Take A BTR Vehicle, Bolt On A Pair Helicopter Rocket Pods

The latest armored vehicle curiosity, in a war rife with them, is a Russian BTR wheeled fighting vehicle packing 32-round rocket pods that normally hang under the wings of an attack helicopter or warplane.

The BTR-80 with its UB-32 rocket pods for unguided S-5 or S-8 rockets is an expedient—one that reflects the growing desperation of an army that has lost no fewer than 10,000 armored vehicles in the first 16 months of its wider war in Ukraine.

There actually is a long tradition of Soviet, Russian and allied forces fitting UB-style rocket pods to trailers, trucks, fighting vehicles and even tanks. But these rocket-pod technicals never solved a fundamental fire-control problem.

Rocket pods for unguided rockets work on helicopters and warplanes because helicopters and warplanes generally have ballistic computers that can help their crews to aim. It’s apparent none of the crude ground technicals have computers. Their crews open fire at targets no farther than a couple of miles away—and hope they get lucky.

“While S-5 rockets have been used increasingly in land warfare during recent conflicts, it is clear that they are predominantly employed when more suitable munitions are not available,” Yuri Lyamin and N.R. Jenzen-Jones wrote for Armament Research Services.

Part of the problem is the small mass—11 pounds—of the S-5. “The effectiveness of improvised S-5 based systems is typically low, due to the inherently weak payload of S-5 series rockets and the low accuracy of improvised systems.” The newer S-8 is twice as heavy, partially mitigating the payload problem. But it still lacks accuracy.

“The accuracy of these weapons is further reduced when they are employed in the indirect fire-support role,” Lyamin and Jenzen-Jones noted. “In some cases, incorrect selection and employment of fuses also appear to result in lowered effectiveness.”

That Russian forces are employing more and more DIY technicals—not just BTRs with rocket pods, but also MT-LB armored tractors with old naval guns—speaks to a growing shortfall of purpose-made fighting vehicles.

The Russians have been losing more than 500 armored vehicles a month for 16 months—and producing, at most, a few hundred new and reconditioned vehicles every 30 days.

Until Russian industry can adapt to high demand and limited resources, the do-it-yourself vehicles pretty much are the Kremlin’s only alternative to sending recruits into battle in machine-gun-armed pickup trucks.

The Ukrainians have the same problem, of course—although, to be fair, they’ve lost a third as many vehicles as the Russians have. And they have reasonably reliable sources of modern replacement vehicles: their foreign allies.