BMP-3 in Russian Army

It has a time fuze, set by laser on board a carrier/in a barrel.

The US 20mm grenade launcher that was going to be their next super weapon used a ballistic computer and super accurate Swiss electronic timing chips they put into each round.

Each timer was set via an induction coil the round were fed through on their way to being loaded (like ANIET) or as they were fired by an induction coil around the muzzle.

The outer barrel on the 2A38M cannon of the Tunguska and Pantsir has two induction coils that measure the muzzle velocity of one barrel in real time so as it fires it accurately adjusts for the real muzzle velocity of the round... on guns that use AHEAD type rounds they use three coils... the first two measure muzzle velocity and the third sets the timer on the shell as it goes downrange.

The core problem with these things is that to get real precision the timers in the shells have to be amazingly precise... which makes them expensive...

In comparison the Soviet 40mm underbarrel grenade launcher grenades used a small bursting charge with a short fuse and then the main charge detonated 1.5 to 2 metres in the air... very cheap and very effective but only works against ground targets and not air targets because it has to hit something to work.

If these new rounds have open bases and can look back at the vehicle that fires them and you flash a laser to set the timer fuse... well why not just eliminate the timer and flash the round when you want it to explode instead.

The precision timing could be part of the fire control system and could be expensive because it gets used for every cheap round you fire.

As I said though a laser command detonation system might have problems with smoke and dust and rain and snow so a radio command signal would work better.

If you are using a small gun mounted radar to find and track targets that could also track outgoing rounds and command detonate them at the closest point to the target then a pulse from the radar could be used to set the round off.

You could encrypt the signal with unique thousand digit codes for each round so you could selectively set off each round if you wanted and the chance of enemy interference is reduced...

The ANIET airburst round also used a timer fuse but the timer is not super precise so getting the shells to explode in precisely the right place is not easy.

Obviously the distance to the target matters so at shorter range it would explode closer to where you wanted it to explode.

If you have seen the Combat Approved episode with the T-90AM they fire some rounds into a firing range tank target and hit it within 1m or so of the centre of mass, but when they fire a HE round it appears to explode a few metres short to really damage the target they set up.

This was done from 5km range with the tank firing from stationary and moving positions.

Kurganets is a vehicle family and is a partner to the Armata and Boomerang and Typhoon and the two chassis snow vehicle DT-30 vehicle family.

It would take rather more than a BMP with one of the new vehicle turret sets fitted to end its programme.

They already listed the B numbers for the different vehicles testing the different turret types, they have been published before.

In fact the designations for the Kurganets family so far are B-10 is the BTR, while the B-11, B-14, B-15 are the BMP models with 30mm Epoch, 57mm Dagger, and 57mm Epoch turrets respectively, while the B-12 is the BREM recovery model, but B-16 through to B-19 as well as B-22 and B-23 are various older model BMPs (BMP-2, BMP-3, BMD-2) with the new turrets for testing.

The point is that there will be T-?? vehicle codes for the different turrets being used on the Armata chassis, and K-?? codes for Boomerang chassis with the different turrets too, as well as Typhoon and DT-30 vehicles with the different turret types.

More to the point they will likely also be testing the T-14 turret on BMPs and BMDs and Boomerangs and Kurganets and DT-30s too.

The point is that they are going to decide on a definitive BMP turret and a definitive BTR turret and a definitive BRDM turret... which might be 57mm grenade launcher/gun, 30mm cannon, and Kord HMG mount respectively. For air defence I would suggest the 2S38 shows what the turret looks like on a BMP chassis but operationally in an Armata division it will be called T-?? and will be Armata chassis based, and Kurganets and Boomerang and DT-30 and Typhoon versions too.

The purpose of vehicle families is to reduce the different vehicle types in a division.

In a current division you might have 4 different tanks chassis... T-90 or T-72 for your MBT, but MSTA might be based on a different tank to your MBT (T-80), and of course engineering vehicles, you might have a Terminator based on a T-72... You might have a dozen vehicles based on the BMP chassis... various different recon and other specific vehicle types, but that does not help because by now they might be different BMP chassis from BMP-1 and BMP-2 to BMP-3 with different engines and different wheels and tracks and transmissions and very little in common. Equally a few vehicles in the division might be BTR based but BTR-60 and BTR-70 and BTR-80... all with different engines and transmissions...

The idea of standardisation was ruined as each type got upgraded with different engines and wheels and tracks etc etc, so this is a chance to standarise again with all the new vehicles being based on the new vehicle types, but to make it easier you standardise... the turret from the 2S38 is for air defence so putting it on all the vehicles in the new vehicle families creates the new air defence vehicle. The T-14 is the MBT version of the Armata, but putting that turret on all the vehicles makes them gun platforms too.

If you used the Kurganets BMP in all divisions then what is the Armata BMP... T-15 for?

Hopefully the engine will provide additional armor like wth the merkava.

Merkavas burn like the rest of them and is nothing to idealise.

A vehicle engine is NOT armour... it has complex moving parts and very hot bits and tubes and fuel lines and all sorts of things that stop working when you thrust projectiles through them... in other words when you put bullets through engines they tend to go through rather more easily than they would if it was armour and they can do serious damage and start fires... both of which completely immobilises the vehicle so if that first hit didn't kill you then you are now a stationary target they can take more time lining up your weak spots for the kill.

A BMP-1 and BMP-2 have engines at the front... does that make them better protected?

Also there was a vid of a javelin hitting a BMP-1 but it just hit the engine, allowing the crew to survive.

A Javelin is a diving top attack weapon so when it hits the engine most of the time the crew will survive because the crew are not on top of or underneath the engine.

Did you even watch the video you posted... it shows the 25mm DU penetrator being blunted and deformed with the front armour elements and being deflected inside the fuel tank... the crew should be fine with such a hit. Ironically if the BMP-3 is firing back with a 100mm guided missile that Bradley is dead out to about 5.5km.

There are no BMP-3 variants that breach 22 tons, but all CV90s are substantially heavier than that.

Wake me up when NATO manages to figure out weight-efficient armor.

So according to that it is getting a more powerful engine and the engine is in the front like it is in the BMP-1 and BMP-2 so a proper ramp rear entry exit setup can be used.

It also mentioned the unmanned turret helps with this new arrangement (presumably by allowing the engine to be moved to the front with heavy frontal armour because the turret should be lighter).

It also mentioned that in the future a 57mm gun armed turret can be used as the military transitions to their new military vehicle families (with rear ramp doors and unmanned turrets).

At an aside was reading an article about the 2S18 which is called Pat and is a BMP-3 based vehicle with a 152mm main gun for artillery support. From that article it appeared that the main reason it was cancelled was because such a light vehicle with such a large calibre gun would be counted in the CFE (conventional forces europe) agreement as being a tank so they discontinued development.

That they are putting it back into the mix is interesting now that the CFE treaty is effectively defunct.

(my apologize if you have already explained it before) Will the Epoch turret here inherit the interesting aspects of the Derivatsiya SVO 57mm gun, such as the employment of smart ammunition with programmable denotation ?

I can't answer that categorically with a definitive answer, but what it appears to me is that they are developing a range of different turrets with different capabilities and will then be fitting them to their new vehicle families to create different vehicle types, so for instance you have the T-14 turret with a 125mm smoothbore tank gun... so that can be fitted to the Kurganets and Boomerang and DT-30 vehicle families for use in those vehicles as a tank vehicle.

Therefore that turret should be able to be put into a T-90 chassis or a T-80 chassis to be used as a tank upgrade as well in theory, though they might need a front hull extension to fit the commander and gunner in the front hull too.

The twin barrel 23mm gun turret recently shown on the BTR-82 might also be used on light vehicles like Typhoon or Tigr as an anti drone platform... it might even be used on Boomerang and Kurganets with the larger vehicles carrying more ammo and perhaps extra weapons like SOSNA or those new aircraft rocket pods.

The 57mm grenade launcher turret has Kornet missiles and Bulat missiles for tanks and BMP like targets respectively and it has a high velocity APFSDS round also for anti armour use against BMPs and BTRs and MRAPs, while the HE round is rather substantial and would be effective against air and ground targets out to probably about 6km or so I seem to remember the range being described as.

The problem with the 30mm cannon shell for a BMP is that enemy BMPs are 30 tons or more and the level of protection means a 30 x 165mm round is a bit limited in terms of penetration even with APFSDS rounds. In comparison the 57mm grenade round is enormous and rather long so there is plenty of room for a long penetrator which is quite light compared with the HE round.

The core of the idea behind telescoped cartridges is that the HE round doesn't need to be fast, it needs to be heavy, while the armour piercing round needs to be very fast and you make it heavy by making it longer... if you make it fatter then you increase drag and make it slow down faster, if you make it longer the drag does not increase but the weight increases allowing it to push through the air more efficiently and retain velocity which means it retains penetration performance better.

If you think about a balloon that is blown up and full of air when you throw it it accelerates very quickly because it is very light but when it leaves you hand it slows down because it is very light and has very little momentum, but has a large area so it is trying to push aside a lot of air to move through the air so it leaves your hand quickly but rapidly slows down and probably only moves a few metres. In comparison something small and heavier like a golf ball you can throw quite a distance, you wont get it up to enormous speeds but its momentum allows it to push through the air more efficiently.

With all this in mind you can develop something like their 57mm grenade round where the HE round is almost all HE bomb with a tiny stub case with propellant to lob the shell at the target, while the anti armour round is a long rod penetrator with most of the round being propellent to accelerate it to very high speed in the available barrel length... the amount of propellent and the length of the penetrator itself will be much more than for the 30 x 165mm shell.

The 57mm grenade launcher essentially replaces the 100mm gun and the 30mm gun... it wont be as powerful as the 100mm gun HE shell, but it will be effective enough with a lot more ready to use HE shells, and of course it APFSDS will be much better than any that could be developed for the 30mm cannon.

The tank gun launched missile (100mm) is replaced by Kornet (152mm calibre) and Bulat (unknown calibre) which is a much better weapon combination too.

What is likely to happen is that their BMPs in most of their units will probably get the 57mm grenade launcher turret, while the 57mm high velocity gun will be used on air defence vehicles and possibly convoy escort vehicles, while the 30mm cannon will probably be used on BTR like vehicles as a dedicated anti MRAP vehicle and direct support vehicle like the BTR-82A used to have and was retrofitted to the BMP-1AM upgrades.

They are going to have a wide range of vehicle types and I think having a wide variety of turrets is going to allow them to optimise their forces for different roles moving forward.

They might develop an unmanned turret based on the Sprut design specifically for light vehicles like Tigr and Typhoon, or they might decide that a 57mm cannon (as opposed to a 57mm grenade launcher) would be good enough for those lighter vehicles... it should be very interesting moving forward to see what they adopt and what does not get adopted.

The recent upgrades of the BMP-3 and BTR-82 where the engines have been moved to the front again are interesting...

Their armour is certainly getting bigger.

@JohnMK that video explains why there were so many people around that Ukrainian train with armoured vehicles on it that Russia attacked the other day... lots of people to put vehicles on and off trains to move them to the front and you have even more when the enemy might attack at any time so you use a lot of people to get lots on or off at once so you spend less time being vulnerable to enemy attack...

will there be a BMP-4 or is the role completely taken over by Kurganets

I don't think they will continue the BMP family naming convention, because the BMP role is going to be split up amongst the different vehicle families.

The T-15 for instance is the BMP-4 in the Armata family, and the B-15 is the same turret in the Kurganets family, while the B number for the Boomerang version is unknown... could it be K-15?

I don't know but other numbers don't match across the families... the T-16 is the engineer and recovery vehicle in the Armata family, but seems to be the Kord turret armed APC version of the Boomerang K-16.

I suspect many vehicles have more changes than just the turret so swapping the turrets would not change them from type to type either.

I do know is that none of them will be called BMP-4. Even the BMP-3 with the turret of the T-15 is called B-19.

I would add that tank level new vehicles all have T designations for every role and are Armata based, while BMP level new vehicles (with tracks) have B designations and are Kurganets based tracked vehicles while the BTR level vehicles that are wheeled seem to have similar weight and power to the Kurganets and are also wheeled but are Boomerang based vehicles and have K based designations....

The light highly mobile vehicles are the Typhoon family of four and six wheeled light vehicles and the arctic and deep snow/mud/sand or marsh and bog vehicles are the two chassis DT-30 vehicles... not sure about the designations for these two families... there are Typhoon VDV types so they might be air droppable so they could be the BMD-5?

There was talk of a specialised naval version of the Kurganets for the naval forces too, which presumably would need to be ready for their new helicopter carriers by the end of this decade.