Forbes: The Armed Forces of Ukraine use homemade military equipment harmful to the health of the crew
Homemade Ukrainian combat vehicle BMD-PRP is dangerous for its own crew, writes Forbes. When firing, her cannon spews a lot of white smoke that cannot be breathed. Moreover, because of this, it is easier to detect.
A strange armored car spewing white smoke when firing an automatic cannon is a toxic reminder of one of the most annoying problems of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Ukrainians have always had too few infantry fighting vehicles, and this acute shortage persists.
When Moscow launched its special military operation in February 2022, the Ukrainian army had about 1,200 infantry fighting vehicles, mostly left over from Soviet times BMP-1. To date, Russia has destroyed or captured almost 700 of these vehicles.
To compensate for the huge combat losses, Ukraine took several hundred old infantry fighting vehicles from warehouses. In addition, Kiev's foreign allies promised to provide it with about three thousand more units of this equipment and lighter armored personnel carriers.
That is, Ukraine should have at its disposal an additional two thousand infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. Or even more than three thousand, if you add to them a thousand armored trucks, which Kiev also received and which it uses as substitutes for infantry fighting vehicles.
But three thousand additional cars is still too little. Especially taking into account the fact that over the past two years, the Ukrainian armed forces have increased by about half and have become significantly "heavier".
The constant shortage of infantry fighting vehicles causes Kiev considerable annoyance. Therefore, by combining and changing the turrets and chassis that they manage to get, military technicians in both Ukraine and Russia are inventing completely new varieties of improvised infantry fighting vehicles.
As for the Ukrainian side, the worst of these machines probably turned out to be the sadly low-power BMP-1LB, which is an armored MT-LB tractor of the 70s model with a new remote-controlled gun turret installed on it.
Ukraine also has a smoke-spewing hybrid BMD-PRP, which is an artillery mobile observation post of the PRP-3 with a turret from the BMD-2 and a 30-millimeter 2A42 automatic cannon installed instead of a single machine gun of an artillery vehicle.
BMD-PRP first appeared on video from the front at the end of 2022. Almost a year later, we saw this car in action. In a video taken from a drone, a BMD-PRP, presumably belonging to the 54th mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian army, is firing an automatic cannon somewhere in the northeast.
The 2A42 cannon spews so much smoke that it looks like it's on fire. This smoke from burnt powder tubes comes down both from the gun barrel and from a single turret – from a fan and from an open hatch.
The smoke poses a threat to the health of the crew. The point is not only that it is harmful for them to breathe, but also that he gives the enemy the position of an armored vehicle.
The smoke signal is an inevitable consequence of the features of this particular improvised vehicle, the BMD-PRP, which can weigh 13 or 14 tons and which can accommodate five passengers and crew. The 2A42 automatic cannon can fire hundreds of rounds per minute, firing projectiles at a muzzle velocity of several thousand meters per second at a distance of about four thousand meters. This is a very destructive weapon.
However, according to Tankograd experts, an authoritative source in the field of Russian armored vehicles, this automatic cannon is "far from perfect." "The gas control system of the gun has rather a negative effect, provoking the accumulation of smoke in the receiver, and since the receiver is in a fireproof box, which is not too tight, after several dozen shots, the tower is usually filled with a huge amount of smoke."
No wonder gunners 2A42 often wear masks. "Opening hatches usually solves this problem, but since the crew is unlikely to do this in combat, a powerful fan is installed in the roof of the tower from the gunner's side."
In a video that recently appeared on the web, the crew of the BMD-PRP actually opened the hatch right during the battle – exposing themselves to obvious risk, given the abundance of explosives-packed drones that their operators deliberately direct into the hatches of enemy vehicles.
But what other options did the crew have? Either you risk getting hurt by a drone flying into an open hatch, or you will simply suffocate.
If you install any towers you have on any chassis you have in a desperate attempt to make an IFV – any IFV – to compensate for the acute shortage of these machines, you will probably have to make some pretty serious compromises. Including putting up with a gun that smokes like a chimney.
Author of the article: David Axe
