How Russia Would Wage War With Its New ‘Terminator’ Tank

The BMPT “Terminator” that was adopted by the Russian Army in 2017 has had a long history and a troubled development

byCharlie Gao

The BMPT “Terminator” that was adopted by the Russian Army in 2017 has had a long history and a troubled development. Various incarnations of the vehicle were in development since the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, and in some circumstances it was unsure what role the vehicle was even supposed to serve on the battlefield.

However, a controversial interview with Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of the lead engineers of the current BMPT may shed some insight into the development process and how the BMPT might be used. In it he makes some dubious claims (The BMPT is superior to the T-14 Armata), but his personal involvement gives a general idea of how development might have proceeded.

Like most other armored vehicles developed in Russia and the Soviet Union, the BMPT has an Object number. This is important as the “BMPT” concept has been around for a long time, with many vehicles bearing the name. BMPT stands for Boyevaya Mashina Podderzhki Tankov or Tank Support Fighting Vehicle. The current BMPT is an evolution of the Object 199 aka “Ramka-99” prototype.

Earlier BMPTs included the Object 781, which featured two turrets mounted on a tank chassis each with a 2A72 thirty-millimeter autocannon and machine gun in addition to two flexible grenade launcher mounts in the hull. An alternate configuration of the 781 featured the BMP-3 turret on the same chassis.

What the earlier designs shared was a focus on close range fighting power, as the name might suggest. While the 2A70 low-pressure one-hundred-millimeter cannon on the single-turret cannon configuration of the Object 781 could fire ATGMs, it was not a primary focus of the BMPT design.

BMPTs were envisioned to support tanks by providing firepower onto places conventional tank guns could not reach due to limits of gun elevation. Literature continually emphasizes the ability to hit the top floors of buildings and operate in mountainous terrain (indeed, before the BMPT designation prospective designs of the type were called “mountain tanks”). The BMPT in such a role needs only close range firepower as longer range capability would be provided by the conventional tanks with which it would be integrated.