Kurganets & Boomerang Discussions Thread #2

Funny how western people have no patience at all any more... they would rather get something now and have it fail and be broken because it wasn't tested and thought out properly than to wait to get something better.

Reminds me of the attitude of children, which is an excellent way of understanding the west and their governments these days.

Boomerang, being a wheeled family of vehicles is going to be very useful and much cheaper to operate than tracked vehicles, though of course their mobility will be less, but then working as a team as each vehicle gets stuck the others can winch them out, and they are amphibious so even if they get stuck they wont sink and be lost.

Also they are much better armoured than any BTR so protection levels for the forces will improve dramatically too.

A they perfect the turrets and suites for each vehicle type transferring them to other chassis should be much easier, so for instance to make the tank version of the Kurganets and the Boomerang, you would fit the T-14 turret and change the internal arrangements of some equipment and things... instant lighter tanks and tank destroyers.

Having heavy armoured track (Armata), medium armoured tracked (Kurganets) and medium armoured wheeled (Boomerang) as well as light wheeled (Typhoon) and even special two cabin arctic models (DT-30 based) vehicle families will be very flexible and useful moving forward.

Well, about that. I hope Bumeramg won’t get canned because of this cost cutter. By the way, it seems Russians won’t be continuing tradition of amphibious vehicles

Hahahaha... someone not understanding... what a shock.

I am guessing what you are trying to say is that a model and drawing of a Boomerang with a cheap simple BTR-80A turret (the same turret they upgraded the BMP-1s with and lots of other vehicles as a cheap simple turret with a 30mm cannon) and you think they are going cheap on the whole project.

And can I post images of the Boomerang with the tiny Kord turret and suggest it might even be cancelled?

I doubt that thing would pass Russian trials, it just has too little going for it.

Boomerang is the vehicle chassis... the basis for a family of vehicles... why wouldn't they fit it with all sorts of turrets or even none at all?

I think only up-armoured bumerang is not, but this is not Bumerang. Just another variation of BTR-82, a cost cutter. As far as I know BTR hulls were much better in water than BMP family and it didn’t need as much preparation before crossing. I just hope it won’t be another stopgap, Bumerang should be prioritised or else it will end up like BTR-90 that was also impressive, but never materialised.

The body is Boomerang, the turret is a BTR-82A turret, the same turret they used to quickly and cheaply give the BMP-1 a 30mm cannon upgrade.

The Boomerang is a vehicle family that will have a range of turrets to match its range of uses... and a few of those uses might be for customers who will never use the amphibious capacity so they might not want the water jets and they might want extra armour... or less armour to make the whole vehicle lighter and cheaper.

The idea of a modular design and a vehicle family is that it is flexible and able to fill a wide range of roles from being fitted with add on armour and a T-14 turret as a mobile gun platform, across the board to an engineer vehicle or ambulance or mine clearance vehicle.

In a Boomerang Division it is everything.

The export site for Russia lists the Boomerang as coming in two versions at the moment... an APC troop taxi with a Kord machine gun mount and the IFV version with the 30mm cannon...

Obviously for export you could order any turret you are willing to pay for but the above 30mm cannon turret would be an option if you wanted to save money... note the turrets are all unmanned.

Here is the Kord turret they are talking about on the export page:

Left BMP 30mm cannon with two twin ATGM missile launchers and BTR Kord HMG turret right.



Though obviously these are on the Kurganets, but they can be used on Armata or Kurganets or Boomerang or Typhoon or the twin chassis DT arctic vehicles too.

http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/land-forces/armored-combat-vehicles/boomerang/

The Boomerang platform will replace every vehicle in a division, which means there needs to be over 27 different versions of the vehicle for each role performed in each armoured division...

In the past vehicles have been used like this but it actually made the situation worse... there are dozens of different vehicles based on the BMP-1, but because the BMP-2 is a different vehicle those BMP-1 based vehicles weren't replaced with BMP-2 based vehicles or BMP-3 based vehicles so instead of reducing the number of different engines and wheels and tracks and transmissions in use it actually made it worse.

It does not matter if half the vehicles in a division are BTR and BMP based if there are three different BTR and three different BMP versions too that don't use the same engine or wheels or tracks or even offer the same level of armour or mobility.

Of course some will be used in a Boomerang Division and uniformity would be important... if half can swim and the other half can't then you need bridging equipment and support.

I would say a non amphibious Boomerang might be bought by the FSB for use in places where they wont need to operate over water and a bit of extra armour or different equipment might be useful... while the 30mm cannon has proved reliable and effective... a paramilitary force wont need ATGMs either.

The more options you have in a vehicle family the more flexible it will be and more useful it becomes to its users.

They have already tested all sorts of turret mounts on their other vehicle types (BMP-1, BMP-2, BMP-3, BMD2,3,4) and in some cases a 30mm is handy, and for others a remote weapon station with a machine gun is good enough.

A stabilised Kord HMG with thermals and laser range finder can be a very powerful weapon out to significant distances and should not be underestimated.

If you want fire power then a bulky unmanned turret with a 23mm 6 barrel gatling gun from the MiG-31 with a water cooling jacket and several thousand rounds of ammo all stored in the turret bustle would be devastating... that gun can fire at 9 to 12 thousand rounds per minute.... that is 150 to 200 rounds per Second...

The point of these simplified models is to ease the transition of Russia's production complex from manufacturing relatively simple and reliable Soviet pattern to expensive but excellent next gen Russian designs.

That is a good point but wheeled vehicles will always be cheaper and easier to operate than any track layer... drive a tracked vehicle 2,000km and expect an overhaul and a lot of work on the running gear.

With wheeled vehicles they can go rather further with less wear and tear... especially on roads...

Its quite a leap to go from a BTR-80 to a Bumerang...

It is, but then it is also quite a leap from a 1970s car to a 2020s car in terms of electronics and equipment and systems.

These are beautiful machines and all but after seeing the bigger Western units trying to transverse the steppes... wonder about the practicality of switching out. Food for thought.

Western vehicles that are not even amphibious seem to struggle in Russian conditions... those Iveco vehicles that the west thinks are so damn wonderful didn't do so well in deep snow, and so I would guess they don't like deep mud either. Not to say they are terrible, but they have their strengths and weaknesses.

There is some terrain as we have seen that even tracked vehicles struggle with... which is why the MTLB family remained in widespread use... even as a BMP in some places simply because of its lower weight and better mobility in deep snow or mud...

There is a sport called winching where guys with big SUVs go find the deepest mud and use electric winches to recover their vehicles from trouble... they are usually 4X4s with 4 wheel drive but they still use their electric winches.

I would say the DT series of twin cab vehicles would be best for Ukrainian mud... as well as arctic ocean ice expeditions.

Whats the point of amphibious AFVs if they need bridglaying equipment for shitty little rivers like ingulets or oskol, because those rivers have banks that are too high?

Because right now the amphibious vehicles are the light BMP and BTR and BRDM based vehicles, while the tank based vehicles and trucks and other types are not amphibious.

When the new vehicle families are fully implimented the Kurganets and Boomerang divisions will be all amphibious too.

In the Ukraine the Kurganets and its tracks would enable better mobility along with its reduced weights compared with the Armata family of vehicles, would mean it could operate in places the enemy wont be able to operate any armour at all.

But you have to be careful - the last miles where you have to maneuver through difficult terrain and manmade obstacles in under-optimal conditions often make or break military operations.

There is realism and there is training... have read of western air defence exercises where known targets from known directions were shot down by air defence units... exercise over. I have read of Soviet air defence exercises that were the same, but have also read about Soviet air defence exercises where the alarms go off at 4am in the morning and the unit that was doing the air defence exercise is ordered to drive 800km to a base they were unfamiliar with and provide air defence for that base as soon as they arrived and to get there as quickly as possible with no information about the threat numbers or the direction the threat was coming from.

Pretty clear which was more useful, but then sometimes it is about ticking the boxes and other times it is testing machines and equipment to make sure they are ready to do the job.

The west never expects air defence to do that much... for the Russians defence means defence...

That is not to say any kind of tracked vehicle will do, though. Western tanks for example are just too heavy to really go off-road across muddy fields. Armata is skirting the limit, but its powerplant has that massive reserve power for towing other stricken Armatas so the issue is not as dire.

The only compensation for heavy armour is excellent situational awareness, which these days means smart use of drones so that the enemy never even sees your armour... long range indirect fire with guided rounds could be the way to go.

But then as we have also seen even tanks with the heaviest armour can be destroyed by missiles and mines and drones and air and artillery delivered ordinance.

Kurganets and Bumerang divisions without the 40-50 ton heavy vehicles would not need as much engineering support as Armata divisions, which can then enjoy a greater proportion of these very vital assets.

A key factor too is that the logistics tail can be shorter when there is only one type of engine and one transmission and one type of tracks or tires/wheels, and the armour and mobility are largely unified across the vehicles in the force.

MRAPs in particular are just shit. Ukraine even got those Maxxpro MRAPs which are just awfully tall and top heavy. They can't handle slopes all that well and they're tall as a barn; out in the steppes you must as well be saying kill me to every roving ATGM team in the area.

MRAPS are rubbish in a real shooting war.... they are best in counterinsurgency conflicts where the threats are mines and IEDs, but when the enemy has air power and decent ATGMs and even decent disposable anti armour rocket launchers then you are in trouble.

For Bradleys and Leopard 2s you might want an RPG-26 or RPG-28 just to be sure, but with an MRAP even an RPG-18 could get the job done and any model RPG-7 rocket including the thermobaric warheads would be lethal to an MRAP.

Well, MTLBs do. Then again, floating and swimming doesn’t mean it can cross any river, not with supplies on board.

Some rivers have areas that can't be crossed safely, or areas that can be crossed but only at certain times of the year... and if the enemy is blowing up dams upstream then the situation can change completely very quickly too.

Theres no point in amphibious capability if most small rivers cant be crossed outside of very few chokepoints due to tall muddy banks.

Isn't that the equivalent of saying that if there is an ATGM that can pierce the armour on your vehicle then your vehicle would be cheaper and lighter and simpler with no armour at all.

One of the reasons the Soviets were so successful in the latter half of WWII is because an enemy force occupying an area would decide that some areas were impassable for enemy armour and so put a few mines there to stop troop attacks and focus defences in other places.

When the T-34s came roaring through these places they shouldn't be able to go through they achieved complete surprise and often made real breakthroughs.

Obviously such things are impossible without air control or significant artillery support and layered defensive lines.

I think people need to realise that the Boomerang is not just a BTR-60/70/80 replacement.

Boomerang is a vehicle family...

There will be a tank version of the Boomerang... it will likely either have a Sprut turret on it:



Or the T-14 turret on it, or a new custom designed turret because the Sprut turret is a manned turret but the turret for the Boomerang and Kurganets and Armata will be unmanned so the Sprut turret could be modified to make it much smaller above the turret ring because there are no crew positions inside it.

The T-14 turret therefore makes more sense because it is already an unmanned turret and doesn't waste space for two crew inside it.

Boomerang will also be able to carry pretty much any other turret including the BMP-2 turret:



The normal 30mm Epocha turret we have already seen time and time again:



With its mix of Kornet missiles and 30mm cannon:



As well as the 57mm cannon armed version called Dagger:



with high velocity 57mm cannon rounds:



Or the 57mm grenade launcher turret:



With Kornet and Bulat missiles and 57mm HE grenades and 57mm HVAP rounds too:



The point is that each turret will be for a different role and a different use and these vehicles are intended to eventually replace all currently used wheeled 8x8 vehicles so the BTR series will eventually be replaced by versions of this vehicle... so yes they will want cheap simpler models and some of the cheap models wont need amphibious capability... such vehicles will be used by MVD forces and FSB forces that wont want to go swimming in rivers or lakes and don't need 57mm guns when the 14.5mm and 12.7mm turret guns will do fine or at best the BTR-80A 30mm turret would do too.

More is better because it gives the customer choice and flexibility and they can use cheaper simpler Boomerangs where before they might have only been able to afford a BTR-80 with rather less armour.

The Typhoon series of 4X4 and 6X6 vehicles can replace the BRDM series and of course the Tigr light vehicles and many other types are there for other paramilitary and law enforcement forces/groups to use.

The main difference will be that the Boomerang is 25-35 tons, while the BTR is 10-15 tons and the difference is mainly in the armour protection, but also fire power.

There were plans for all sorts of BTRs including vehicles with 85mm guns but only 14.5mm and 30mm versions were widely used.

Boomerang is a vehicle family... so cheap and simple is a niche it needs to fill too.

Don't be afraid they will cheap out and go for crap... they are just testing the entire range of turret options.

I personally suspect the 57mm grenade launcher will have a more powerful HE bomb than the 57mm gun, and the APFSDS of the grenade launcher will be good enough to get the job done to replace the 30mm and 100mm weapons of the BMP-3, but the 57mm high velocity gun will be either selected to replace or to be use together with the 2A38M 30mm cannon of the Tunguska and Pantsir as the air defence guns in air defence and fire support vehicles...

The 30mm turret will be used on APC role vehicles, so in a modern armoured division if you map all the vehicles in a Boomerang chassis to the current types, the Boomerangs that replace the BMP-3s will have the 57mm grenade launcher turret, the Boomerangs that replace the BTR-82As will have the 30mm cannon turret, the Boomerangs that replace the T-90AM tanks will have the T-14 turret, but being light vehicles will not be used as aggressively as a properly armoured tank... a wheeled vehicle with a tank gun is a sniper... if you use him right on the front line he is dead meat, but sneaking around near the front line picking off important enemy soldiers from a distance where he is hard to spot and he will be a powerful force on the battlefield.

Of course you have to remember a Boomerang with a T-14 turret is not as weakly armoured as a BTR with a T-14 turret, it is actually better protected than a BMP-3 which is less than 20 tons, but it is not able to go toe to toe with heavy enemy armour either.

Very potent against enemy BMPs.