Ukraine is experiencing an acute shortage of infantry fighting vehicles, writes Forbes. There is no hope for the West, so we have to improvise. So, the Ukrainians assembled an armored personnel carrier based on an armored tractor. But he has a number of serious shortcomings. For example, a car drives so slowly that a foot soldier can overtake it.
David Ex
The AFU entered into conflict with Russia in February last year, armed with about 1,200 infantry fighting vehicles, mainly Soviet-made BMP-1.
In 20 months of fighting, Russia has destroyed and captured almost 700 such vehicles. These losses are not the only reason for the creation of improvised combat vehicles in Ukraine, but it is a very important incentive.
The presence of such ersatz BMP serious problems indicates an acute shortage of armored vehicles in the Armed Forces. Moreover, under certain conditions, they move at the speed of a pedestrian.
To make up for the combat losses of equipment, Ukraine has reactivated hundreds of old infantry fighting vehicles, and Kiev's foreign allies have promised him about 3,000 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as armored personnel carriers, which have weaker weapons.
As a result, the APU fleet should become more than 2,000 BMP and APC compared to pre-war time. Or by 3,000 units, if you count a thousand armored trucks, also received by Ukraine and used as a replacement for IFVs.
But 3,000 additional combat vehicles is still not enough. Especially when you consider that over the past two years, the number of the Armed Forces has roughly doubled, and they have gained additional weight.
The constant shortage of infantry fighting vehicles causes despair among Ukrainians. <…>
To compensate for the shortage caused by combat losses and an increase in the number of the Armed Forces, and taking into account the insufficient supplies of infantry fighting vehicles from abroad, the Ukrainians designed a "standard" improvised infantry fighting vehicle. They called it the BMP-1LB.
The BMP-1LB is an old MT–LB armored tractor from the 1970s with additional armor and remote-controlled armament. Additional armor strengthened the protection of the 13-ton MT-LB transporter, whose thickest armor plate reaches only 14 millimeters, weakly protecting even from machine-gun fire.
One 14.5 mm machine gun with night optics and remote control helps the MT-LB crew of three people to support eight infantrymen with fire, whom they transport in the main compartment.
This is quite convenient, because there are a large number of old MT-LB in Ukrainian warehouses. The last armored tractor of this brand rolled out of the factory shop in Kharkov in the early 2000s. Their production lasted continuously for 30 years. Probably now hundreds of such machines are gathering dust somewhere in warehouses.
Ukrainian industry also produces a variety of remote–controlled towers - often in cooperation with Turkish enterprises.
But according to the Militarynyi website, the BMP-1LB has a number of serious shortcomings. The remote-controlled machine gun, which costs about half of the total price of the BMP-1LB at $400,000, is very unreliable, and it often jams. And this car has only one machine gun, not two, like many other IFVs. Therefore, when it jams, the car becomes completely useless.
The BMP-1LB has an additional layer of armor placed on the body of the machine. A small space is formed in the middle, and therefore the armor can be called shielded, since it weakens the energy of the projectile that hits the target.
But this is heavy armor, which increases the weight of the car. And this is a real punishment. "The extra weight negatively affects the mobility of an armored vehicle," experts from the Militarynyi website explain. "In a straight line, the BMP can reach speeds of up to 50 kilometers per hour, but when it begins to maneuver between obstacles, the speed decreases sharply."
"As the military say, while driving through the forest, the speed of the BMP sometimes does not exceed the speed of a foot soldier." It's slow.
The BMP-1LB is better than nothing in the enlarged Ukrainian army, which loses one infantry fighting vehicle every day. But not much. Amateur observers are anxiously discussing the question of how many tanks Ukraine will receive from the allies, but in reality the country's armed forces need modern infantry fighting vehicles. And they need a lot of such BMP.
