the Alien movies, or Israeli assassination attempts...

Its nice to have a BMPT if you are ambushed, but even then its only a palliative at best - what happens if the BMPT gets taken out early in the fight?

Well rather than calling it an anti ambush weapon.... even though that is what it is... it would make more sense and be clearer to call it a convoy escort vehicle.... which means when your convoy gets ambushed it is most likely to be with you. The level of armour protection on the BMPT is intended to make it the hardest vehicle in the convoy to actually take down, but obviously any plans can fail and any ambush will take the presence of the BMPTs into account, so they might just wait for the next less well protected group of vehicles to attack.

Of course the BMPT should be in radio communication with local forces and perhaps be able to call in laser guided artillery or helicopter gunships and CAS aircraft to defend the convoy.

A BMPT would be harder to take out than the BTRs and BMPs that would otherwise be used I suspect.

They would also be valuable vehicles for airfield air defence, because while not optimised for shooting down aircraft (there would be other vehicles for that) but any small ground force hoping to surprise the defences and take down the air defence capacity so they could land a force to take over the airfield could be neutralised by a few BMPTs and a coordinated air defence.

2A42 gun have no problem using APFSDS round, I wonder if lighter 2A72 could. Those, which are fixed like on Uran-9 or on BMP-3, most probably could, question is for unfixed guns like on BTR-82A.

My understanding is that the main problem with APFSDS rounds is any muzzle breaks or muzzle devices like the muzzle velocity sensor on the 2S38M on the Tunguska which calculates muzzle velocities of rounds as they are fired in real time, can sometimes get damaged by the sabot of APFSDS.

Other issues include airborne weapons like on the Mi-28 or Ka-52 or Su-25 or other aircraft where the Sabot fragments could be ingested and do damage to gas turbine and jet engines.

And the third issue is simply ballistics... for guns like the 2A42 and 2A72 which use separate belt feeds for each type of ammo it is not a problem... when you switch belts the system will switch aiming reticle for the very different trajectory of the APFSDS rounds, but with something that uses a continuous belt feed like the twin barrel 30mm cannon of the Hind or the Su-25 or the Tunguska or new Pantsir with their 2A38M cannon having a belt with APFSDS rounds and HE rounds would mean the different rounds would not go to point of aim without massive aiming adjustments.

I would say 2A72 on BTRs and other ground vehicles should have no problems with APDS or APFSDS rounds, but single mixed belt fed weapons like the GSh-30-2 and the 2A38M, and also weapons carried by aircraft like the GSh-301 would not be able to use the APFSDS rounds.

Russia delivers Terminator combat vehicles to African country — military cooperation chief

https://tass.com/defense/1330031

What I meant to say is that most armies managed fine without BMPTs and only relying on MBTs and IFVs/APCs. Take the Abrams for example: It had something like 3 machineguns and canister shots and that was plenty enough for urban warfare work.

The thing is that a western tank like an Abrams has an extra crew member whose only job is to make sure the correct round is in the chamber ready to fire and they don't even make that decision themselves... the commander will generally call the type of ammo to be used and give target information to the gunner to find and start engaging the target... which means when not using the main gun there are two crew in the turret pretty much not doing very much.

Equally with BMPs the Soviets have found direct fire HE rounds are valuable as are high velocity cannon so they provide both, whereas western forces don't have large calibre HE support for their BMPs.

Russia could hardly justify nuking urban concentrations just because their opponents have taken to hiding amongst the civilian populace like cowards.

Russia is not fighting for fun... if there are troop concentrations around Kaliningrad that are preparing to march in and take that enclave then Russia will nuke them... no question about it at all... any civilians caught up is HATOs problem.

No point in having nukes if there is no way or intention to use them.

Generally when it comes to crushing an entire country's will to resist it makes sense to take hold of their capital with your ground forces, at least to paralyze the nerve center of the country as it were.

Russia is not interesting in invading EU countries or occupying hostile capitals... if they were then there would have been Russian troops in Tiblisi in 2008 and in Kiev in 2014. Russia wants to neutralise threats, no add territory with hostile citizens...

They will focus no destroying military formations and striking the command structure that controls those military formations... in Brussels or Washington...

Grenades are fun but the way they are used would inflict a significant logistical burden if you place them on every IFV.

The 57mm grenade launchers will replace the 30mm and 100mm guns of the BMP... the 57mm grenades are smaller and more compact than the 57mm guns they are adopting in their AA units like the 2S38 air defence vehicle.

They are larger than the 30 x 165mm cannon shells currently used but also much smaller than the 100mm shells carried too.

That's why you sent an advance party to recon ahead. They might die, but at least the cavalry is minutes away to avenge their deaths.

These days the advance party can be unmanned drones... air and ground ones... and the ground based ones might be rather tricky to destroy... it would take multiple hits to take out its engine and its weapon systems etc etc.

The main danger for military columns are not preplaced ambushes of rifleman and RPG teams - too much COIN has turned our minds to mush, but air attacks. A tank division on the march would be a beast of a column that is stretched for a dozen miles at least, and very much ripe for pickings by air strikes. That's why they had all these air defense batteries moving in time with the entire formation and not BMPTs.

Generally a ground force like that would move forward looking for resistance... heavy resistance would get artillery and air power softening, but scattered defence would be rolled over and dealt with... super heavy resistance would be bypassed and dealt with using artillery and air power and follow up units.

By hard targets I mean like Grozny... the lead force might be a Kurganets or Boomerang force with mobility and fire power but not super heavy armour... a follow up force to deal with something like a well fortified and defended city would be Armata based and include sappers and specialist troops to operate inside fortified enemy cities... extra armour and special weapons and drones a artillery and air support.

Russia delivers Terminator combat vehicles to African country — military cooperation chief

For many african countries the Terminator is better armoured than most existing and current tanks in the region and its weapons are better suited to deal with large lightly armed infantry based forces...

So will the BMPT-3 come with one or two 57mm guns?

Also, will the chassis look more like the T-14 or the T-15?