Over the past decades, the main factors ensuring the mobility of troops have been railways and road transport. At the same time, due to some objective reasons, much more attention is paid to the second. In any military unit, regardless of its belonging to one or another branch of the army, there is a certain number of vehicles of various classes. The so-called military automotive equipment (BAT), including multi-purpose vehicles (AMN), is capable of performing a variety of transport tasks and therefore is the most massive class of vehicles in the armed forces.
According to the head of the Main Armored Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (GABTU), Lieutenant General A. Shevchenko, the AMN share in the total number of military vehicles of the armed forces is 91.5%. The second place in terms of number is occupied by military tracked vehicles with 7.4%. Special wheeled tractors and similar vehicles close the list with 1.1 percent. It is not difficult to calculate the approximate number of cars of one class or another, if we take into account the total number of military vehicles - about 410, 2 thousand units.
It should be noted that the automotive fleet is going through hard times. The amount of old equipment is still very large and needs to be replaced. Some progress has already been made in this direction, but it cannot yet be considered sufficient. To understand the current trends, consider the information published in the February issue of the magazine "Truck Press". It provides interesting data on the state of the WAT fleet in 2005 and 2012.
In 2005, the armed forces had military vehicles of 41 basic models and 60 modifications with a total number of 410, 8 thousand units. 71% of this equipment was equipped with gasoline engines. Thus, trucks and tractors with diesel engines were in the minority. This ratio of engine types can be the subject of much debate. Another fact about the state of the BAT in 2005 looks unambiguous and unpleasant. Approximately 80% of the equipment was over 12 years old, i.e. was produced no later than the first half of the nineties of the last century. The remaining 20 percent was distributed as follows. Most (13%) were vehicles between 6 and 12 years old, and the remaining seven percent were new vehicles not older than six years.
ZIL-157
ZIL-131
Ural
GAZ-66
KAMAZ
MT-LB
You can also consider the share of equipment of a particular model range. In 2005, the undoubted leaders in this aspect were the cars of the Likhachev Plant. The share of trucks ZIL-157, ZIL-131, etc. accounted for a third of the total number of VAT in the army. The second and third places in terms of quantity, with a small gap, were occupied by Urals (13%) and GAZs (12%). Next came KamAZ trucks with 10 percent, and the fifth place was shared by Ulyanovsk (UAZ) and Kremenchug (KrAZ) vehicles with a share of six percent. Finally, about four percent of BAT were MT-LB tracked tractors. The remaining 16% were a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles produced at various factories: Minsk wheeled tractors, Bryansk, etc.
It should be noted that these figures relate only to the total number of cars. In the available open sources, nowhere is the number of BAT in storage or in operation mentioned. Such information could make the existing picture much more detailed, but the Ministry of Defense is in no hurry to disclose it. You can also pay attention to the years of production of equipment and its share. It is not hard to guess that among those 80 percent of cars that were over 12 years old in 2005, there are a lot of equipment made before the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition, this group includes a certain number of cars assembled in the first years of independence. The smallest number of cars available in 2005 was produced from 1999 to 2005, i.e. in the period after the default of 1998. There are no exact data of this kind, but there is reason to believe that in the first few years of this period, the rates of production were much lower than later.
Almost eight years have passed since the statistics presented. During this period, funding for the armed forces has steadily increased. With the money received from the budget, the military department repaired old equipment and acquired new ones, including military vehicles. Thanks to this, the situation with the BAT fleet began to change little by little, but, nevertheless, at the present time it still does not meet the needs. The required 75-80 percent is still a long way off.
According to the same magazine "Truck Press", the share of old equipment, whose age has passed over 12 years, by 2012 decreased to 57%. Cars, tractors, etc., that fell into the category from 6 to 12 years old, became slightly more - 14 percent. As for the new technology not older than six years, its number has quadrupled. As of the end of last 2012, 29% of military vehicles fall into this category. This is half the amount required by the current State Rearmament Program, but 2020 is still a long way off and there is time for renewal. The total number of BAT, according to some data, almost did not decrease, and the difference lies in only a few hundred cars, which, given the existing scale of the figures, can simply be ignored.
Unfortunately, there are no specific figures on the composition of equipment, similar to the data on the state of the WAT fleet in 2005. However, several details are known. Thus, the overall ratio of vehicles with diesel and gasoline engines has hardly changed. Cars with gasoline engines are still in the majority and their number is twice the number of diesel "brothers". In addition, the share of ZiL trucks over seven years has decreased from 33 to 6 percent. The reasons for this are the write-off of obsolete cars, as well as the lack of bulk purchases of new ones. Reducing the number of cars of the Plant named after. Likhachev, while maintaining the total number of the vehicle fleet, directly indicates that others have come to replace the decommissioned trucks. Judging by the available data, 23 percent lost by ZiL vehicles were replenished with KamAZ and Ural vehicles.
It should be noted that the above figures refer only to the current state of military equipment in the Russian armed forces. During the failed nineties and ambiguous 2000s, the domestic automobile industry was in a difficult situation and therefore could not fully engage in the development of automotive technology for the army. Currently, the armed forces need several vehicles for various purposes at once, while being created on a single base. Now this topic is being worked out by several car factories and prototypes of new cars have already been demonstrated several times. By 2015, the army should receive the first production samples of new cars. How will the quantitative and qualitative composition of the WAT fleet change after that? We will find out in seven years, in 2020.
KAMAZ-63968 Typhoon-K
Ural-63099 Typhoon-U
