Bolting Random Weapons On Random Chassis, the Ukrainian Army Proves Its Ingenuity … And Desperation

A slightly odd-looking Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle, churning through the cold mud that’s typical of Ukraine’s early winters, tells a profound story.

One of desperation. And improvisation.

The Ukrainian military and its supporting industry for months have been taking bits and pieces of wrecked armored vehicles and combining them with museum-quality antique weapons and even pickup trucks.

The result is a dizzying array of improvised armor, rocket-launchers and air-defense systems. Each the military equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster.

Some obviously work just fine. Some probably don’t. All are indicative of Ukrainian ingenuity. But they also underscore vexing shortages in the Ukrainian arsenal—shortages that Ukraine’s foreign allies are unwilling or unable to fill as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 10th month.

The improvised, Soviet-style BMP infantry fighting vehicle—combining the turret of a BMD airborne IFV with the tracked hull of a PRP-3/4 artillery-observation vehicle, lies on the higher end of the spectrum of Ukrainian Frankenvehicles. There’s no reason this hybrid shouldn’t function just as well as a purpose-built BMP does.

On the lower end, however, are some truly cringeworthy vehicles—many of them belonging to second-line Ukrainian formations. It’s fair to be skeptical of a pickup truck mounting PM1910 Maxim machine guns with anti-aircraft sights. The PM1910 is a 110-year-old weapon.

If you spot a Ukrainian brigade packing upward-firing Maxim guns, it’s because that brigade got really, really desperate for anti-aircraft firepower.

There’s a long, global tradition of Frankenstein armored vehicles. Militias in Syria and Iraq, with their tractor-tanks and steel-encased trucks might be the modern champions of do-it-yourself armor, but the Ukrainians offer stiff competition.

DIY armor began cropping up in large numbers in Ukraine over summer, as the Ukrainian army scrambled to add brigades in order to stiffen the front line and add weight to the counteroffensives commanders were planning for the fall.

The active Ukrainian army in general formed new brigades only as fast as it could acquire secondhand armored vehicles by way of donations from Ukraine’s NATO allies—or by capturing vehicles from the Russians.

That made sense. Ukraine’s active units handle the most intensive fighting. Without armor and fire support, they’re worse than useless. They’re a waste of precious manpower.

By contrast, Ukraine’s territorial brigades often—though not always—perform secondary missions: garrisoning cities and towns and patrolling rear areas. A dozen or more territorial brigades already were forming when the Russians attacked in February—and they were doing so with whatever small arms and trucks they could scrounge.

From day one of the war, the territorials were hungry for heavier weaponry. So it should come as no surprise that they were responsible for many of the weirder DIY vehicles.

A lot of the earlier Frankenvehicles were rocket-launchers. In a bid to even the Russians’ two-to-one advantage in artillery and launchers, the Ukrainians salvaged rocket pods from wrecked, purpose-built BM-21 ground launchers and even pulled out of storage launchers designed to hang under the wings of attack helicopters and warplanes.

Bolt a pod to a trailer, pickup or flatbed truck and voila—instant rocket-launcher. It’s likely to be wildly inaccurate, of course. But inaccurate fire support is better than no fire support, right?

The territorials soon found a partial solution to the accuracy problem inherent in bolt-on rocket-launchers. They began installing 100-millimeter MT-12 anti-tank guns on MT-LB armored tractors.

The Cold War-vintage MT-12 is a towed gun that can take minutes to unhitch, set up, aim and fire. The MT-LB normally lacks heavy weaponry, relegating it to support roles. Combining the two mitigates the weakness of each—and offers the territorials a direct-fire support weapon they can aim with optical sights rather than having to calculate a ballistic trajectory.

The “MT-LB-12” Frankenvehicle has been a success. It’s not for no reason that more and more copies of the DIY mobile anti-tank gun have been showing up at the front. Still, that the territorials continue to ask for MT-LB-12s speaks to a demand for artillery that even hundreds of ex-NATO guns and launchers alone can’t meet.

Likewise, DIY infantry fighting vehicles such as the BMD-PRP-3/4 hybrid meet a need that Ukraine’s allies haven’t met. Each of the Ukrainian army and marine corps’ roughly three dozen heavy brigades requires a hundred or more infantry fighting vehicles.

An IFV is an armored personnel carrier that, thanks to its turret-mounted cannon, also can fight. In addition to shuttling troops around the battlefield, IFVs accompany and protect tanks and dismounted infantry.

The Soviet-Russian BMP is an IFV, as is the American M-2, the British Warrior, the German Marder and the Swedish CV-90. The Ukrainian armed forces have a couple thousand BMPs. But that’s too few to equip all of their heavy brigades.

Despite the shortfall, Ukraine’s NATO allies have donated just a few hundred IFVs—all of them BMPs. Ukraine hasn’t received a single non-Soviet IFV from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany or any other ally.

Instead, NATO countries have sent to Ukraine a thousand lightly-armed APCs—M-113s, mostly—that each can carry a squad of infantry but generally lack turrets and cannons. They can carry, but they can’t fight.

Yes, the M-113 is fast and reliable. But all those APCs filling in for IFVs could represent risk for Ukrainian heavy brigades—and likely explain the enduring demand for Frankenstein fighting vehicles.

It’s safe to assume that, if the Ukrainians were getting hundreds of secondhand M-2s from the Americans or Marders from the Germans, they wouldn’t bother welding BMP turrets to PRP-3/4 hulls.

But those M-2s and Marders aren’t forthcoming—and it’s difficult to explain why. Many NATO armies are in the process of replacing their older IFVs with new designs or, owing to post-Cold War force-structure cuts, are sitting on huge reserves of idle IFVs.

NATO countries seem to be answering a logistical impulse. They want to equip the Ukrainian army with the fewest possible different vehicles. By that rationale, it’s better for the United States and Germany both to offer up M-113s than for the Americans and Germans separately to pledge M-2s and Marders. One supply chain versus two.

But in the case of armored vehicles, that logistical standardization comes at the cost of combat capability. Ask Ukrainian commanders which tradeoff they favor. They might not always ask for simpler logistics.

If simplicity were their priority, they wouldn’t be bolting random rockets and guns onto whatever wheeled or tracked chassis they can get their hands on.