Russian forces appear to be fashioning improvised artillery guns from the main armaments of old BMP-1 armored fighting vehicles.
One video circulating on social media shows a soldier firing what appears to be a BMP-1’s 73 mm 2A28 Grom gun fixed to a makeshift wheelbase. Another video shows a group of soldiers towing the improvised gun into position.
The crude device may reflect the heavy equipment losses Russia has suffered in its invasion of Ukraine.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Sunday that Russia had lost 14,937 artillery systems and 15,645 armored fighting vehicles since it launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
While Russia is still more than capable of crafting new artillery systems and reviving Soviet-era weaponry, it will be difficult to keep up with the rate of losses and the firepower required on the front lines.
And while the improvised 2A28 artillery gun may act as a temporary fix for dwindling supplies, it is highly likely to be inaccurate.
One video shows the device, which is designed to be fired from a stable armored turret, jumping off of the ground as each shot is fired.
The unarmored gun will also be extremely exposed to Ukrainian drone attacks, which have proven to be successful in taking on heavy Russian tanks.
It is not the first time Russian forces have seemingly resorted to using makeshift devices.
In March, videos appeared to show Russian troops using vulnerable golf cart-style vehicles to transport infantry to the frontline.
In April, another video appeared to show a Ukrainian hit on a Russian tank that was using an “improvised EW system,” Rob Lee, a senior policy fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote on X at the time.
Lee said the system “reportedly was effectively countering a large number of FPVs operating with different frequencies before it was stopped.”
Russia has also previously deployed “turtle tanks” fitted with rudimentary metal roofs to defend against inbound munitions such as drone attacks.
“I know people are laughing at this, but I don’t think it is a crazy adaptation,” Lee wrote in another post on X.
“The Russians are adapting to the particular conditions of the battlefield in which Ukraine has a lot of FPVs, but not enough ATGMs, anti-tank mines, and artillery,” he said. “So sacrificing observation and the ability to rotate the turret on one tank per platoon that can jam many FPVs frequencies at once makes sense.”
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