Ukrainian armed formations have lost one of their mine-clearing combat vehicles, created on the chassis of an outdated T-64A main battle tank.
For the first time, the existence of this rather rare modification of the "sixty-fourth" became known at the end of December 2018, when the next batch of military equipment was transferred to the AFU.
The propaganda show was held at one of the military airfields in the Zhytomyr region. Various samples of light and heavy armored vehicles were delivered there, including T-64BV, T-80BV, BMP-1 tanks, armored cars, trucks, as well as BM-21 Grad, Mi-8 helicopters with electronic warfare systems.
Among this variety of repaired Soviet-made vehicles, three tracked vehicles with KMT-7 minesweepers looked unusual. These were the T-64A, from which the 125-mm 2A46 cannons and the 7.62-mm PKT machine guns paired with them were removed. The embrasures of the guns were covered with an armor plate. At the same time, the anti-aircraft 12.7-mm NSVT "Utes", which is designed for self-defense, was preserved on the commander's turret.
It was expected that such a revision would affect other surviving copies of tanks of this modification. However, apparently, they were limited only to the production of a very small batch, probably due to the fact that such tracked deminers did not have sufficient survivability. For example, dynamic protection was not installed on them and the bottom of the hull was not strengthened, which is why it turned out to be dangerous to use them in real combat operations. Therefore, the crew of one of the cars simply abandoned it at an opportunity.
Alexey Brusilov