Intense Combat Video Shows Ukrainians Take On Russian Tank At Point-Blank Range

Any video put out by one side involved in a conflict deserves to be treated with some caution; like the Russian video which supposedly showed a strike by their Kinzhal hypersonic missile which was actually something else entirely. But footage of an Ukrainian BTR-4 Infantry Combat Vehicle taking on Russian armor in close-quarters combat deserves a second look.

The 64-second video shows the view from the commander’s video screen — we can tell this is the commander’s view rather than the gunner’s from the word ‘commander’ in Ukrainian — during street fighting against Russian forces. Emerging suddenly near the enemy, the BTR-4 engages first a BTR-82 personnel carrier and then a T-72B3 tank at extremely close range, with its 30mm automatic cannon.

“Such short-range short-notice encounters are, of course, endemic in FIBUA [Fighting In Built-Up Areas},” says Patrick Benham-Crosswell, a former tank officer in the British Army and author of “The Dangerous World of Tommy Atkins: a beginners guide to land warfare.”

After destroying the BTR-82, the Ukrainian BTR-4 moves into position and fires a burst at the T-72’s flank (at :22 seconds) which does nothing apart from setting off an explosive reactive armor tile intended to disrupt incoming shaped charges.

The BTR-4 then dodges back out of the way before the tank can respond, coming back a few seconds later for a surprise second attack. This time the gunner takes longer to aim and unleashes a stream of rounds not at the tank’s body or turrey but low down at track level (at :39 seconds). The first burst of four rounds has appears to have little effect. During the second burst flames appear, and during the third and fourth the tank is burning fiercely.

This may seem quite unlikely. The Ukrainian-made BTR-4 is a lightly-armored, eight-wheeled vehicle weighing about 25 tons with a crew of three, which carries a squad of seven infantry. It is fitted with a turret armed with a 30mm cannon, plus a grenade launcher and machinegun. It also has a Konkurs or Baryer anti-tank guided missile launcher, but this has a minimum range of about 100 meters and tanks longer to engage than the cannon. (It should be mentioned that this 30mm weapon is far less powerful than the famed GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun fitted to the U.S. A-10 aircraft).

The BTR-4’s armor is thick enough to withstand heavy machinegun fire from the front and medium machinegun – equal to perhaps 30mm of steel plate. Its cannon is designed for taking on similar vehicles, not heavy tanks.

The T-72B3 is one of Russia’s most modern main battle tanks, a 45-ton steel beast with a 125mm cannon capable of destroying other tanks at long range. Its frontal armor is slanted to give an effective thickness of over 500 mm (20 inches) of steel plate, or at least ten times as much as the BTR-4. This armor was designed to defeat the 105mm guns of NATO tanks, and early anti-tank missiles like Dragon and TOW. So it seems unlikely that something like a 30mm cannon, which can only penetrate about 45 mm or armor at typical combat ranges, would be able to do more than scratch it.

However, tank armor is not the same from all angles. Because the enemy is most likely to be in front of a tank, most of the weight of the armor is put on the ‘frontal arc’ to stop threats from ahead. Side and rear armor are invariably lighter, especially on Russian tanks.

In the case of the T-72, a detailed 2015 study on tank blog Below The Turret Ring gives the lowdown gleaned from a number of open-source works on just how effective the armor is in individual parts of the tank.

While the frontal armor may give an effective thickness of 500mm, the side armor is only 80mm for the upper 60% of its height. The lower 40%, which would normally be less visible to the enemy due to uneven terrain or the tank being behind cover, only has armor 20mm thick: a weak point which the BTR-4 gunner knew to go for.

“It’s no surprise that 30mm knocks holes in it,” Benham-Crosswell.

It is worth noting that the 25mm round fired by U.S. M2 Bradley vehicles was reportedly effective against the side armor of Russian-made tanks in Iraq, though normally the Bradley would use guided missiles.

While some commenters suggested that the rounds must have hit a fuel tank to cause the fire, this is not the case. Diesel fuel is notoriously difficult to ignite and some tank designers actually put fuel tanks in front of vital components to protect them. The T-72’s ammunition storage is in the hull in the area struck, so the most likely explanation seems to be that this was hit enough times.

“Having penetrated with a relatively low-energy round it will take a while for some behind-armor effects — i.e. secondary fires — to take off,” says Benham-Crosswell.

While the 30mm cannon is not the weapon you would want to take into a fight with a T-72, with sufficient courage, skill and knowledge of your enemy’s weak spots it is still possible to win. For their part the Russians failed to react quickly enough either to get out of danger or deal with the fast-moving threat.

“Lack of reaction from either vehicle was a surprise,” says Benham-Crosswell. “No sign of smoke being popped, fire returned or, particularly the T-72, any attempt to reverse.”

Closer inspection shows that the T-72 does appear to move forward slightly (from :23-:24 seconds) during the engagement, but does not get out of the way. This may be because the crew had little idea of where the enemy was and they may have been taking fire from other directions.

A couple of other features stand out in this video. One is the extreme short range. The 30mm cannon is effective out to 2,000 metres or so, but the fighting is at a hundred meters or less. Driving around at this range, when an enemy vehicle can appear around any corner and destroy you with one shot, requires the proverbial nerves of steel.

Another feature is the presence and absence of footsoldiers from the two sides. As in other cases, Russian armor seems to be operating on its own without infantry to act as their eyes and ears, an extremely dangerous approach in in built-up areas. As Benham-Crosswell notes, the accepted approach is combined arms, with infantry and armor supporting each other, the vehicles bringing heavy firepower while the footsoldiers provide situational awareness and lay down suppressive fire on anyone pointing an anti-tank weapon.

In the video, Ukrainian infantry can be seen very close to the action, apparently working in co-ordination with the armor. This may be the squad dismounted from the BTR-4 from which the action was filmed.

The original video was recorded on the BTR-4’s onboard system; the version online looks like it was filmed during playback on a phone, with the bottom portion of the screen left out to exclude time and location data. Some sources suggest it was shot in Mariupol. A similar rapid-fire video, in which a BTR-4 fires at a T-72 and then destroys a BVRM-1K reconnaissance vehicle was put online a few days earlier.

It is worth stressing that such videos cannot necessarily be accepted at face value, may not show what is claimed, and are obviously released for their propaganda value. But they may still give some idea of what urban combat in Ukraine is like, and an indication of the resolve and courage of Ukrainian forces and the lack of tactical skill of their Russian opponents.