Desperate Russian Forces Are Sticking 80-Year-Old Naval Guns On 70-Year-Old Armored Tractors

The Russian army is welding 80-year-old gun mounts, originally built to arm patrol boats, onto 70-year-old armored tractors—and sending them to Ukraine to get captured by the Ukrainian army.

The up-gunned, tracked MT-LBs are further evidence of the Kremlin’s worsening equipment crisis as it struggles to make good its losses in Ukraine.

The first of these weirdo MT-LBs started showing up in Ukraine last month. On or before Feb. 3, Ukrainian forces in Vuhledar captured from hapless Russian brigades a 13-ton, two-crew MT-LB sporting a 2M-7 gunboat turret.

The 2M-7 is an over-under pair of 14.5-millimeter machine guns behind a steel shield. It entered service with Soviet forces in 1945.

In early March, photos circulated online depicting MT-LBs with 2M-3 naval turrets welded to their roofs. The 2M-3 is two 25-millimeter auto-cannons, one atop the other in an enclosed casing. The 2M-3 made its debut in 1953.

To be clear, the Ukrainians also have bolted unusual weapons to some of their own MT-LBs. The Ukrainians favor MT-12 100-millimeter guns, however. These MT-LB-12s are, in essence, crude mobile howitzers.

The difference between a Russian MT-LB with a naval gun mount and a Ukrainian MT-LB-12 is range. An MT-LB-12 can fire as far as 9,000 yards. A Russian MT-LB/2M-3 shoots no farther than 2,700 yards while engaging targets on the ground.

So the Russian Frankenvehicle must get a lot closer to the enemy in order to be effective. The problem is that the MT-LB is thinly-armored. Its steel hull is half an inch thick at its thickest.

A determined Ukrainian machine-gunner could take out an MT-LB from 1,600 yards, giving the MT-LB crew a small range advantage in that particular match-up.

But Ukrainian missile teams, tankers and artillery gunners—including the crews of MT-LB-12s—can hit the weirdo Russian vehicles from thousands of yards beyond the weirdos’ own firing range. That might not be such a big problem if the MT-LB were better-protected.

Now, the Russian MT-LB/2M-3/7 might have an anti-aircraft role—which, of course, would obviate the armor problem. But the vehicle lacks a radar to guide its gunfire. So if it is an air-defense system, it’s a bad one.

It’s not hard to see why the Russian army has resorted to up-arming MT-LBs and sending them to the front. After losing more than 9,000 tanks, fighting vehicles, trucks and howitzers in the first year of its wider war on Ukraine, the Russians are running low on modern armored vehicles—and they can’t build new ones fast enough to make up for it.

Which is why the Kremlin is pulling out of long-term storage hundreds of 50-year-old T-62 tanks, 60-year-old BMP-1 fighting vehicles and 70-year-old BTR-50P armored tractors. These awkwardly up-gunned MT-LBs just further underscore the Russians’ growing desperation.