BTR-80/82A and variants: News

Why does Russian army operate both BMP-3 and BTR-80/90 APC , both are APC so why operate two types ?

In WWII most infantry walked. Even the German Army had to walk most of the time.

With time forces became more mechanised but even in the 60s and 70s the vast majority of soldiers went by truck in the west.

In the Soviet Union they developed the BMP vehicle which was relatively well armoured but with serious firepower, and was not cheap. If you have a 3 million man Army and an expensive APC then the majority will either walk or travel in trucks.
US forces at the time went in M113s which were basically a box on tracks for the high priority forces and trucks for the majority.
Soviet forces introduced the BTR series as being cheap enough to get into service to replace trucks in the role of troop transport.
Examples of cost cutting include using a widely available truck engine to power the BTR-60 but it was so underpowered they had to use two engines. This made it harder to maintain and operate but it was relatively cheap with plenty of spare parts and most mechanics were familiar with how the engine worked.
The BTR-70 replaced it and kept the twin engine design though they became diesel engines for fire safety.
Finally in the BTR-80 they had one engine, which simplifies the transmission of the vehicle.

Compared with the western equivalent of the BTR, which for the most part was a truck the BTR was much better protected from small arms and mines. There are plenty of photos of the BTR in Afghanistan with wheels blown off by mines and the vehicle is still fully operational.
The BTR also has much better firepower than the average troop truck, and in many ways it even had better firepower than the M113, in the sense that while the turret was manually operated it was a protected position unlike the gun fitted to the M113 and had both 30 cal and the very powerful 14.5mm guns. In many ways the 14.5mm was very much like a western 20mm gun with less HE capacity but higher muzzle velocity so the AP rounds tended to be better than the 20mm rounds of the time.

Through experience however it has been found that the BTR series have good mobility where roads are OK.
There are no APCs that you can actually fight from unless the enemy are completely pathetic so the lack of armour compared with the BMP was not that important.
In both cases the vehicle transports the troops to where the enemy is and when the troops deploy and advance the vehicle provides fire support.
The better optics and better firepower made the BMPs more effective, and as their units would be fighting a tougher enemy they generally needed that.
The BMP-2 was the favourite vehicle in Afghanistan because of its high elevation fire power and its armour was better than that on the BTRs, but there weren't many places a BMP could go that a BTR couldn't and they were much cheaper.
I have a manual from an old tank game called M1 tank platoon. Its description of the BTR was that it was a turkey of a vehicle and that if the Soviet Union had a Congress it wouldn't be in service. The BTRs armour was no worse than that on the M113 and on roads it was faster and cheaper to operate and had better fire power. The difference of course is that it shouldn't be compared with an M113... it should be compared with a truck... it has better armour, better cross country ability, better fire power, and better mine resistance.

In a normal Motor Rifle unit there will be tanks and BMPs and BTRs... without the BTRs the troops would be in trucks. Units in East Germany would have the better BMPs and BTRs, while the units in the middle of nowhere would have old tanks and old BMPs and old BTRs.

Yes, we have a similar operating model.

For general troop transport, we use the M113.

For the Infantry support, we have Bradleys.

Actually when the BTR was in service you hadn't developed Bradleys yet... it was M113s and trucks.

The US didn't "invent" the Bradley till after the Soviets introduced the BMP-2...

Russian tracked APC is MT-LB, which is equivalent to M-113.

Not really. The MTLB is a prime mover... an artillery tractor. It is designed to tow a gun and carry the crew and some ammo. In deep snow it is used in lieu of BMPs but that is rare.

The M113 was the BMP and the Truck was the BTR in the US military.

I doubt Stryker will replace Bradley, because wheeled vehicles could not
do properly the job of tracked vehicles, which could have heavier armor
and stronger armament, because they are more stable and have lower
pressure or ground.

There is a tracked vehicle being developed to replace the Bradley. Wheeled vehicles have the benefit of excellent mobility where roads exist, high speed, good resistance to mines, very low operating costs, low maintenance costs, at the cost of reduced armour and generally reduced fire power.

BTRs mean that the troops that would otherwise go by trucks can keep up with the rest of the force when it comes to a river with no bridge for example.

I remember a report written by a US officer after evaluating a BTR in a test drive and he said it was the ultimate RV (recreation vehicle). It would bounce over fairly rough country with ease.

The new BTR-82 just improves some things that were relatively easy to fix and make some changes that made sense now. Fixes include removing the main gun stoppage of 50 round belts of ammo by using a continuous 500 round belt of 14.5mm ammo. A small fix but makes the gunners job much easier and provides an improvement in fire power. The turret is now fully electric with power traverse and elevation and stabilisation for the weapons and sights. The old manual controls were not that heavy but the addition of an auto tracker and fire control system and weapon and sight stabiliser means firing on the move is much more accurate, which again improves the fire power of the vehicle.
Regarding changes that needed to be made include the replacement of the anti radiation liner with a kevlar anti spall liner and improvement of side and rear armour was also a good idea for now.

I wasn't even talking about who did it first Garry, I was talking about what we have and what they have, calm down.. :p

I am perfectly calm.

The question was why the Russians/Soviets operated both BMPs and BTRs which are both armoured vehicles used to transport troops.

I felt a history lesson was necessary to explain why a large powerful nation like the Soviet Union that built entire submarines out of an expensive material like Titanium would bother with such a cheap simple vehicle.

It certainly was a cheap and simple vehicle, but more expensive and useful than the alternative... which as I pointed out was at the time for all other armies a truck or for some actually walking.

The west likes to talk about Russia adopting western style this or that, yet hardly mentions the reverse, like the west adopting Russian style assault rifles, and Soviet style IFVs.

At 0:22, that's a very small bomb

It was just a show pyrotechnic... it is still a fairly new toy so I doubt they would want to scratch it... yet.

Why not have both anti-radiation liner and kevlar anti spall liner ? One
never know when they would encounter operating against a nuclear
backdrop or going into places that have been nuked few hours back.

For all we know they might have left the anti radiation liner in place and put the anti spall liner over top. Most exported vehicles didn't have anti radiation liners anyway.
As long as they are keeping their tactical nukes I guess it makes sense to keep preparing for such things.
After all in Desert Storm the threat of bio and chem warfare was very real.

I'm guessing it's more likely to encounter fragmentation than it is to encounter NBC environments.

Yeah... looking purely mathematically at it I would say odds are any real use of the vehicles will likely involved the real threat of fragmentation and penetration, while any NBC environments might be faced once if ever.
The spall lining is useful against HESH warheads because the kevlar captures any of the armour that peels off and would normally do internal damage. It is also useful against 90% penetrations where the incoming round almost but doesn't quite penetrate as that can lead to parts of the armour on the surface where the penetration would have occurred from spalling. And of course with an actual penetration the kevlar can sometimes stop the projectile but more often will at least stop the particles of armour coming into the vehicle with the penetrator so internal damage is reduced.

Does BTR-82 have better mine resistance comparing to older BTRs? For
sure kevlar liner will improve armor capabilities, how much, depend on
the ticknes of kevlar liner.

It all depends on the type of mine. The average anti tank mine or anti personel mine with most of the BTR series just resulted in a wheel being blown off. The vehicle could usually drive away... because the tire took most of the force and damage. For a mine that might explode under the belly... either a magnetic mine or remote controlled mine the vehicle is not so well protected. Fitting the seats to the walls or ceilings of the vehicles improve the chance of survival for the crew and troops because a seat directly fixed to the floor will channel the energy of the explosive right up through anybody sitting on those seats and most likely crush their spines and kill them. A seat fixed to the wall or ceiling will break and the distance between the seat and the floor will absorb a lot of the energy of the explosion... so the person sitting in that seat will be able to survive more powerful explosions. Obviously if the bomb is a 500kg aerial bomb with a remote fuse then nothing will walk away. Kevlar liners will reduce spall and any fragmentation from entering the troop compartment and might also slightly soften the impact as the seat hits the kevlar. For its weight and cost kevlar lining is very much well worth it.

The experts in mine resistent vehicles were the South Africans with the Buffels and Ratales, the ideal shape is the V body shape to direct the blast away from the hull.

Most countries have copied their designs... ie V shaped hull, seats not attached directly to the floor, spaced armour under the floor and extra steel plates to protect certain vehicle positions like the driver and the engine etc.

Improved mine resistance is something all new designs will likely address... including Boomerang.

The problem is worse for tracked vehicles if the explosive is powerful enough to destroy the track as it suddenly loses mobility. A wheeled vehicle is more likely to just lose a wheel but still be able to move. This is the advantage of an 8 wheeled vehicle over say a 4 wheeled vehicle.
With the extra weight it could be possible that the Boomerang could be a 10 x 10 vehicle.

Looking at that video it looks perfectly stable firing its 30mm gun.

Perhaps the problems were with a particular vehicle having problems with aiming?

The above video showed a target sheet covered with hits but there was no indication as to the range at which they were shooting, but the fact that the vehicle was perfectly stable while firing suggests to me perhaps criticism of accuracy could either be based on laying accuracy of the mount, a ranging mistake for the ballistic computers calculated aim point, or perhaps they were firing while moving and the stabilisation system isn't good enough.

Nice video anyway... thanks for posting.

Wasn't sure myself so I looked again and you can clearly see when you freeze the frame there are large holes and there are much smaller holes, with the larger holes being 30mm and the smaller holes looking like rifle calibre rounds in comparison.

The different calibres giving us a scale for the shooting pattern, but we don't know what range they fired at it from.

It might have been 500m or 1,000m.

The size of the piece of paper compared with the 30mm holes suggest to me the accuracy is very good

More importantly after every 50 round burst with the 14.5mm HMG they had to change belts...

In BTR-82 and BTR-82A the ammo belts are continuous...

Add to that better armour, anti spall liner, and lots of minor things that make it easier to operate, and I wouldn't say it is a starship, but it is a significant step in the right direction.... I wouldn't mind one myself...