The infantry needs a fundamentally new combat vehicle, not a taxi to the front line
A number of statements made recently by top officials of the Ministry of Defense, primarily by the chief of armaments of the RF Armed Forces, General of the Army Vladimir Popovkin, regarding the available and promising models of light armored vehicles, cause bewilderment: what will the Russian infantry use to move and fight in the medium term? According to some reports, in the depths of the military department, a project is brewing of abandoning tracked infantry fighting vehicles and the complete transfer of motorized rifle units and formations "on wheels." Is this decision legal? What lightly armored combat vehicles and means of transportation are needed in modern conditions? Let's try to figure it out.
In May last year, in preparation for the Victory Day parade, Dozor reconnaissance patrol vehicles drove across Red Square for the first time, which, as it was announced, entered service with the group of Russian troops in the Republic of South Ossetia. The novelty, it must be said, is very symptomatic, reflecting the tilt that has emerged in the RF Armed Forces towards lightly armored wheeled vehicles intended for actions during counter-guerrilla operations and other low-intensity conflicts.
At first glance, it may seem that this approach is fully justified, because over the past 30 years, our army had to fight in such conditions. However, despite the fact that conflicts of this type with a possible escalation into local wars really occupy the first place in the list of the most probable threats to the security of the Russian Federation, the possibility of unleashing a "big" war against our country, including with the use of weapons, cannot be completely discounted. mass destruction. This, by the way, is directly stated in the new Military Doctrine of Russia, approved by the decree of President Dmitry Medvedev as recently as February 5, 2010.
And if the permissibility of a large-scale conflict escalating into a war with the use of nuclear weapons is mentioned among the threats to the country's security, then the Armed Forces must have the appropriate weapons and military equipment, and conduct appropriate training.
EXPERIENCE IMPORTANT BUT NOT ABSOLUTE
In no case should we forget the blood-paid experience gained by our army in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The development of new models of light armored vehicles to replace the existing armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, the ideology of the creation of which in most cases was formed back in the 50-60s of the last century, of course, must be carried out taking into account the realities of counter-guerrilla operations and local conflicts like the "five-day war" with Georgia … Nevertheless, the experience gained there cannot be absolutized. However, it is on the basis of this experience that the Ministry of Defense is now trying to develop TTZ for light armored vehicles of a new generation. One of the main arguments against the existing vehicles, as you know, is that the infantry rides them mainly "on horseback", and not under the cover of armor.
The argument, to be sure, is reasonable. The fact that armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, created for a more or less safe delivery of motorized riflemen to the front line of a "normal" war with a "normal" front and rear, are not at all suitable for counter-guerrilla actions, the servicemen of the Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan realized very quickly. And they began to use the equipment entrusted to them, not as prescribed by the regulations and instructions, but as the acquired combat experience and common sense suggested. The principles of application and movement on armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles remained the same in Chechnya. These rules are quite simple. If an RPG grenade hits an armored vehicle, the landing force inside it will suffer due to a sharp pressure drop. Therefore, it is better to sit on top, and not under the cover of armor. When attacking from an ambush, it is important for motorized riflemen to open fire as early as possible. But in order to get out of the car, you have to squeeze through the not too wide side doors one by one, which leads to the loss of precious seconds. So, again, it is better to sit on top. In the event that the landing party rides on armor, the fighters in the sectors observe the surrounding area and are ready to instantly open fire on the detected target. Naturally, at the beginning of the shelling, the infantry "poured" from the armor to the ground very quickly.
By the way, an interesting feature of local conflicts in terms of the use of armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles is that the infantry here protects their armor from enemy fire, and not vice versa, as was originally intended. Indeed, in an ambush attack, while armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles are intact, motorized riflemen can count on powerful fire support from 14.5-mm machine guns and 30-mm cannons, capable of hitting the enemy even behind natural cover. If the armor is knocked out, then you have to rely only on infantry small arms and the help of helicopters or artillery. But in some cases this help still has to wait.
The first conclusion that suggests itself is that special armored vehicles are needed to operate in the context of counter-terrorist and counter-guerrilla operations. But this is how it should be, no army in the world has yet found an exact answer. After the outbreak of the war in Iraq, the US Armed Forces began mass purchases of wheeled armored vehicles with enhanced mine protection - MRAP ("VPK", No. 15). But if they showed themselves very well in Iraq, then in Afghanistan the use of MRAP turned out to be not so effective. Firstly, the large weight and considerable dimensions of these machines affected, which reduced their mobility in local off-road conditions. Second, Afghan militants quickly devised a way to deal with them.
In general, the Taliban recipe is not complicated. You need a powerful enough land mine to dump an already prone to overturning MRAP on its side. And to finish off an immobilized car is already a matter of technology. Heavy and very expensive, both in purchase prices (about $ 2 million per piece) and in operation ($ 52 per mile) Stryker wheeled armored personnel carriers, proved to be far from the best side both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. There is no need to talk about HAMMWVs with their insufficient or absent armor protection and zero resistance to explosions.
This means only one thing. The conclusion about the need for special counter-guerrilla armored vehicles is not correct. It is impossible to get carried away by saturating the army with armored vehicles and wheeled armored vehicles. Armor for the infantry must be universal, it must work successfully in both local and large-scale conflicts. At the same time, when developing the TTZ, it is necessary to focus primarily on the most difficult conditions, that is, on a "big" war with the possible use of weapons of mass destruction.
It is important to remember that if in a local war, say, during an operation to force the Georgian aggressors to peace, the Russian group faced the active use (not in residential areas, but in the troops) of cannon artillery, MLRS, strike aviation, not to mention chemical or radiation contamination of the area, no one would have thought to get out on the armor.
It is impossible to neglect the preservation of the system of weapons and military equipment (AME) of the ability to restore combat effectiveness in the exchange of nuclear strikes. A grouping of troops after the use of weapons of mass destruction must quickly take off, cleanse itself of radioactive contamination, restore combat effectiveness and continue to carry out combat missions. If this does not happen, the admissibility of a preemptive nuclear strike by Russia, declared in the new Military Doctrine, simply loses its meaning. The combat manuals of the 80s provided for such options for the development of events. Today, there is practically no practice of actions to restore combat readiness after the use of nuclear weapons.
THE MAIN THING IS NOT TO LOSE ADEQUACY
What Armed Forces does the Russian Federation need today? The answer is well known. Compact, efficient, mobile, ready, depending on the situation, to create an adequate grouping in the threatened direction. The system of weapons and military equipment of the Ground Forces as the basis of such a grouping should ensure a high transience of combat operations, a high level of fire impact on the enemy, while maintaining the mobility of groupings of troops (forces). This means that military equipment must operate equally successfully in any region. But the physical, geographical and climatic conditions, transport infrastructure in the European part of the country, in the Arctic, in the Far East, in Transbaikalia are very different.
But the machines, without losing their combat capability, need to work both in the conditions of the developed road network of the western strategic direction, and in the snows of the North, in the wooded and swampy terrain of the tundra and taiga. Will a motorized rifle brigade on wheeled armored personnel carriers be able to fight in the Arctic in winter? Apparently, it can, but only along a few roads, which means that its combat effectiveness will be very limited. With the exception of the European part throughout the rest of Russia, the priority mover for armored vehicles is undoubtedly the tracks. We will also have to take into account the fact that not only tanks and light armored vehicles, but also the chassis on which artillery complexes, air defense systems, supply and support systems are installed, should have the same mobility in different conditions.
The problem of the ability of the transport system of the Russian Federation to ensure the deployment of operational-strategic groupings of troops in threatened directions requires separate consideration.
The General Staff must answer the question of the ratio of tracked and wheeled vehicles in brigades of different types and different operational-strategic commands so that troops can operate in different conditions with equal combat effectiveness. This is not an easy task, but its solution largely depends on whether it will be possible to create in Russia a modern army with a structure and weapons that meet both the threats and the economic capabilities of the state.
One example of a successful solution to this problem is the creation of the 1st Far Eastern Front in August 1945. The field management of the operational-strategic association was formed on the basis of the field management of the Karelian Front due to the fact that the natural conditions of the mountain-taiga areas of Primorye and Manchuria are generally similar to the natural conditions of Karelia and the Arctic.
Later, already in the 80s, the weapons system of the Far Eastern Military District was distinguished by the fact that there were no wheeled armored personnel carriers. The motorized rifle divisions included regiments on infantry fighting vehicles and on tracked BTR-50. For the latter, there was no impassable terrain either in winter or in summer.
A more recent example is the modern Leningrad Military District, the only association in the RF Armed Forces designed to operate in the Arctic. The troops of this district are saturated with such equipment as the outstanding cross-country capability of the Vityaz and MTLB articulated tractors. But in today's conditions it is necessary to ensure that the brigade transferred here from central Russia is able to operate as successfully as the troops permanently stationed in the region.
NEW MEANING OF A HANDY TERM
The new look of the RF Armed Forces provides for the creation of combined-arms brigades of three types:
- heavy brigades - with a predominance of tank units;
- medium or multipurpose brigades, primarily intended for rapid transfer to threatened directions;
- light brigades - airborne assault and mountain brigades.
Accordingly, the technique for them will be subdivided into three groups. It seems that the configuration of the Land Forces' weapons and military equipment system should look like this:
- tanks and heavy armored personnel carriers based on them, as well as corresponding combat and logistics support vehicles;
- combat vehicles of infantry and airborne troops on tracked and wheelbases;
- armored vehicles.
The gap between the BMP and the armored car is a niche for the armored personnel carrier in the form in which it was created in Soviet times: a light mass vehicle, in terms of components and assemblies, to a large extent unified with national economic trucks. But is this intermediate element necessary in modern conditions? Apparently not, since the new generation armored personnel carrier, the BTR-90, has largely lost its support in the automotive industry and is steadily growing towards a wheeled infantry fighting vehicle. And then the question turns into a slightly different plane: what, in fact, should be the content of the term "infantry fighting vehicle" in modern conditions?
The classic definition of BMP looks like this: an armored tracked vehicle designed to transport personnel to the place of the assigned combat mission, increase the mobility, armament and security of the infantry on the battlefield in conditions of the use of nuclear weapons and joint actions with tanks in battle. Simplifying somewhat, we can say that the BMP was created to transport soldiers to the battlefield and support them with fire. A motorized rifle platoon on an infantry fighting vehicle is a full-fledged combat unit only as long as people are inside, and the commander has the ability to direct the gunner-operator and driver. In the course of a battle in the mountains or in the forest, dismounted infantry actually loses fire support from the BMP (and often communication with it), since the targets are out of line of sight, and such a machine is not designed to conduct mounted fire.
In modern conditions, the concept of creating an infantry fighting vehicle must be filled with a fundamentally new meaning. An infantry fighting vehicle should not only carry soldiers, but fight in the interests of the infantry, be able to constantly support a motorized rifle unit with fire, whether it be direct fire or through its battle formations and natural obstacles. To do this, firstly, a powerful armament system must be installed on the BMP, including guided high-precision weapons, and secondly, the subunit commander, a platoon commander, must have an automated control complex linked into a single automated control system by a tactical link. It looks something like this: the platoon commander has a kind of terminal - a tablet or a communicator, on the screen of which information is displayed about the position of his three vehicles on the ground, the amount and type of ammunition remaining, and the level of fuel in the tanks. It has the ability to automatically assign a task to the driver and gunner-operator to maneuver and defeat targets observed by dismounted infantry even when the vehicle crew does not see this target. Combining dismounted infantry and BMP crew in one control system will make it possible to create a combat vehicle.
Summing up, we can say that the versatility of the new generation of lightly armored vehicles can be achieved due to two main factors. The first is a perfect control system. The second is the competent tactical use of armored vehicles. It is in this second direction that it is necessary to generalize the experience of past local conflicts. Remembering the second Chechen campaign, one can quote the words of one of the “practicing” military leaders: “We had a rule: we drive on the asphalt - everything is inside, under armor, because the land mines will be on top, on trees and poles. We are driving on the ground - everything is on the armor, because the land mines will be in a rut. If you do this, then everything turns out without loss. It is appropriate to mention the storming of Grozny during the second campaign, when the competent use of armored vehicles and well-established interaction with the infantry made it possible to avoid serious losses.
We will talk about what performance characteristics the new BMPs should have in the following publications.
