The press service of "Ukroboronprom" recently reported that the first seven armored personnel carriers BTR-4, the hulls of which are made of new domestic armor, have entered the Ukrainian army, and that production cooperation has been established at the Lozovsky Forging and Mechanical Plant for the manufacture of armored hulls of the BTR-4 and their further assembly at the Malyshev plant and the Kiev armored plant.
The scandalous story with these armored personnel carriers and armor for them is a long-standing and already forgotten one. 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 delivery of 429 Ukrainian-made BTR-4 BTR-4s 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 at the expense of 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 did not manage 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 consignment and did not even allow the Singaporean ship SE Pacifica to enter the ports of Iraq, on board which this consignment of armored personnel carriers was.
Such actions by Iraq were due to the fact that 80% of the armored personnel carriers from the previously delivered lots had cracks in the hulls of the armored personnel carriers, for this reason they could not be operated. This ship with the unloaded armored personnel carriers dangled in the open sea for almost a year until the question of where to send this batch of armored personnel carriers was resolved.
Considering that the money for the payment of this contract was allocated by the United States, a trial began there to find out where the money disappeared. In the course of the proceedings, it turned out that intermediaries from the United States, the leadership of Ukrspetsexport and the Iraqi military were involved in the corruption scheme under this contract. Through a number of offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, considerable commissions were transferred to the 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 due commission, and all this received international publicity.
The Ukrainian-Iraqi contract was terminated in early 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 received practically no punishment. And the state of Ukraine had to return the prepayment and pay a huge penalty for non-fulfillment of 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 really inoperative, many knew about the cracks in the armor in their hulls, but all this was covered up by the participants in the transaction.
The developer and manufacturer of the BTR-4 was the Kharkov Design Bureau for Mechanical Engineering named. Morozov (KMDB), which previously was engaged in the development of only tanks, lightly armored tracked vehicles and even more so wheeled design bureau never developed. There was no experience in such developments, and just the day before, the design bureau developed the Dozor armored car and the BTR-3 armored personnel carrier, and produced 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 shop, and even more so no tests had been carried out, and they were going to be supplied under an international contract! This surprised me very much, the tests of this technique have been going on for years. Inevitable malfunctions and defects are identified, improvements are carried out, 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 adopted into service without carrying out a full cycle of tests.
When a scandal arose with massive defects in armored personnel carriers supplied to Iraq, the Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of trying to defame "excellent Ukrainian technology" in order to eliminate a competitor in the arms market. But things 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 assess the possibility of concluding contracts for their supply, but due to the identified technical problems in the supplied armored personnel carriers, these countries refused to conclude contracts.
The main technical problem of the BTR-4 was cracks not only in the welded seams 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 said: “Questions can 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 made 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 of unknown quality, and scandals constantly arose in the production of armored vehicles, as was the case at the Kiev tank repair and Lviv tank repair plants in the production of the BTR-3 armored personnel carrier and the Dozor armored vehicle.
At the Lviv Armored Plant, armor from Poland was used for armored vehicles, but there were problems with it, it cracked even 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 vehicles”, through cracks appeared on the bottoms about 40-50 cm long in the area of the engine. At the same time, the cars on which the 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 supposed to be supplied by the KMDB, which does not have its own production base for welding hulls. The manufacture of the hulls was transferred not to the Malyshev plant, which always welded the hulls of tanks, but to the Lozovsky Forging and Mechanical Plant, which in ancient Soviet times welded MTLB hulls produced by the Kharkov Tractor Plant.
By that time, the 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 unknown quality was used, while welding was used another wire that was not provided for in the documentation. In 2017, a criminal case was initiated against LKMZ only on the basis of the use of another wire in the welding of bodies. The criminal case, apparently, ended in nothing, since, in accordance with the information given at the beginning of the article, the welding of the BTR-4 hulls continues at LKMZ.
Nine years later, Ukraine suddenly announced that its own "domestic armor" had appeared, although it had been produced there for a long time, and its production was destroyed. Who was involved in the production of armor and what its quality is, it is difficult to say. Time will tell how serious this is. After corrupt deals and technical blunders in 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, recriminations 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 how much this vehicle meets the requirements for it, time will tell. After such a train of failures, it is unlikely to be able to break into the international arms market. Victory statements about solving the problem of armor still need to be proved, in Ukraine the statements very often do not correspond to real deeds, and the epic with the delivery of BTR-4 to Iraq clearly showed what adventures Ukrainian officials and the government structures that support them are ready to get involved in.
