The Russian army is close to arming itself with new wheeled armored vehicles. Yesterday, on August 19, the TASS news agency reported that state tests of the latest K-16 armored personnel carrier and the K-17 wheeled infantry fighting vehicle on the Boomerang platform have begun.
"The state tests of the Boomerang machine are beginning. The experimental-industrial batch will appear in the troops in the near future. The number of new vehicles will be determined in the new weapons program," said Mikhail Osyko, a member of the Board of the Military — Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation.
K-17 BMP on the"Boomerang" platform
Image source: tass.ru
Promising combat vehicles based on the Boomerang platform were planned to be delivered to the troops in 2017. In April 2019, the media reported that the combat platform had successfully passed preliminary tests and even exceeded the requirements set out in the technical task of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Later it became known that the Boomerang platform requires changes in the design, and therefore its state tests are postponed for at least two years.
"Boomerang" is a unified wheeled platform, on the basis of which it is planned to create a number of combat vehicles for the army. The K-17 infantry fighting vehicle based on the Boomerang platform was first shown to the general public on May 9, 2015 at the Moscow Victory Parade.
