The Russians Are Turning Old Vehicles Into Rolling Bombs

At least three times in recent days, Russian forces around Marinka in eastern Ukraine have packed old armored vehicles with explosives, jammed the controls and sent them rolling, unmanned and primed to explode, toward Ukrainian positions.

At least two of the known attacks by Russian vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDs, ended in failure when the vehicles ran over a Ukrainian mine or ate a rocket or shell. But the Russians claimed one of the VBIEDs struck a Ukrainian strongpoint and inflicted “significant losses.”

A VBIED has obvious advantages and disadvantages. You can pack a lot of explosives in an old BMP fighting vehicle, MT-LB armored tractor or T-55 tank.

A Russian engineer told state media he rigged an MT-LB with 3.5 tons of explosive line-charges and five 220-pound FAB-100 aerial bombs for a total of more than four tons of explosives. The T-55 VBIED that struck a mine outside Marinka on or before Sunday reportedly was filled with six tons of TNT.

The vehicle required no modifications. The same engineer said he and the vehicle’s driver maneuvered the MT-LB VBIED to within 300 yards of Ukrainian lines, put the tractor in drive and “departed to the rear” as the VBIED rolled forward.

The resulting explosion, he said, “was very serious.”

A VBIED with four or five tons of explosives can kill unprotected enemy troops from 500 feet away—and hurt them from 3,000 feet away. A vehicle-delivered IED basically is a way to deliver a lot of firepower, all at once. It’s not for no reason that insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria favored VBIEDs—and that terrorists also have turned to the crude rolling bombs.

But don’t kid yourself: VBIEDs are poverty weapons for armies with too many decrepit vehicles and too few modern means of concentrating long-range fires. Armies with ample stocks of rocket artillery rarely resort to VBIEDs to reduce enemy positions.

There are several Russian and allied regiments in and around the eastern half of Marinka, which lies 13 miles southwest of the center of Donetsk city. The nearby 381st Artillery Brigade supports these units with its BM-21 rocket-launchers, Msta-S howitzers and drones.

It’s not clear why the Russians would bother with VBIEDs when they could call in fires from the 381st. It’s possible that the artillery brigade is overextended as the Kremlin shifts more forces south and west to meet Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. It’s also possible the 381st is suffering from a shortage of rockets and shells—although, if that’s the case, the shortage might be temporary.

In any event, there’s a tried-and-true method for defeating VBIEDs. One the main Ukrainian forces around Marinka—the 116th Territorial Defense Brigade and Solovey Drone Group—already have tried out. Patrol with drones. Strike with rockets, artillery or anti-tank missiles.

The problem, of course, is that a VBIED based on a tracked vehicle can approach across any open field. It’s not limited to roads. That means there are many different axes along which Russian forces can attack with VBIEDs. It’s not enough for the Solovey Drone Group to hover an unmanned aerial vehicle over the main N15 road through Marinka.

Anticipating this problem way back in 2010, U.S. Army major Edward Williams gamed out VBIED interdiction in a thesis for the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California. He concluded UAVs should patrol in circles around a friendly base.

“The key variable for the UAV is the radius of its patrol,” Williams explained. The drone’s flight path should give it a good chance of detecting an approaching VBIED before the VBIED is close enough to inflict major damage.

But it’s risky for the drone to patrol too far away. The wider its orbit, the longer it takes for the drone to complete a trip—and the more opportunity the enemy has to slip a VBIED through the perimeter.

The Solovey Drone Group apparently has figured this out. On Saturday it plinked a BMP VBIED outside Marinka.