Russia's improvised battle machines: Hybrids and hurdles
The Russians are deploying increasingly bizarre equipment in combat. Russia appears to be significantly impacted by the shortage of infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. Not only are civilian vehicles being used in assaults, but also unusual creations based on partially functional tanks. Here's how they manage and how they're created.
The video below shows a Russian armored personnel carrier, fashioned from the hull of a T-80BW tank, stuck in a Ukrainian anti-tank ditch. This situation forced the evacuation of the crew and the accompanying infantry, as an immobilized vehicle becomes an ideal target for drones or artillery.
Russia's armored Frankensteins — here's how and why they create them
The Russians have already depleted most of the armored shells stored in their strategic junkyards, where sometimes it takes three wrecks to produce one functional unit. However, this is sometimes insufficient, leading to various types of hybrids, such as the T-90M tank with a T-72B3 turret.
Even that doesn't always suffice, as there are times when no turrets are available for hulls. The Russians attempt to convert these into heavy armored personnel carriers by adding an armored superstructure, covered with Kontakt-1 reactive armor blocks and an anti-drone net on the roof.
The unit in question appears to be a factory production rather than a field improvisation assembled from scrap, known as "armored barns", even though the concept is similar. The goal is to use the well-armored chassis as a base for building an armored superstructure that protects artillery fragments and, to a lesser extent, drones for the transported assault group.
The downside of such a solution is a significant deterioration in situational awareness, as only the driver has a good forward view. There is no assistance from the commander, who typically has a better view through viewports or periscopes mounted at the top of the turret. Any sufficiently deep ditches can become a dead-end trap if there's no second tank or technical support vehicle with a winch nearby.
