BMPT "Terminator"

Not as much ammo as machine guns. They are heavy weapons and the grenades are much more costly and take longer to be produced in less quantity than stabdard ammo.

But I agree if you know how to use it and fire at the target, 2 or 3 grenades will decimate any light target including vehicles, groups of soldiers, light bunkers, houses...

However precision at long distances isn't that great. Plenty of footages shows it being used as a mortar to saturates a zone or some random shooting hoping it will touch something.

The crew-served heavy grenade launchers are basically pocket mortars.

The lack of precision is intended. You want that weight of fire spread over a large area instead of churning up dust for the same patch of ground.

Russian grenades in particular, use steel bodies so the fragments they produce can easily rip through heavy clothing.

And the grenades are bouncing after hitting the ground, explosion happens somewhere between 1,50 and 2,00 metres.

Not as much ammo as machine guns.

True, but they also don't use as much.

With a vehicle mounted system rigidly mounted and with optics and ballistic computer I would say the grenade distribution would be much much less than from a portable grenade launcher... they tend to jump around a lot when they fire leading to a spread of grenades on targets at extended distances.

Shooting at a target at 1.5km a 5-10 round burst of grenades would likely be rather effective, while a 50-100 round burst of 7.62 might not get a direct hit on anything.

They are heavy weapons and the grenades are much more costly and take longer to be produced in less quantity than stabdard ammo.

The ammo certainly is much heavier and more bulky and also rather more expensive, and against some targets might not be as effective as bullets (especially AP bullets or other specialist types...

However precision at long distances isn't that great. Plenty of footages shows it being used as a mortar to saturates a zone or some random shooting hoping it will touch something.

Another factor is range, with the new 30mm grenades (well they aren't that new now) their 30mm grenade launcher can reach 2.1km which is rather better than rifle calibre machine gun fire which would probably reach its limit at about 1.5km unless you use very long bursts.

Their new 40mm grenade launcher fires to 2.5km and has a bigger heavier more effective grenade.

The crew-served heavy grenade launchers are basically pocket mortars.

During WWII a Soviet designer actually had a 50mm automatic grenade launcher intended to replace the 50mm mortar... the idea like the newer models was to make up for the small bomb by firing them in numbers giving a cluster bomb effect which made it more effective, but the designer died and the project disappeared... most military forces eventually came to the conclusion that 50mm mortars were just too expensive for what they were and dropped them for rifle launched grenades or nothing at all.

The lack of precision is intended. You want that weight of fire spread over a large area instead of churning up dust for the same patch of ground.

The ground based launchers certainly jump around during firing, but the effect of the grenades is scary... there is a Combat Approved episode showing them testing the 30mm grenade launcher with cardboard and balloon targets showing the fragmentation extent of each grenade.

And the grenades are bouncing after hitting the ground, explosion happens somewhere between 1,50 and 2,00 metres.

They don't naturally do that, but the Soviets/Russians have a model of 40mm grenades for their underbarrel grenade launchers that has a separate bounding charge to blow the grenade up into the air before the main charge explodes... it detonates the main charge usually at 1.5-2m height.

With standard impact grenades they tend of course to explode on the ground resulting in serious leg and lower body injuries, but with the bounding grenades (idea based on german mines that did the same thing) means they explode at head height so the wounds tend to be head and neck and upper chest wounds that are far more dangerous and life threatening.

Much better bang for your buck.

English captions available.

Wow, that is interesting... it says that in combat the Tanks roll in first and the Terminators follow and use their Thermals and optics (pano sights) to look for threats attacking the tanks and engaging them... so effectively the tanks will have targets they are focusing on, but the following terminators can eliminate any enemy that pop up and try to engage the tanks or their own vehicles...

That is rather interesting...

Of course the tanks would still benefit from Thermal Panorama sights but this makes them safer too.

(thanks for posting)

This is exactly the reasoning behind the development of such vehicles which started back in the 70´s. The BMPT does the job of AIFV´s in the
combined arms attack, but without the infantry sitting in the back. No infantry to worry about. Tanks can move faster.

The really interesting part are the auto and semi-auto modes of the weapon system. Did I get that right, the turret turns into the direction where
enemy fire comes from and the vehicle shoots by itself?

@MIR,

Is that real or is someone taking the piss?

Those grenade launchers are just grenade launchers and the gunners sight it identifies as a laser system seems wrong too.

The ATGMs can of course be used against drone targets as can the 30mm main guns with command detonated 30mm cannon shells, but much of the rest seems a bit far fetched.

They do have a laser based anti drone vehicle in operation in Ukraine but I don't think it is Terminator based... ( though it would be amusing if the Terminator did have a 40 watt plasma rifle as requested.... )

Hole wrote:
The really interesting part are the auto and semi-auto modes of the weapon system. Did I get that right, the turret turns into the direction where
enemy fire comes from and the vehicle shoots by itself?

Shtora-1 allows for automatic slewing of the gun to the direction of the enemy laser so maybe the BMPT has something similar.

Also possible that they can service targets designated through the battle net.

Is it me being blind, or there is no dedicated thread for Terminator?!?



Very good coverage.

They do. Some of the films made in the factory showed those on production lines.
It proves itself quite fine I guess.

The very low rates of losses among BMPTs - both of personnel and knocked out vehicles, even/especially compared to the T-90M is proof positive that the T-14 with its unmanned turret is the correct decision. Reminder that both BMPT and T-90M weigh 48t - its just that the BMPT has no need for a heavy turret that's roughly 1/3 of vehicle's gross weight so all of the armor is concentrated around the crew citadel in the chassis. That the BMPT's weapon systems are essentially unarmored to even HMG fire and yet aren't taken down with expected ease also bodes well for the survivability of the much better protected main gun on the T-14.

Nice to see all of that egg on the face of all those idiots and fools who sneered at the BMPT concept and decried it as useless.  Just goes to show that the Russian military knows what it is doing, and that self-proclaimed armchair experts (even in Russia herself) are best ignored.

There is one vid from approx. a month ago, when it got hit by FVPD in the back. It looks like not even noticing the fact, as the firewall from both cannons doesn't stop for a moment

Reminded me of that:

Text: Hold the line. There is someone at the door.

Would love to see them add LIDAR for detecting drones and also a laser based jamming or even interception module.

The twin 30mm cannons are devastating but I wonder if a 23mm version firing 23 x 115mm shells was considered... especially now they have airburst shells for 23mm rounds..

With 23 x 115mm they could probably carry twice as much ammo for the same size and weight.

And the twin barrel 23mm gun mounted on the current model Hind has an excellent rate of fire of 3-3.5K rpm... a short burst leading to a cluster of HE rounds falling on the target at range like a giant shotgun blast.

Would like to see a version with the 57mm grenade launcher and perhaps their new caseless 40mm grenade launcher... it would enable it to engage light armoured vehicles using APFSDS rounds and of course there is potential for a 57mm grenade round with a HEAT warhead at the front and at the back where the back one fires first through the centre of the front one and then the front one fires digging further into the armour...

Regular wrote:
Eh, Russian military themselves were on the fence for this vehicle. Glad they didn’t can it.

The Russian military was apprehensive of the BMPT because it fails to address the main shortcoming of the MBT - that of the limited fire and observation channels. Despite wide claims, the BMPT was not developed in response to Afghanistan or Chechnya and they weren't looking for a Shilka or a Tunguska but with the armor of an MBT.

The real birthplace of the BMPT concept was the nuclear and chemical battlefield that made it impossible for the infantry to dismount their transports and support the armor. Because as we've seen many times in Ukraine, armored vehicles can see very far and engage targets at massive distances, but there are still only 2 sets of eyes (and guns) per vehicle. Unless you have lots of armor in one place, it becomes a massive challenge to properly control the terrain with fires.

The BMPT tries to address this by adding auxillary weapon stations (the 2 GL mounts) but this implementation is very clumsy because of the limited capability of each station to independently search and engage targets on their own. Ultimately the BMPT has what, maybe 4 search channels, and maybe 3 engagement channels versus 2 in the killer-killer setup of the T-90M. Its even worse with the BMPT-72 because the commander does not have his own HMG so its even worse than the T-90M in that regard.

And of course, a BMPT can never go down into the trenches, and search buildings one room at a time. You need something a lot more portable than a 48t vehicle to accomplish these things, and the BMPT simply doesn't have enough people onboard to properly conduct close combat on dismounted.

Looking at these two deficiencies its not hard to see why the Russian MoD would be a bit hesitant in adopting these vehicles.

Regular wrote:
BMPT is is very good concept and will be improved, hopefully we will see with Armata chassis.

Not in its current state, no.

Personally, I think the Armata/Kurganets/Bumerang BMPT will just be the IFV model but with the passengers all remote piloting FPV drones. This way, you get the best of both worlds - a squad's worth of eyes that can search and engage targets all on their own and the mobile protection to preserve the combat power of the infantry until they land to where they are needed.

One of the prototypes was this:



So the vehicle closest to the camera has a BMP-3 like turret with a 100mm gun and a 30mm cannon, but what you might also see is that behind the turret is a mount, actually you could describe it as a waist gun turret designed to fire sideways and forward with a crew position behind it between the engine and the turret and behind him is another crew position facing the other side of the vehicle operating a similar turret.

Now what I was thinking about this time was that the BMP-3 turret is just fine... it is intended for fighting all the things tanks don't fight very well... infantry and positions and enemy light vehicles and perhaps aircraft.

What I was thinking of myself is something like the T-35 from WWII which didn't work very well because while it was huge its armour was thin and command and control was difficult because of the way it was laid out and communication and control was bad in the vehicle .

The T-35 had 5 turrets because anti tank guns were small calibre 45mm guns so you needed two of those to give decent coverage depending on where the enemy was, while the standard normal round was the 76.2mm gun which fired a decent for the time HE shell and because of its recoil it was in the main central turret with the best angles and views, and the remaining two turrets contained machine guns.

But this vehicle is not a tank, it is an infantry vehicle and infantry replacement vehicle for use where troops can't be deployed because they are too vulnerable, so four unmanned turrets... two in front and two behind the main turret armed with rifle calibre machine guns and automatic grenade launchers in unmanned compact turrets, with a central turret mount with a choice of weapons including but not limited to machine guns up to large calibre cannon and automatic cannon and grenade launchers, perhaps with a remote weapon station on the panoramic sight on top with a heavy machine gun for the commander.

They are already making external turret mounts that include weapons and ammo and optics that do not penetrate down into the hull of the vehicle, though the external turrets in this case will have limited fields of fire they should allow independent fields of fire so different targets can be engaged at one time by crew members operating weapon turrets able to engage targets on their own.

You could use a bit of ingenuity and have high powered stabilised sniper rifles in the front two mini turrets allowing very specific targets to be found and engaged with precision... they might only have 200 rounds per gun...

The two rear mounted extra turrets might be grenade launchers able to fire the entire left and right hemisphere respectively with indirect sights and drone support.

The turret mounted gun might include a 57mm grenade launcher and a twin barrel 23mm cannon, or even a 120mm gun/mortar with a twin barrel 30mm cannon and grenade launchers controlled by either the gunner or commander with the commander able to use a kord HMG or 40mm grenade launcher mounted on his panoramic sight mount.

On the rear of the turret you will have rocket pods for 122mm and 80mm and 57mm aviation rocket pods of the same type carried by attack helicopters and ground attack aircraft.

Air burst rounds in 23mm, 30mm, 40mm, 57mm, 100mm, 120mm, 125mm could be used to deal with any type of drone you can think of.

Some rear facing gun mounts plus of course the main turret and rear turrets could all fire as the vehicle is leaving the area at speed.

The key is multi engagement channel capacity where gun turrets can all engage drone threats at different ranges... it is interesting to think about...

GarryB wrote:especially now they have airburst shells for 23mm rounds..

23x152, not 23x115.
And showing it all over the planet as the smallest programmable ammo that exists.
I said that already - don't count on 23x115 programmable ammo any time soon, as it is simply too small for the task. If you put the electronics there, there will be no space left for explosives worth bothering.