I visited the Kiev Armored Plant, where they produce the famous BTR-3E armored personnel carriers and prepare tanks for the ATO. The plant is unique in that it has a full production cycle for armored personnel carriers.
The Kiev Armored Plant (KBTZ) was founded back in 1935 as a mechanical repair plant and since then everything here has been connected only with armored vehicles. On the territory of the plant there is even a pedestal with an IS-3 tank (Joseph Stalin), testifying to the former profile of the enterprise. In Soviet times, KBTZ had its own specialization - the modernization and repair of T-72 tanks, in contrast to the Kharkov factories focused on the T-64.
The T-72 was practically not used in the Ukrainian Army until 2014, so the Kiev plant mastered a new direction - the production of armored personnel carriers. Three years ago, they began producing their own model of the BTR-3E, which turned out to be in demand on the arms market. Before the war in Donbass, KBTZ managed to complete a large contract for the Thai army, which made it possible to thoroughly develop the technology for producing armored personnel carriers.
Now the plant, according to director Vladislav Lisitsa, operates in three shifts. Conducts production from scratch of the BTR-3E, modernization of T-72 and T-64 tanks, restoration of equipment damaged in the ATO zone.
The plant was in a fever for a long time, and after the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, when the country was expecting military equipment from it, past frauds began to “resurface.” Revelatory materials and reports of the arrest of leaders began to appear in the media. The current director is trying to raise the plant, organize continuous production, and organize work in the shops.
As soon as the ATO began, the Kyiv Armored Plant had to urgently look for a replacement for Russian spare parts. Suppliers of even ordinary parts and rubber bands refused to supply them under various pretexts. And without them, you won’t be able to release new equipment. The plant had to show miracles of ingenuity, looking for analogues in Ukraine and Europe.
The atmosphere of the mid-20th century reigns at the plant. Yes, there is all the necessary equipment, but the machines here have not been updated for a long time. Most of the operations are manual. This means that the quality of the product directly depends on the qualifications of the personnel. Most of the workers are strong, Soviet-trained men. And it is on them that this plant rests. “Young people are not drawn here,” the site manager complains, “our salaries are not high, but we have to work a lot.” Many specialists have been working for decades and we don’t know who can replace them. Nowadays they don’t make these anymore - the factory workers joke.
Mobile teams of the armored plant are constantly in the ATO zone and repair equipment after battles, says the head of the enterprise. It is these specialists who then make rational proposals for the modernization of the BTR-3E, taking into account combat operations. But we cannot properly reward these initiatives. People understand this, and even prepare their proposals for free. In total, almost 900 changes and improvement proposals were made last year,” states the plant director.
After the armored personnel carrier comes off the assembly line, it is sent to the final delivery workshop, where it is prepared for acceptance by the military. The program also includes mandatory shooting. The new BTR-3E must shoot a machine-gun belt, fire from a cannon and an automatic grenade launcher. If any of the disciplines are not passed, the equipment is sent for revision.
The armored plant has a lot of difficulties. The company needs investment, it needs orders, it needs freedom of action, it needs new system management and incentives. If Ukraine wants to boost its defense industry, people must want to work here the best specialists, the best designers and receive a decent salary. Enthusiasm and patriotism alone will no longer allow you to travel. And the state should at least say thank you to today’s men who are now working for the defense industry. They accomplish this feat, working in unheated workshops, day and night.
The press service of Ukroboronprom recently reported that the Ukrainian army received the first seven BTR-4 armored personnel carriers, the hulls of which are made from new domestic armor, and that production cooperation has been established at the Lozovsky Forging and Mechanical Plant for the production of BTR-4 armored hulls and their further assembly at the Malyshev plant and the Kiev armored plant.
The scandal with these armored personnel carriers and the armor for them is old and already half-forgotten. It all started in September 2009 with the conclusion of a contract between the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian state concern Ukrspetsexport, which later became part of Ukroboronprom, for the supply of 429 Ukrainian-made BTR-4 to Iraq in the amount of 457.5 million US dollars.
The most interesting thing is that payment for this contract was to be made from funds allocated by the US government as part of the rearmament of the Iraqi army. Therefore, the United States closely monitored its implementation, and Ukrainian corrupt officials failed to hush up the fact of the failure of this contract.
In 2011-2012 Under this contract, 88 armored personnel carriers were delivered to Iraq. In April 2013, the next batch of 42 armored personnel carriers was delivered. Iraq refused to accept this batch and did not even allow the Singaporean ship SE Pacifica to enter the ports of Iraq, which carried this batch of armored personnel carriers.
Such actions by Iraq were due to the fact that 80% of the armored personnel carriers from the previously delivered batches had cracks in the armored personnel carrier hulls; for this reason, they could not be used. This ship with loaded armored personnel carriers hung out on the high seas for almost a year until the question of where to send this batch of armored personnel carriers was decided.
Considering that the money for this contract was allocated by the United States, a trial began there to find out where the money disappeared. During the investigation, it became clear that intermediaries from the United States, the management of Ukrspetsexport and the Iraqi military were involved in the corruption scheme for this contract. Through a number of offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, considerable commissions were transferred to participants in this scheme. The contract included serious money for marketing research under the contract and they were paid. Some of the participants in the scheme apparently did not receive the commissions they were owed, and the whole thing received international publicity.
The Ukrainian-Iraqi contract was terminated at the beginning of 2014, and this batch of armored personnel carriers eventually returned to Ukraine. At least the Ukrainian participants in this scam escaped with a slight fright and suffered virtually no punishment. And the state of Ukraine had to return the advance payment and pay a huge penalty for failure to fulfill the terms of the contract, since state guarantees were given for it.
In addition to the corruption component, there was also a technical problem: the armored personnel carriers turned out to be truly inoperable, many people knew about the cracks in the armor in their hulls, but all this was covered up by the parties to the deal.
The developer and manufacturer of the BTR-4 was the Kharkov Mechanical Engineering Design Bureau named after. Morozov (KhKBM), which previously developed only tanks, never developed lightly armored tracked vehicles, much less wheeled ones. There was no experience in such developments, and literally the day before the design bureau developed the Dozor armored car and the BTR-3 armored personnel carrier and manufactured small batches of them.
At the very beginning of the epic with the Iraqi contract, the design bureau showed me the first two samples of the BTR-4. Their assembly was just being completed, they had never left the workshop, much less any tests had been carried out, and they were going to be supplied under an international contract! This surprised me very much; testing of such equipment has been going on for years. Inevitable malfunctions and defects are identified, modifications are made, and only after that the car is given a start in life. Here everything was unnatural; apparently, in order to promote the Iraqi contract, the BTR-4 was quickly put into service without conducting a full cycle of tests.
When a scandal arose with massive defects in armored personnel carriers delivered to Iraq, the Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of trying to discredit “excellent Ukrainian equipment” in order to eliminate a competitor in the arms market. But everything quickly fell into place when Iraq terminated the contract and refused to accept Ukrainian armored personnel carriers. Also, small batches of these vehicles were delivered to Indonesia and Kazakhstan to evaluate the possibility of concluding contracts for their supply, but due to identified technical problems in the delivered armored personnel carriers, these countries refused to conclude contracts.
The main technical problem of the BTR-4 was cracks not only in the welds of the hulls, but also cracks in the armor itself. In Ukraine, which previously produced all types of necessary armor, there were already problems with the quality of the armor produced. In 2014, the director of the Malysheva plant stated: “Questions may be about armor. But we are solving this too, focusing on the Europeans. Most likely, in the near future we will have European armor...” They thought that Europe would help.
Since Soviet times, the supply of armor for tanks and MTLBs has been carried out by the Mariupol Azovmash, which, through the efforts of the Donetsk oligarchy, was brought to the stage of bankruptcy and stopped producing armor. They found a replacement for him. The armor came from unknown suppliers with unknown quality, and scandals constantly arose during the production of armored vehicles, as was the case at the Kiev Tank Repair Plant and the Lvov Tank Repair Plant during the production of the BTR-3 armored personnel carrier and the Dozor armored vehicle.
At the Lvov Armored Plant, armor from Poland was used for armored vehicles, but there were problems with it too; it cracked during testing. At the beginning of 2015, when testing the first samples of an armored car in the hulls of two of the three armored cars, through cracks about 40–50 cm long appeared on the bottoms in the area where the engine was located. At the same time, the vehicles on which cracks were found traveled a little over 400 and 100 km.”
The hulls of the BTR-4 delivered to Iraq were made from the same incomprehensible quality of armor. According to the contract, the BTR-4 was to be supplied by KMDB, which does not have its own production base for welding hulls. The production of hulls was transferred not to the Malyshev plant, which always welded tank hulls, but to the Lozovsky Forging and Mechanical Plant, which in ancient times Soviet times carried out welding of MTLB bodies produced by the Kharkov Tractor Plant.
At that time, LKMZ had lost the technology for carrying out such work and the traditions of military acceptance, which led to disastrous results. Instead of the required armor, armor of an unknown quality was used; during welding, another wire was used that was not provided for in the documentation. In 2017, a criminal case was initiated against LKMZ only for the fact of using a different wire when welding housings. The criminal case, apparently, ended in nothing, since in accordance with the information given at the beginning of the article, welding of BTR-4 hulls continues at LKMZ.
Nine years later, Ukraine suddenly announced that it had its own “domestic armor,” although it had been produced there for a long time, and its production was destroyed. It is difficult to say who was hired to produce the armor and what its quality was. Time will tell how serious this is. After corrupt deals and technical mistakes during the development, testing and production of the BTR-4, they are trying to revive it again. Over the years, there have been many scandals with the armored personnel carrier, mutual accusations and attempts to hide the identified technical shortcomings of this vehicle.
Now the BTR-4 has passed many types of tests, including in real combat conditions, and time will tell how well this vehicle meets the requirements for it. After such a trail of failures, it is unlikely to be able to break into the international arms market. Victorious claims about solving the armor problem still need to be proven; in Ukraine, claims very often do not correspond real things, and the epic with the delivery of BTR-4 to Iraq clearly showed what adventures Ukrainian officials and the power structures supporting them are ready to get involved in.
On the website of the Ukrainian information and consulting company Defense Express interesting material from its director has been published Sergei Zgurts "When will the new armored personnel carriers reach the Ukrainian army" about problems with the production of armored personnel carriers BTR-3 and BTR-4 in Ukraine. As is easy to see, a number of current difficulties in the Ukrainian defense industry are common to the entire post-Soviet space and reproduce phenomena that the Russian defense-industrial complex faced some time ago (and continues to face in certain segments).
The body of an armored personnel carrier BTR-3DA, manufactured for the armed forces of Ukraine (c) Defense Express / defense-ua.com
The fulfillment by the Ukrainian defense industry - both public and private - of the state order for the supply of new equipment to the army clearly fits into two patterns. The first is almost an axiom: “Each new type of weapon costs twice as much, takes twice as long to make, and has half as much effect as stated.” The second law is more boring. Increasing funding for an unbalanced defense industry does not mean that you will get more products. Quite the contrary.
Both of these rules have been tested by the practice of other countries. Ukraine is just another confirmation of this. Only national characteristics give it a special flavor. About them - in the material prepared by the director of the information and consulting company Defense Express Sergei ZGURETS.
The laws of war economics, or the American experience of the 80s
First, an excursion into history. In the 70s, the policy of detente between the USA and the USSR resulted in a massive withdrawal of industrial enterprises from the arms market for America. But already in the 80s, in an aggravated international situation, the Pentagon began to loudly and dissatisfiedly declare the low quality and insufficient quantity of weapons purchased from its defense industry. In direct response to Pentagon requests, government defense orders were increased by approximately 25% per year. And so - for ten years. The result of this financial injection was paradoxical.
Jacques Gensler, the US Under Secretary of Defense for Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, later openly stated the following. The increase in military spending did not lead to a noticeable increase in the supply of new military equipment to American troops. Despite doubling funding for arms purchases, by 1988 the state of the defense industry had deteriorated. The unbalanced growth of budget funds for the development and purchase of new weapons, on the one hand, and investments in improving experimental and production capacities, on the other hand, gave rise to a rapid increase in the cost of products and a significant extension of the time it takes to complete orders by contractors.
The situation in relations between the customer, the Pentagon, and manufacturing companies stabilized just ten years after the start of the new weapons launch. And it all ended with the concentration of production in the US defense industry with new centers of power and capabilities.
Now the Ukrainian defense industry has begun to fully experience these patterns of the military economy. True, we are still only going through the first stage, associated with an increase in the demand of the country's law enforcement agencies for new products. This is especially noticeable in the example of the production of light armored vehicles for the Armed Forces and the National Guard.
How we make armored personnel carriers, or the bottleneck of the process
Now the Ukrainian defense industry is supplying the army and NSU with two types of new armored personnel carriers - BTR-3 and BTR-4, developed by the Morozov KMDB. Although, given the firepower of the combat module, they actually belong to the category of wheeled infantry fighting vehicles. Both state-owned enterprises that are part of the Ukroboronprom concern and private traders are involved in the production of both “fours” and “threes”. Moreover, one “private owner” set all the rules of the game for the entire armored industry.
The country's entire potential for the production of wheeled armored personnel carriers/infantry fighting vehicles - both for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, NSU, and for export contracts - depended on the Lozova Forging and Mechanical Plant (LKMZ), the largest forging and stamping enterprise in Ukraine. It is at LKMZ that new hulls for armored personnel carriers are produced. True, they are produced using technology that was developed back in the days of the Soviet Union. Non-hardened sheet armor is supplied to production, it is cut, the edges are processed, and welders weld the body on the stocks. Then this body is loaded into a huge furnace, where the body of the future armored personnel carrier is hardened to a certain temperature and then gradually cooled. This is necessary so that the armored steel becomes armor, even including welds, and the body of the armored personnel carrier does not crack. Although, as practice shows, it’s not necessary once in a while.
I will say directly: such technology can no longer be called modern. It initially involves a huge amount of manual labor, is very dependent on the experience of welders and involves an excessively long technological cycle. I have something to compare with. I visited a factory in Poland, where they produce modern Rosomak armored personnel carriers, developed by the Finnish company Patria. There, the hulls are welded directly from hardened armor, and this work is performed not by people, but by robotic line devices. Watching them work, I realized the key importance of straight lines in the design of modern armored vehicles, including the design of the Rosomak armored personnel carrier, in comparison with the evil genius who created the BTR-3. The gloomy puzzle of the BTR-3 body has so many squiggles in its design that no robotic line can cope with its production. Only people. With the “four” it’s a little easier, but not radically.
According to my estimates, since 2010, including the Iraqi contract, at least 250 BTR-4 hulls have been made at Lozovaya. There are about the same number of “threes”. In addition to hulls, LKMZ also produces key components and assemblies for the chassis of armored personnel carriers.
In mid-2017, the owner of LKMZ, when I asked how many buildings his plant could produce per month, said: “Twenty. But we have been without work for five months now. There are no orders from the Ministry of Defense." It was during this period that the state defense order for the next year, 2018, was being formed. Its volumes were such that at the beginning of this year I wrote optimistically that for the first time new armored vehicles would enter the Ukrainian army in battalion sets. Among other things, the state defense order was calculated based on the rather underestimated capabilities of Lozovaya for the production of hulls. But suddenly the risk-free corpus minimum was under threat.
Everyone left to “cook” Polish ships, not Ukrainian armored personnel carriers
In the first quarter of 2018, Lozovaya’s workload for case production was also close to zero. This is understandable. Taking into account our bureaucratic procedures in the relationship between the customer - the Ministry of Defense - and the executor of the state defense order - the enterprises that are part of Ukroboronprom - there was a traditional process of signing contracts.
At the same time, the Kiev Armored Repair Plant is responsible to the Ministry of Defense and the National Guard for the production of the BTR-3. And for the production of the BTR-4, in turn, the Kharkov Mechanical Engineering Design Bureau named after. Morozov, whose leadership, unlike KBRZ, decided to produce armored personnel carriers for financial resources also within the framework of state guarantees.
By the time the agreements were signed between the Ministry of Defense and Ukroboronprom enterprises, the reality on Lozovaya had changed dramatically. The temptation of a visa-free regime has reached this enterprise as well. Work in Poland for qualified welders turned out to be paid an order of magnitude higher than at home. Attempts by the company's management to raise wages to 18-20 thousand UAH turned out to be late. Of several welding teams, only one could carry out work on the hulls. The supply of the declared quantities of both “fours” and “threes” hulls under the state defense order was under threat. But the story didn't end there.
For its key customers - KBRZ and KMDB - Lozovaya raised the cost of manufacturing the hull by 56 percent, and the chassis components and assemblies by 30 percent. After which, manufacturing plants began to prepare for the procedure for revising prices with the customer. Since all the documents contained indicative prices 2017
Price labyrinth
I'll say it briefly. Everything related to financial relationships in the defense sector - from methods for setting prices for products to the volume and procedure for financing the state defense order - is today a systemic stumbling block in the relationship between the customer, represented by the Ministry of Defense, and the manufacturer of defense products. Regardless of whether it is a private or public enterprise. An important circumstance here is the budget indicators for next year and further rhythmic financing of all projects related to the implementation of defense production. It often happens that the volumes of financing, including advances from the Ministry of Defense, do not correspond to the real costs of defense enterprises. Or the start of financing is postponed for 3-6 months instead of the beginning of the year. “This is fundamentally wrong, since the normal functioning of the entire production body of our enterprises is disrupted,” they explained to me at Ukroboronprom.
In turn, the heads of KBRZ and KMDB argued that it is not entirely fair when the implementation of the state defense order is the responsibility of only the executing factories. And neither the military nor the civilian financiers from the same Ministry of Finance are responsible for all the bureaucracy and unexpected introductions.
As an example, during the production of the “pre-dose” BTR-3, the Kiev Armored Forces was tasked with completely redoing the equipment intercom and switching and adapt the “troikas” to new foreign radio stations. This violated the planned deadlines due to the significant amount of work being performed, since it was necessary to redo what had already been done.
And KMDB, as a pioneer in the use of funds within the framework of state guarantees, was faced with an undeveloped mechanism for the implementation of these financial opportunities. The algorithm for coordinating the use of credit resources provided for in the contract resulted in a significant increase in the actual production cycle and a complication in the procurement of components.
But let’s return to the jump in prices for housings from Lozovaya. According to the management of the Kyiv Armored Plant, all price increase processes were confirmed by military acceptance and no difficulties were foreseen in accepting the new price when delivering the products to the customer. But de facto, the new price for the “troika” has not yet been approved. According to representatives of the Ministry of Defense with whom I spoke, the KBRZ provided updated calculation and calculation materials later than the deadline determined by the current standards. And it went beyond nine months of supply of products after making an advance payment, as determined by the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 464 “On issues of state defense order.” Therefore, now, they say, all issues should be resolved only through the courts. The picture is that, given the hybrid manifestations of domestic legal realities, front-line courage has already exhausted itself.
As I understand it, there is no court decision yet on the price of the BTR-3, which has not yet been launched, and there is no talk yet about the acceptance of new “troikas” manufactured under the State Defense Order, or the start of production of a new batch under state guarantees. Although the management of the KBTZ wrote a letter to the Minister of Defense explaining the current situation, this did not help the matter much. Therefore, the “troika” is on pause for now...
"Ukroboronprom" turns on afterburner
Already from the third quarter of 2018, the situation with hull production has become a headache for the management of Ukroboronprom and responsible sectors in the National Security and Defense Council. Nobody gives numbers, but, according to my pessimistic estimates, in its current state, LKMZ can produce hulls for armored personnel carriers per month by an order of magnitude less than the quantity that the owner told me about in 2017.
What was done? To begin with, the first contrarian step was taken. State enterprises were forced to help the “private owner”. The same one who “raised” the price for the cases. But the demand for the state defense order is not from him. Therefore, a team of qualified welders was sent from KMDB to Lozovaya to speed up the production of hulls. To be fair, it's worth noting. The current leadership of KMDB, having a significant order from the Ministry of Defense for the production of BTR-4, initially signed a contract with Lozova for the production of only a small number of hulls. It was purely our usual temptation to digest the entire jackpot of the order on our own, setting up the production of cases for the “fours” in Zhitomir, and then in Kharkov. And they transferred most of the order to Lozovaya only after it became clear: the desire to earn money did not correspond to the possibilities. Without these four to five months of delay, Lozovaya could have planned her work differently - both the workload and the retention of staff. And now a team from Kharkov is working on Lozovaya - and the number of welders from KMDB is the same as local ones. Everyone is working in overdrive.
The second step is systemic and long-term. To expand the bottleneck - hull production - Ukroboronprom decided to launch independent production of armored personnel carrier hulls at its own facilities, so as not to depend on Lozova’s services. Hull production was deployed at the Kiev Armored Plant, at the Kharkov Design Bureau and at the Kharkov Malyshev Plant. All these production facilities require the presence of embedding stands, tilters and furnaces for heat treatment of hulls. The transition to qualitatively different production technologies is not yet possible due to design and financial limitations.
In September, October and November, a process took place and is ongoing when the first hulls produced at these new facilities, and the production facilities themselves, are certified by military acceptance. In fact, this is truly the beginning of a new stage in the domestic production of armored vehicles. True, the balance between supply and demand has not yet been achieved. Especially taking into account the growing needs of the Ministry of Defense and a number of export orders for the new BTR-4. Both in the basic version and the modernized version of the BTR-4MV1.
According to my estimates, taking into account the projected demand for new wheeled armored personnel carriers/infantry fighting vehicles from the defense department alone in the amount of at least 100 new vehicles per year, it will take at least two years to achieve the desired balance. The Ministry of Defense, Ukroboronprom, and private companies will need to solve this problem not in confrontation and ignoring systemic problems, but in a consolidated manner. There is nothing left to do but take it and do it. With getting rid of blood clots that are generated by our specifics. They contain no less evil than the technologies of the past. Old and ossified models of management and relationships will never allow us to create new competitive products. This is the same axiom as those with which I began this article. To survive and develop, our defense industry simply must change. There are simply no other options.
Armored vehicles in combat operations in the South-East of Ukraine.
April-October 2014
The prerequisites for the outbreak of armed confrontation in Ukraine arose back in March 2014. But the Crimean referendum and the return of the peninsula to the Russian Federation did not cause any open hostilities (apart from individual provocations). Moreover, many Ukrainian military personnel voluntarily joined the Russian Armed Forces. Of course, in Kyiv they immediately announced that they “would not tolerate such a situation” and would “return Crimea by force,” but things did not go further than threats.
To begin with, let’s look at the lists of military equipment published in various official sources that were formally registered with the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) from the collapse of the USSR until 2009-2013. These are very impressive figures, because in 1992 “Independence” Ukraine inherited 4,080 tanks of all types (from T-55 to T-80).
According to Western and Ukrainian experts, by the time this country plunged into the darkness of the Maidan madness preceding the start of a full-scale civil war, the Armed Forces of Ukraine should have been in service with:
– T-72 tanks of various modifications – about 600 units. (almost everything is in storage);
– T-64 tanks of all modifications – about 1750 units. (at least 650 of them are in storage as of 2013), including 40 in the Marine Corps;
– T-64BM “Bulat” tanks – as of March 2014, 85 units. (available in the 1st departmental tank brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the 169th training center of the ground forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "Desna" and the Academy of Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine named after Hetman P. Sagaidachny), while it is unclear from the available documents whether the T-64BM is included in the total “paper” number of Ukrainian T-64s or are they considered a separate column and must be added to this total number;
– T-80 tanks – 165 pcs. (including about 50 T-80UD, all in storage);
– T-84U “Oplot” tanks (Ukrainian modification of the same T-80UD) – 10 pcs. as of 2010, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used these tanks mainly for parades. In 2009, a contract was signed for the supply of the second batch of T-84U APUs (also in a “fantastic” quantity of 10 units), but, as of 2013, this contract was not fulfilled “due to insufficient funding”;
Consequences of the Grad MLRS strike on a concentration of Ukrainian Armed Forces equipment. Zelenopole, Lugansk region, July 11, 2014. In the foreground is a broken T-64BV, behind it on the left is an BTR-80, in the background is an excavator on a KrAZ chassis and several vehicles.
– BMD-1 – 60 pcs. (as of 2013);
– BMD-2 – 78 pcs. (as of 2012);
– BTR-D – 44 pcs. (as of 2013);
– SAU 2S9 “Nona” – 67 pcs. (as of 2013)
– BTR-Z/BTR-4 – were produced only for export and were not officially in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, although the BTR-4 was formally adopted for service on July 24, 2012;
– BTR-60 – 176 pcs. all modifications; before the start of the war, the Ukrainian Armed Forces made limited use of mainly radio vehicles and CVs on the BTR-60 chassis, the rest were in storage;
– BTR-70 – 857 pcs. (as of 2013), up to half - in storage;
– BTR-80 – 395 pcs. (as of 2013), some are in storage, 50 are in the Marine Corps, several dozen are in the National Guard;
– BMP-1 – 994 pcs. (as of 2012), including several hundred in storage;
– BMP-2 – 1443 pcs. (as of 2013), including 75 from the Marine Corps, and some are in storage:
– BMP-3 – 4 pcs. (as of 2013), another one sold in the USA;
– BRDM-2 – more than 600 pcs. (as of 2010, including anti-tank variants and KLUM), almost all were in storage in the Ukrainian Armed Forces; apparently, mainly single versions of the modernized BRDM-2LD, BRDM-2DI and BRDM-2DP were used;
– MT-LB – 2090 pcs. (as of 2012), up to half was in storage;
– Self-propelled guns 2SZ “Akatsia” – 463 pcs. (as of 2013);
– SAU 2S1 “Gvozdika” – 600 pcs. (as of 2013), including 12 (one division) in the Marine Corps;
– SAU 2S5 “Hyacinth” – 24 pcs. (as of 2013);
– SAU 2S7 “Pion” – 99 pcs. (as of 2013), some are on conservation;
– SAU 2S19 “Meta” – 40 pcs. (as of 2013);
– MLRS BM-21 “Grad” – 315 pcs. (as of 2013), some are on conservation;
– MLRS 9K57 “Hurricane” -137 pcs. (as of 2013), some are on conservation;
– MLRS 9K58 “Smerch” – 80 pcs. (as of 2013);
– Installations of tactical missiles 9K79 “Tochka-U” – up to 90 pcs. (as of 2013), some are in storage and conservation;
– ZPRK 2S6 “Tunguska” – 70 pcs. (as of 2013).
It is interesting to compare these data with the well-known statement of the President of Ukraine P. Poroshenko, made after the official announcement of a truce in the South-East in September 2014. He claimed that the Ukrainian army “lost more than 65% of its equipment” during the summer battles. It turns out that from May to September 2014, at least one or two tank battles took place on Donbass soil, comparable in scale to the Kursk Bulge in 1943 or the battle of Dubno in 1941. And if we summarize all the above data, it turns out that in the summer of 2014 the Armed Forces of Ukraine should have lost at least 1000 tanks alone!
T-64BV - the main tank of the Ukrainian army during the ATO.
A modernized version of the sixty-four - T-64B1M. It is he who is considered as “a promising tank for arming the Armed Forces of Ukraine and battalions of the National Guard.” September 2014
T-64BM "Bulat"
Alas, you should not take the announced data too seriously. On the one hand, there is a desire to inflate their own material losses as much as possible (so that Western “friends” would help with money or arms supplies), and on the other hand, there is a desire to retroactively write off the outright theft of Ukrainian leaders and military personnel over the past two decades.
As is known, since the mid-1990s. The main course of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was maximum rapprochement and subsequent integration into the European Union and NATO while simultaneously getting rid of any “legacy of the damned totalitarian past,” including military-technical.
Until recently, science fiction writers loved to compose gloomy prophecies about how Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine declares independence and a dozen NATO divisions led by “Young Europeans,” like Poland or the Czech Republic, immediately come to the aid of the “Svidomites.” Alas, no one in NATO was and is not going to shed the blood of their soldiers for Ukraine. As for the material side of the issue, practically the only samples of Western military equipment that entered service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the late 1990s were 150-200 (given different numbers) multi-purpose Hummer vehicles in a cargo-passenger version, transferred virtually free of charge, as part of the so-called “humanitarian aid”. And all Western supplies to the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the war boil down mainly to food, uniforms, body armor, thermal imagers, optics, etc. and so on. Below are some facts about the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine.
In fact, the real combat potential of the Ukrainian army as of 2013 fits in very remotely with the above figures. In 2013, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had two tank, ten mechanized, two airmobile, one airborne, five artillery and two missile brigades, one airmobile regiment and two separate marine battalions. They formally included 160,000 personnel (the mobile reserve in case of war was unreasonably estimated at approximately 1 million people) with 4,112 units of armored vehicles of all types (tanks, self-propelled guns, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers), 400 aircraft, 93 helicopters, 25 warships and boats and up to 1000 artillery and mortar barrels (including 23-mm ZU-23-2 and 82-mm mortars). But only a little more than 10,000 people were involved in the so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO) in the South-East of Ukraine. (i.e., less than 10% of the available personnel), counting 25 “volunteer battalions” staffed by far-right and various kinds of neo-Nazis, which did not belong to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but to the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the National Guard. According to the reported data, only 774 units of armored vehicles of all types were scraped together to participate in the ATO.
The question arises, where does such a striking discrepancy between “paper” data and harsh reality come from? The answer is simple: if the leaders of Ukraine succeeded in anything during the 23 years of “independence,” it was exclusively in embezzlement and squandering the potential inherited from the USSR, including the military one.
T-64BV of the Ukrainian Armed Forces abandoned in a trench. July-August 2014
T-64BV of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which fell into the river from a built bridge. The tank was later pulled out by the militia, repaired and put into operation.
T-64BM "Bulat" tanks of the militia. Autumn 2014
In theory, for an operation like the notorious ATO, the “good old” T-55 and T-62 would be very useful for Ukrainians (especially if you remember that Russian army quite successfully used the T-62M during the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya). But to the question, where did the hundreds of tanks of these types that Ukraine inherited from the USSR go to, as well as, for example, the ZSU-23-4 (in 1992 there were at least 200 of them in Ukraine, and as of 2008 - not a single one) !), now no one can answer clearly.
The “wide sale” affected all types of armored vehicles. This is what happened, for example, with the Ukrainian T-80s. In the late 1990s, the military leadership of Pakistan, concerned about the adoption of the Russian T-90 by the Indian Army, decided to find an adequate (and, preferably, inexpensive) answer. As a result, 320 T-84s were purchased in Ukraine at a very reasonable price. Some of the vehicles were produced “from scratch” (the plant in Kharkov had a backlog of components from Soviet times, but some had to be done anew), and some were modified to an export standard from the available T-80UD. In addition, a certain number of Ukrainian T-80s (Russia, as is known, supplied T-80U only to Cyprus and South Korea) ended up in the armies of African and Asian countries (according to Western data, 66 units in Yemen, etc.).
All these facts, combined with the lack of recent photographs of Ukrainian T-80s, indicate that the entire existing fleet of vehicles of this type has long been sold out or written off. Ten T-84Us remain, which participate in parades and various weapons exhibitions. During the fighting in the South-East of Ukraine in the summer of 2014, not a single one of them was seen. True, the military leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine states that KhZTM may well produce several “Oplots” per month, but military-technical experts consider this doubtful. Perhaps the plant has the capacity to produce two or three dozen T-84U (since there was a corresponding contract in 2009), but large-scale production of Oplots in the current conditions is hardly realistic, since some of the components for them came from abroad (in including from the Russian Federation) or from factories located in the South-East of Ukraine. And there is currently no money for such programs in the Ukrainian budget.
The main tank of the Armed Forces of Ukraine naturally turned out to be the T-64, produced in Kharkov until 1985, with several modifications. This car had no export potential, since initially it was a kind of, in “automotive” language, a “concept car”, on which a number of advanced technical solutions for its time were tested, and therefore had a huge number of design and manufacturing defects . Of course, over the years of mass production and numerous upgrades, the quality of the T-64 has improved significantly, but organic defects associated with the low reliability of the engine and chassis remained (even the Soviet technical manuals carefully stated that the T-64 must be “competently operated and technically maintained "and that this tank requires an "experienced crew").
As a result, neither before 1991 nor after these vehicles were ever exported and earned very contradictory assessments both among experts and among the tank crews who served on them. The Ukrainians received about 2000 T-64s of all modifications.
Attempts to sell them abroad naturally did not end in anything, although the T-64BM Bulat variant was developed specifically for export, in which the general level of protection, the quality of sights and communications were “upped” to the level of the later T-80. 50 modernized T-64BV1 (T-64B1M) were planned to be sold to the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the end of 2013. Reportedly, some of these tanks have already been sent to the customer, and ten vehicles have been delivered to the National Guard.
Over the past two decades, a certain number of Ukrainian T-64s have been decommissioned and sent for smelting (metal also costs money), but several hundred tanks of this type have remained both on the move and at storage bases in varying degrees of desolation and understaffing. As a result, it was the T-64 that suffered the greatest losses in the battles of the summer-autumn 2014 and became the main type of tank both in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard, and in the Armed Forces of Novorossiya (militia units of the DPR and LPR).
As for the several hundred T-72s that Ukraine received, they were sold en masse and with great success, since this tank did not particularly need additional advertising. In Ukraine in the 1990s. they even developed a version of the T-72-120 with a 120-mm NATO cannon (apparently, with European buyers in mind), but it didn’t go beyond the prototype. On the other hand, according to available data, Ukraine sold at least two T-72s to Sierra Leone, 110-60 (according to various sources) to Sudan, at least 200 modernized Ukrainian T-72s on the eve of the 2008 war and then received by Georgia (in 2013, 96 T-72s remained in the Georgian army; 18 tanks were destroyed in 2008; at least 65 Georgian T-72s then went to the Russian, South Ossetian and Abkhaz armies as trophies). By the end of 2013, according to experts, only 30-50 T-72 of various modifications remained in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, most of which were in training units or rusting at storage bases. However, a number of tanks of this type were put in order and used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the ATO; at the same time, several vehicles were shot down or fell into the hands of the militia (for example, in September-October 2014, during the battles for the Donetsk airport, the militia used at least 2-3 T-72s from those previously captured from the Ukrainian Armed Forces).
Self-propelled gun 2S3 "Acacia" of the Ukrainian army
In total, after 1992, according to Western experts, Ukrainians sold at least 1,238 tanks of all types to countries in Asia and Africa.
An absolutely similar picture was observed in Ukraine with other types of armored vehicles. A lot of combat vehicles were disposed of and melted down. At least several hundred BMP-1 and BMP-2 were exported (150-200 vehicles to Georgia alone).
In fact, by the beginning of the ATO, Ukraine was producing only armored personnel carriers for export. True, this “export product” is quite unique. For example, the Ukrainian BTR-94 (its further development - BTR-3) was not produced anew at KhZTM, but was converted from the BTR-80 inherited from the USSR by installing a new engine and a combat module instead of the turret (the BTR-94 had a module with 2x23 mm cannons or 14.5 mm machine guns; later other weapon options appeared). The export success of the BTR-94 was modest; 90 vehicles were converted into this version, 50 of which were sold to Jordan (the rest were adopted by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, where they were used mainly for parades and various public displays). However, in 2003, the Jordanians transferred all their BTR-94 armored personnel carriers to the army of pro-American Iraq: the main reason was the low quality of Ukrainian vehicles.
As for the BTR-3, this vehicle was produced only for export from the very beginning. Thus, by order of Thailand, by the end of 2013, at least 32 BTR-3 were manufactured, but the customer refused to accept these vehicles. The reasons are failure to meet the deadlines of the contract, inflated price and poor workmanship. As a result, BTR-ZE and BTR-ZK from the Thai order on May 22, 2014 were solemnly transferred to units of the National Guard and sent to the ATO zone. At least 30 more BTR-3 of various variants, including 82- and 120-mm “self-propelled mortars” (apparently also from the “Thai stock”), paraded at the parade in Kyiv on August 24, 2014.
"Seventy-two" DPR militias
The BTR-4 armored personnel carrier deserves special mention, about which domestic “couch Napoleons” once enthusiastically wrote that it was a “wonderful vehicle” and “an example for the Russian military-industrial complex in remaking the BTR-80.” In essence, the BTR-4 is a “rearranged BTR-80 according to protection requirements” and according to NATO standards. At KhZTM, the hull of the “eighty” was completely redesigned, increasing its height and installing aft doors for landing. The control compartment was moved forward and received separate side doors, which gave the BTR-4 a resemblance to the French VAB or the German Tpz “Fuchs”. The engine (Ukrainian diesel ZTD or its imported analogue) was also moved forward, and instead of the turret, a Ukrainian-made universal combat module with a cannon, machine gun and ATGM was installed (on different versions of the BTR-4 the Grom, BAU-23-2, Shkval modules were installed " and "Sail"). As a result, there is nothing outstanding in the design of the BTR-4, except for the modern silhouette.
Moreover, being overly carried away by those very “NATO requirements”, the Ukrainians did not make a normal armored personnel carrier capable of following tanks in battle, but a typical patrol vehicle for escorting convoys and local counterinsurgency operations, with weak armor (for example, instead of loopholes and viewing devices, armored personnel carriers 4 has large windows with armored glass) and mine protection. As a result, although the BTR-4 was put into service on July 24, 2012, it was noted that this armored personnel carrier does not meet the requirements of the Ukrainian army and it either needs to be radically redesigned (with increased armor protection and offensive capabilities), or purchase a similar model in the West (the second was clearly preferable for the generals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine). But, as usual, no money was allocated to the developers.
As a result, the whole “conversion of a patrol car into an armored personnel carrier” came down to a single prototype, which was demonstrated a couple of times at international arms exhibitions. True, the developers of the BTR-4 did not count on orders from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since the vehicle was clearly intended for export. In 2009, a contract was signed for the supply of 420 BTR-4 armored personnel carriers to the Iraqi army, and in addition to the linear version, it was planned to supply ARVs, KShM and ambulances. Later, it was planned to sign a contract for supply to Kazakhstan (only the Kazakhs had to assemble the BTR-4 under license), but by the beginning of 2014, the Kazakh contract remained at the level of a “protocol of intent.”
By the end of 2013, about 100 BTR-4s were sent to Iraq. And then the unheard of happened - the Iraqi military (the supply of any weapons for which Washington paid and continues to pay; by the way, one BTR-4 cost the Iraqis, or rather the Americans, a tidy sum - more than 1 million USD) was returned to the manufacturer in January 2014 42 BTR-4! The reason is a failure to meet the deadlines of the contract (by 2014, all the armored personnel carriers stipulated by the contract were to be delivered, and at least a quarter), poor workmanship (rust and cracks in the armored hulls were discovered, from which some experts concluded that the chassis and hull parts parts of the BTR-4 were not manufactured anew, but were again converted from the BTR-80), the discrepancy between the actual characteristics and the declared ones and the inflated price.
Self-propelled gun 2S1 “Gvozdika” of the Ukrainian army.
The result of this scandal was that all the BTR-4 manufactured from the Iraqi stock accumulated at the KhZTM were transferred to the National Guard. Ten BTR-4s were solemnly handed over to the “volunteer battalions” on March 23-24, 2014, and by the end of the summer it was planned to transfer another 58 vehicles, some of which were “shown” at the parade on August 24, 2014. It is interesting that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were not particularly keen receive the BTR-3 and, even more so, the BTR-4. Even the same type of cars of these brands from different batches have serious external differences, i.e. these are, in fact, low-volume export samples with non-interchangeable parts that are unclear how to operate and repair (there are no such problems with conventional BTR-80s). And for those eager for battle and not very technically savvy fighters from the National Guard, the BTR-3 and BTR-4 were quite suitable, especially since there was no choice given the lack of equipment. Considering that HTZM has some backlog of parts under the Iraqi contract, the National Guard and the Armed Forces of Ukraine may still receive several dozen more BTR-4s, but further (and especially mass) production is in question, since some of the components (for example, chassis parts and suspensions) manufacturers received from abroad.
SAU 2S19 "Msta" of the Ukrainian army
By the time the fragile truce was announced in September 2014, other “newest” models of armored vehicles appeared in the National Guard, the Ukrainian Border Guard Service and the Ukrainian Armed Forces - for example, the Cougar and Spartan armored cars, several dozen of which were allegedly produced specifically for the National Guard at KrAZ. Both samples are actually a parody of an armored personnel carrier or armored personnel carrier, since they are made on a commercial chassis. The Cougar is an armored Toyota Land Cruiser, and the Spartan is a Ford F550. Manufacturers are modestly silent about the origin of the chassis itself. The real combat value of these vehicles is more than doubtful, since in terms of bulletproof (not to mention RPGs, mines or land mines) armor protection, both of them are inferior even to armored Hummers or such a “miracle of technology” as the Turkish Otokar-Cobra.
Damaged and burned out self-propelled guns 2S3 "Akatsiya" and 2S5 "Gyacinth" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Lutugino, September-October 2014
But the “re-exported” BTR-3 and BTR-4 and the Krasovsky “ersatz armored cars” on the scale of Ukraine are a drop in the bucket. As a result, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had to scoop up the BTR-70, BTR-60 and BRDM-2 for the war from the military reserves and from the storage bases of the BTR-70, BTR-60 and BRDM-2 (for example, BRDM-2 units without turrets and armored roofs, which had previously clearly undergone “demilitarization”, ended up in the theater of operations » conversion into “dual-purpose all-terrain vehicles”; perhaps these were once disarmed anti-tank vehicles). There were even reports that units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard received armored personnel carriers and armored vehicles taken from radioactive burial grounds in the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant...
However, even these outdated armored vehicles and vehicles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were clearly not enough. As a result, both the militia and units of the seemingly regular Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard were forced to use (and continue to use to this day) absolutely “left-handed” civilian vehicles, including various pickups, SUVs, and trucks (even dump trucks and cargo trucks are used to transport ammunition) , minibuses, tanks. The “Right Sector” battalions did not (and do not) disdain the cars they took from local residents. The lack of firepower and full-fledged armored vehicles forces the use of bank armored vans, a variety of “jihad mobiles” (semi-armored home-made vehicles on any base, from UAZ-469 to KrAZ cargo trucks) and “carts” (ZU-32-2, ZGU or heavy machine guns based on any suitable trucks or pickups).
BMP-2 from the unit of A. Mozgovoy (LPR). August 2014
Burnt Ukrainian BMP-2 with anti-cumulative shields. Blagodatnoye (Donetsk region), August 2014
BMD-2 of the Ukrainian army.
Before being sent to the ATO zone, armored vehicles (and they are all very old) usually undergo a major overhaul, which boils down to the fact that the models are “put on the road”, their weapons are “revitalized” and repainted. Moreover, a characteristic feature of Ukrainian equipment is the so-called “anti-cumulative screens” made of steel angles, rods and mesh, which are massively welded onto the armor of infantry and airborne combat vehicles, as well as armored personnel carriers. This is some completely misunderstood “lesson” that the Ukrainian military (in particular, the combined brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that visited Iraq) learned from the experience of NATO companies in Afghanistan and Iraq. But even the Americans themselves and their allies admitted that such protection (even in combination with dynamic protection and mounted plates made of ceramic materials) is generally ineffective, since it impairs visibility and mobility and can only save from hits from elementary disposable RPGs or FOGs of under-barrel grenade launchers (and even then from a long distance and in the event that the enemy is so stupid that he starts shooting at a protected place). It does not protect against tandem grenades from RPGs, ATGMs and armor-piercing shells, not to mention heavy artillery shells, mines and landmines. Numerous photographs of damaged and burned Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers equipped with such protection confirm its purely “psychological” nature.
Full-scale fighting(or rather, a real civil war) began in Ukraine in April-May 2014, after a referendum was held in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics on the sovereignty of the latter, their unification into Novorossiya and their desire to subsequently join the Russian Federation. 74% of the population participated in the referendum, up to 89% of whom were in favor of all of the above steps. In general, at first it was just about giving the DPR and LPR the status of broad autonomy within the framework of a single Ukrainian state and preserving the Russian language as the second state language. However, Kyiv did not want to recognize even the very fact of holding this referendum, and army units were sent to Novorossiya to “suppress and punish.” And the very first blood shed radically changed the initial situation and balance of power.
BTR-80 of the Ukrainian army
Preparations for the ATO were carried out in a hurry; there were no competent commanders at the head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Even the objectives of the operation were not clearly defined. If the task is to protect civilians from “pro-Russian militants” and “terrorists,” then why is it necessary to carry out massive artillery shelling of populated areas where these “terrorists” are not present? And if the task is to destroy the residential and industrial infrastructure of Donbass along with the population, why do we need empty talk about “the fight against terrorists”? The Kiev junta, it seems, was going to carry out three main tasks: the complete “derusification” of the South-East of Ukraine according to the version of right-wing ultranationalists, to protect the interests of a number of local oligarchic groups and to “clear the site” for the production of shale gas in the Donbass (by companies whose controlling stake is in the hands of officials from the US State Department). At the beginning of autumn, none of these tasks had been completed.
Tactically, the punitive operation had the character of a kind of permanent “cleansing”, when Ukrainian units moved exclusively along roads, and even in diverging directions, without clear orders, or stable communications with their neighbors, and not even trying to build some kind of continuous front line.
The first militia combat vehicles were 2S9 Nona, BMD-2 and BTR-D. The former Ukrainian numbers and tactical designations have been painted over. The inscriptions “People's Militia of Donbass” are clearly visible. Slavyansk, summer 2014
The troops have always operated as something like “battalion tactical groups” - a maximum of a battalion on armored personnel carriers/infantry fighting vehicles and vehicles with a tank platoon or company with attached 1-2 batteries of 82- and 120-mm mortars, 122-mm howitzers D-30 and EU- 23-2 and, sometimes, other means of reinforcement, such as various self-propelled guns and MLRS (usually BM-21, less often 9K57 or 9K58). When encountering armed resistance, Ukrainian units usually stopped, taking up defensive positions (often right in open areas or at forks in roads) and trying to suppress the enemy from long range with heavy weapons fire. At the beginning of the war, when the militias were armed only with small arms and RPGs, such tactics worked in a number of cases.
In addition, Ukrainian units never attempted to storm any locality occupied by the militia, always trying to surround it and starve it out with the help of massive artillery shelling and air raids. Due to the lack of qualified spotters, spotters and normal radio communications, residential areas, as a rule, fell under attack, and the main victims were civilians. True, this tactic worked once, when the militia was forced to leave the town of Slavyanok in early July 2014. But with more major cities, like Lugansk and Donetsk, such methods of warfare turned out to be useless and even led to the opposite results - the encirclement and destruction of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard.
The Ukrainian command made a number of fundamental mistakes during the ATO. For example, he should not have thrown airmobile brigades into battle at the very beginning. Yes, these units had the most trained personnel, but were equipped exclusively with specific equipment such as BMD and BTR-D with their only bulletproof armor and had almost no heavy weapons. As a result, this army elite was naturally knocked out first. Possessing the best technical equipment, these units had personnel, partly including conscripts or mobilized contingents, who did not really understand the meaning of this war. The result is low combat stability of the units, a large amount of equipment abandoned on the battlefield and a mass of dead, captured and missing.
And it was certainly not worth throwing into battle the neo-Nazi “volunteer battalions” of the Right Sector, which, as a rule, were part of the National Guard or the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. These formations, often subordinate to someone unknown (most often to their battalion commander or “sponsor” in the person of some oligarch or odious politician, and not to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine), immediately became “famous” for their criminal habits. The crimes of the Right Sector battalions - such as mass extrajudicial executions, hostage-taking, robberies and looting - are now world famous. These really poorly armed and trained units (not counting the professional mercenaries fighting in the “Right Sector” units, who do not make up the majority there) often acted as “barrier detachments” in relation to units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but in real battles they suffered heavy losses. Subsequently, after the August defeat, a number of commanders of the “volunteer battalions” blamed all military failures on the illiteracy of Ukrainian generals and poor technical equipment, promising that if they were “given additional tanks and artillery,” they would “take Moscow.” Be that as it may, Kyiv is now planning to reorganize these units, equipping them with heavy weapons as much as possible.
“The beauty and pride” of the National Guard is the BTR-4E armored personnel carrier. Summer 2014
BTR-3K, burned down near the village of Telmanovo (Donetsk region) in early September
At first, the militia (the DPR army was officially created on April 10, 2014) did not have armored vehicles at all: there were at least two cases of removal from pedestals and subsequent use of tanks from the Great Patriotic War (IS-ZM and T-34-85; these tanks were on the move , but could not fire - the guns of monument tanks are always made unsuitable for firing). However, as the intensity of hostilities increased, captured “armor” began to appear in the militia’s arsenal.
So, already on April 16, 2014 in the city of Slavyansk, paratroopers of the 25th separate airmobile brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who did not want to fight with their own people, voluntarily surrendered six combat vehicles to the militia: BMD-2 (No. 824), BMD-1 (No. 813) , self-propelled gun "Nona" (No. 914) and three BTR-D (No. 709, 815 and 847). They served the militias for a relatively short time, since they were not in the best technical condition (further evidence of the lackluster situation with equipment in the Armed Forces of Ukraine), and at first the militia had practically no qualified crews and repairmen. Thus, the faulty BMD-2 No. 842 was blown up and burned when the militia left Slavyansk on July 5, 2014. The faulty BMD-1 No. 813 (was mined) and the Nona self-propelled gun No. 914 (taken to Kyiv, where it is now proudly displayed at the “captured equipment exhibition”). Of the three BTR-Ds, vehicle No. 847, according to some sources, was also abandoned due to a malfunction and then fell into the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the remaining two were used by the militia until recently.
On these vehicles, the previous designations were painted over, and the inscription “People’s Militia of Donbass” was stenciled over them. Later, as new units were formed, other letter designations appeared on captured vehicles. Known, for example, are the inscriptions “LPR”, “DPR”, “Battalion Vostok”, “People’s Militia of the Luhansk Region A. Mozgovoy” as well as patriotic inscriptions such as “Death to the Banderlogs!”, “For Donbass!”, “To Kyiv!”, “ Death to the Nazis! and etc.
It is interesting that at first the armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not have any special designations (the emblem of the Ukrainian Ground Forces in the form of a red or crimson cross with crossed swords and a yellow-bladed trident in the center is applied to the equipment only for parades), except for three-digit numbers, emblems of the Airborne Forces (inherited from USSR parachute with two planes on the sides) and, sometimes, contour tridents (although in fact the national emblem of Ukraine is called “falcon”, but it is drawn in such a style that it really looks like a fork, not a bird).
However, around the end of April 2014, “quick identification marks” in the form of double white stripes on the frontal armor, turret or sides began to be applied to military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the ATO zone (in the USSR, white stripes usually designated one of the “warring sides” during exercises) , which theoretically made it possible to distinguish friend from foe from afar and avoid being hit by “friendly fire.” This, of course, did not stop there.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine and, especially, the “Right Sector” began to decorate their cars and combat vehicles with yellow flags and stripes, unit emblems (“volunteer battalions” receive all this symbolism in the form of stickers) and monotonous patriotic slogans, mainly like “With us God!”, “Glory to Ukraine!”, “Glory to the Heroes!” etc. For example, a T-64BV tank was recorded with the inscription “Fair Little Russian” on the gun barrel (it was destroyed in July 2014) and a T-64BV tank with the inscription “To Moscow!” on the side screen. In general, the armored vehicles of the militia, which were of captured origin, could be distinguished from the Ukrainian ones by fresh spots of paint in place of the white stripes and the flags of the DPR and LPR hung on the radio antennas (and sometimes painted on the armor).
The first official report on the losses of military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces dated May 30 cautiously reported that during this period (i.e., one and a half months of fighting) all Ukrainian units in the ATO zone were irretrievably lost (broken with the impossibility of subsequent restoration, burned or fell into the hands of the enemy ) 11 BMP-2, 2 BMP-1, 1 BTR-80, 2 BTR-70, 1 BTR-D, 2 BMD-2, 1 BMD-1, 1 Nona-S, 2 ZU-23-2 ( apparently on a vehicle chassis) and 4 82-mm Vasilek mortars. Apparently, this list is far from complete, since, for example, the BTR-D, as mentioned above, at least three were lost, and not one, as indicated in this summary.
Ukrainian BTR-80 with options for improvised lattice anti-shaped charge screens.
Homemade anti-aircraft guns on the chassis of commercial vehicles in service with the militia. Such improvised “fire weapons” are readily used by both sides of the conflict.
Further information about the losses of the parties is often not entirely complete and is fragmentary, especially since since August 2014, censorship has been officially introduced in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and any information about losses, as well as details such as types of equipment or its tactical numbers, are classified. Nevertheless (all the data presented are based on photographs and video materials of the militia and data from independent military experts), for example, the following combat episodes are reliably known:
– June 2 in the village Aleksandrov, Lugansk region, during the disarmament of the military unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the militia destroyed three ZIL-131, one GaZ-66 and captured a BTR-70. At the same time, at least one BTR-80 of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was destroyed (burned out) in the Slavyansk area;
– June 17 at the station. Lugansk was shot down by a T-64BV, which was subsequently repaired by the militia and put into operation. The next day, near the village of Metallist, an APU BTR-80 was destroyed, two more BMP-2s and one BTR-80 fell into the hands of the militia;
– July 11 at the positions of the 72nd OMBR and 24th OMBR of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near the village. Zelenopole, Lugansk region. for the first time a massive strike was carried out from the BM-21 (the first time when militia units massively used Grads with sufficient quantity ammunition). The Grad fire completely destroyed at least 25 vehicles, three T-64BV, two BTR-80, one IMR-2, two EU-23-2 and two D-30;
– July 14 on the road near the village. Lutugino near Slavyansk, T-64BM, BTR-80 and ZIL-131 of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were destroyed;
– July 16 at different places“South Cauldron” the militia captured two BMP-2 (No. 258 and 245), four trucks and a D-30 howitzer.
In total, by the beginning of August 2014, the militias in the “South Cauldron” managed to assemble more than 150 units of repairable armored vehicles. Moreover, on June 20, the militia command announced the creation of a tank division. It turns out that by this time the DPR and LPR units already had up to 250 units of armored vehicles captured from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The defeat that befell the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard in August 2014 was impressive.
The 25th, 95th and 79th airmobile, 24th, 51st and 72nd mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the majority of the National Guard battalions participating in the ATO were completely or more than half destroyed. Kyiv first officially announced that from April 7 to August 29, Ukraine’s security forces lost 789 people. killed and 2,789 wounded. This figure, of course, did not take into account prisoners and missing persons, while in the “Southern Cauldron” alone the fate of at least 2,000 military personnel remained unknown. And in the “volunteer battalions” no sane accounting of losses was ever kept. At the same time, the UN recognized that 1,129 civilians were killed and 3,442 wounded in the South-East of Ukraine during the ATO. This data is incomplete because civilians continued to die in October 2014, after the formal conclusion of the truce.
Later, independent military experts, with reference to the National Security Service of Ukraine, named the following figures for the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other Kyiv “siloviki” in the civil war in the summer of 2014: up to 12,000 killed, 19,000 wounded and up to 5,000 prisoners and missing. It is difficult to say how reliable these data are, but the fate of several thousand Ukrainian military personnel is still unknown, and Kyiv stubbornly keeps silent about the true numbers of losses.
The losses of the militia killed during the same period, according to various sources, are estimated at no less than 1000 people. And the total number of killed and wounded in the Ukrainian civil war of 2014 (including civilians) is estimated at 45,000-50,000 people. Unfortunately, this figure continues to increase.
The most formidable, but not very accurate and new weapon of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the Tochka-U tactical missile launcher.
As for equipment, according to updated data, by the beginning of September 2014 (at the time of the announcement of the truce), the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine had lost: 673 vehicles, 75 AT-L and MT-LB tractors, 258 T-64 tanks (in the summer-autumn battles of 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost at least 4-5 T-64BM Bulat tanks), armored personnel carriers of all types - 321 (including at least one armored personnel carrier-4 and one armored personnel carrier-3, lost on September 6 near the . Telmanovo), BMP-1/2 - 223, BRDM-2 - 4, BM-21 - 81, 9K58 "Smerch" - 13, 9K57 "Hurricane" - 15, 2SZ "Akatsia" - 4, 2S9 "Nona" - 15, 2S1 "Gvozdika" - 32, 2S19 "Meta" - 7, 2S5 "Gyacinth" - 2, 120-mm mortars - 31, EU-23-2 - 21, 122-mm D-30-36.
These statistics do not take into account, for example, equipment lost in September-October 2014 in the battles for the Donetsk airport and on the approaches to it, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces had at least ten armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, and at least one T-72 and three T-64 (one of which, according to the militia, “was still suitable for spare parts”).
Among them, the militia captured: 124 cars, 65 T-64 tanks (by October the militia forces included at least three captured refurbished T-64BM tanks), T-72 - at least 5, BMP-1/2 - 69, armored personnel carriers of all types - 39, BRDM-2 - 2, BMD-1/2 (possibly this includes BTR-D) - 9, BM-21 - 24, 9K57 "Hurricane" - 2, 2S5 "Gyacinth" - 2 , 2S9 "Nona" - 6.2S1 "G Vozdika" - 25.2SZ "Acacia" - no less than 2, 2S19 "Meta" - no less than 1-2, 122 mm D-30-10, EU-23-2 - 18.
Even the BRDM-2 was not spared the “shielding” fashion. This machine was finalized in Kyiv.
“Mobile checkpoint”, manufactured on the basis of the same BRDM-2 in Nikolaev.
In addition, as of the end of August 2014, the following data was provided: the militia captured and used 43 T-64 tanks from the Ukrainian Armed Forces (at least three were lost irretrievably), about 30 BMP-2 and BMP-1, 24 BTR-80 , 8 BTR-70 and 14 BRDM-2. The irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the same period were estimated at no less than 35 T-64, 61 infantry fighting vehicles and 11 self-propelled guns of all types.
According to the LostArmour.info resource, Ukrainian Armed Forces losses in armored vehicles as of October 2014 were: May - 9 units, June - 10 units, July - 55 units, August - 151 units, September - 131 units, October – 44 units. Militia losses: July - 10 units, August - 18 units, September - 9 units, October - 6 units.
Some samples of military equipment changed hands several times. For example, at least three T-64s captured by the militia in the summer of 2014 then ended up again with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and in July-August 2014, during the battle at the Marinovka border checkpoint, the Ukrainian border service acquired an BTR-80 from the Vostok battalion (previously captured from the Ukrainian Armed Forces ). According to some reports, this armored personnel carrier later turned up again in the hands of the militia!
Now a rather fragile truce has been declared in the South-East of Ukraine, which is not particularly respected by the Ukrainian side, which seems to be planning to continue fighting. In any case, it was announced that Ukrainian repair plants (for example, Lviv) during October 2014 were to overhaul and commission about 1000 units of various armored vehicles in the Armed Forces of Ukraine instead of those lost in the summer battles (it is reported that by the beginning of November 2014 . About 200 tanks and 200-300 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers were partially put into operation, however, almost all of this equipment was produced before 1991).
At the same time, it is planned to modernize all or almost all T-64s remaining in Ukraine to the T-64BM standard “with increased security” and equip armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles with “additional mounted armor and anti-cumulative screens.” After these events, there is practically no reserve of armored vehicles left in Ukraine (in the absence of its own production). In addition, independent experts note that in the summer and autumn of 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard wasted most of the ammunition remaining from the USSR; The stock of Tochka-U tactical missiles and missiles for MLRS of all types is assessed as “minimal.”
"Ersatz-BTR" on the KrAZ chassis of the National Guard battalion "Donbass".
KrAZ Cougar armored vehicle.
MT-LB VSU tractor, equipped with lattice screens, on a trailer.
A homemade KamAZ truck of the Dnepr punitive battalion.
According to a number of reports, units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces may soon be replenished with 2S7 “Pion” self-propelled guns, removed from mothballing.
Kyiv also counts on military assistance from abroad. So far, at least two facts of the supply of heavy weapons to Kyiv are known. In July-August 2014, Hungary sold (in fact, transferred for less than 10% of their value) Romania (according to other sources, the sales scheme was more complicated: Hungary transferred the tanks to the Czech Republic “with the right to modernize and resell,” and then the Czechs transferred this equipment to the Romanians) several dozen T-72M tanks from the reserves of the former VNA “with the right of subsequent resale”: already in August, at least 10-15 tanks from this batch were unloaded in Odessa from foreign ships. In addition, in September (i.e., after the truce was declared), NATO military transport aircraft delivered several (most likely one battery each) MLRS LAROM (BM-21 of Romanian production) and Teruel (Spanish production) with ammunition. In turn, the militia command stated that during September-October, technical services repaired and put into operation at least 100 units of various military equipment from among those left by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield.
So the armed conflict in the South-East of Ukraine, which has already claimed a huge number of human lives, including ordinary civilians, does not subside. It is still impossible to predict how it will end.
Photos of S. Popsuevich were used, as well as from the public Internet, including materials from the sites “Losses of military equipment in Ukraine” (LostArmour.info) and “Courage” (olvaga2004.ru).
Rostislav Angelsky
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I can name one reason right away - the designer of this tank, Yuri Apukhtin, today is not in the design bureau, but in prison. For separatism. And when designers do not support their products, they can be used, but not for very long and not successfully. The technique is too complex and there are too many subtleties. But “Bulat” came into service only in 2004. It has just begun to be tested in the field. The old designers who retired, who did not accept the Maidan power and... There are other reasons, discussed in detail below.
The least convincing reason was given by the director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research, Valentin Badrak: “We announced the transition to NATO standards, but we currently do not have our own certification base. Another reason is that the system of responsibility for failure of quality, despite the war, has not been established.” .
Badrak noted that the government still does not have a special structure that would control the quality of equipment and manage the defense industry. “The rearmament of the army is taking place in a mode of manual control and sporadic efforts of individual enthusiasts. It is clear that the army will fight with what it is given. If they give you rifles, you will fight with rifles. But if we want to see it equipped with new high-tech systems, then with the current approach this will not happen.”
Some of the Bulats were lost in battle, dozens more vehicles are idle at the plant in Kharkov without repair and are in training centers, which led to the inability to form even one battalion (31 tanks) from them. The military explained the rejection of these tanks by their large mass and weak engine. As an alternative, linear T-64s are used, as well as various modifications of T-72 and T-80
But let's figure it out
Why is the old T-64 better than the “new” BM “Bulat”
“In general, the reserve of equipment is still large, but all this equipment is outdated, and the potential for modernization is almost exhausted. Some upgrade options fail in real combat. For example, the T-64BM Bulat tanks, due to heavy weight and weak engines turned out to be ineffective, were transferred to reserve and replaced by linear T-64s” (Deputy Commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces for Logistics, Major General Yuri Tolochny).
So, why does Yuri Tolochny consider the good old T-64, or rather, one of its latest light versions of modernization (T-64B1M), to be more in demand than the Bulat BM, rightfully considered the best version of the modernization of this Soviet tank?
No, of course, the issue is not maneuverability. The T-64B1M tank has a 5TDF engine with a power of 700 hp. With. On the basic version of the Bulat BM there is a forced version of the same 5TDFM engine with a power of 850 hp. With. Perhaps General Tolochny is comparing the Bulat with the T-64BM1M, which has a 6TD engine with a power of 1000 hp. With. But this is incorrect, since exactly the same engine can be installed on the Bulat BM if desired, if the customer so desires.
So, it’s not all about maneuverability, but the fact that the T-64B1M and T-64BM1M tanks are equipped from the warehouses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with spare parts and equipment that they inherited from the USSR, and for Bulat it is necessary to produce partially new and expensive equipment.
Actually, that is why in 2014 Kyiv settled on these two main versions of tank modernization. Everything they needed was in warehouses and did not require any costs.
On the contrary, one could still make very good money from such modernizations. Criminal cases against the directors of Ukrainian armored factories, where precisely such schemes for cutting military budgets emerged en masse, are proof of this.
It was getting ridiculous. The plant sold spare parts to a front company and bought them from the next one, but as new. Moreover, the spare parts themselves never left the territory of the “native” plant.
With tanks, I think everything is clear. But here the Ukrainian Armed Forces are doing more or less well. At the very least, there are still Soviet reserves, and in the 2014-15 campaigns. tanks were destroyed much less frequently than lightly armored vehicles. The real detective story begins when you begin to dive into the details of how Ukrainian factories produce just such machines.
And having figured it out, you immediately begin to understand the feelings of the Kyiv soldiers, who really don’t like these remakes.
It's all about the armor and barrels
In fact, Kyiv has one problem. Technological degradation. All other troubles are its derivative. The thing is that in Ukraine they have forgotten how to roll good armor. And as a result of this, all new Ukrainian armored personnel carriers and armored cars have the same problem.
It was first revealed during the implementation of the so-called Iraqi contract under Yanukovych. The Iraqi military simply refused to accept one of the batches of new BTR-4 armored personnel carriers, since they had cracks in the hull (and a lot of other problems).
After long attempts to cram in the unsuitable and the ordeal of Ukrainian politicians and diplomats, these cars ended up in the Donbass, where the war had just begun. And here they earned themselves a lot of ridicule from their own and the enemy. The vehicles were covered in cracks and did not hold bullets from conventional small arms, and often broke down. In a word, they “sabotaged” the conduct of hostilities and behaved like real “agents of the Kremlin” and accomplices of the “separatists.”
Already as a result of the first battles, it became clear that the vehicles required radical modernization.
By the way, similar problems appeared not only in the ill-fated BTR-3 and BTR-4, but also in all new Ukrainian armored vehicles produced under contracts of the Ministry of Defense, starting in 2014. Everywhere the armor did not hold bullets, and everywhere it had to be strengthened. And the gain came from increasing weight. As a result, the suspension could not stand it and broke, and the vehicles themselves changed from floating to purely land-based.
To restore buoyancy to weighted hulls latest versions BTR-4, they even came up with additional floats...
In general, just one, but important technological problem has turned the once glorious branch of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine into a laughing stock.
By the way, the same thing is happening in Kyiv with trunks. Do you know what that casing is around the barrel of a standard Soviet 30mm cannon?
Its task is to stabilize the barrel, since without it the gun shoots anywhere. The root of this problem is the same. There is no appropriate grade of steel from which high-quality barrels can be made. And so it is everywhere. As soon as you start studying yet another Kiev know-how in the field of tank building, you come across the consequences of the technical degradation of the industry.
It is noteworthy that large caliber barrels are not produced in Ukraine. And also for the same reason. After all, you can’t take a 125-mm tank gun into its casing, and without it it will shoot anywhere, but not at the target.
An example from life. The author of these lines remembers very well the story of one of his acquaintances, who participated in testing 125-mm tank barrels manufactured in the 1990s at the Sumy Pipe Plant for Pakistani contract tanks. Even then, literally after the collapse of the USSR, Sumy residents could not get a gun with the required characteristics. The survivability of the barrel was 2-3 times lower than that of Soviet models, and Pakistani customers did not want to accept such a product. We got out of the situation simply. They took the required number of old barrels from the warehouses, and in return they put in products from Sumy machine builders.
When in 2014 Kyiv decided to try to restore the production of at least such “guns”, it turned out that there were no more specialists or appropriate technologies in production. That’s why Sumy residents don’t make guns for the ATO today. They can't anymore. And so it is everywhere in Ukraine now. There is no technology, and there is no high-quality military equipment.
I think it’s now clear why today the Armed Forces of Ukraine value the preserved and modernized samples of military equipment from Soviet warehouses. And you don’t need to be a great analyst to predict that as soon as the last reserves of the former USSR are completely exhausted, the combat power of this army will immediately begin to decline. Or rather, it is already falling, judging by the statements of the Ukrainian military, and this has not yet been observed explicitly only because there has been no active hostilities in the Donbass for the third year.