APC Development and related topics.

[sabresandy]

Thanks for the information! It's nice to find a clearinghouse for the news from the defense industry.

I'd like to bring up some issues with the Russian APCs and IFVs in their OBAT, which is obat11. Patch 7.0 did a nice job of trimming out some of the cancelled BTR-90 variants; I'd like to take it a few steps further. First, let's look at the many MT-LB mods. Specifically, OBAT11 numbers 213 (MT-LBM-6M1A3), 332 (MT-LBM-6M1B2), 800 (MT-LBM-6MA), 801 (MT-LBM-6MB), and for that matter 872 (MT-LBM). To the best of my knowledge, these vehicles showed up once at an arms expo, and were promptly never heard from again. I find no reports of any of the MT-LB modifications actually coming into service.

Likewise, there are a number of programs that never seem to have taken off: they are units number 305 (BTR-70M), 787 (BMP-2 Berezhok), 788 (BMP-2M), 850 (BMP-2M (-)), and the heavy APCs 343-345 (all the BTR-Ts). While I believe the BMP-T is on order by the Russian army, I find no indication that the BTR-T is actually being produced. The rest, the BMP and BTR modification programs, appear to exist only in advertisements; the Russians don't look like they've bought off on them.

Pending confirmation, so far as it's possible with Russian military equipment, I think it's fair to delete all of these from the OBAT for Russia and for the RED force (wherever they overlap).