STARE, Ukraine — The era in which armadas of heavy beasts of armor dominated the ground in battlefields is drawing to a close.
The newest trends of land warfare, with its surge of guided anti-tank missiles, as well as the asymmetric nature of today’s wars, are about to put lead-footed tanks on the retired list in the nearest decades.
The modern warfare is now about highly mobile, small combat groups on fast attack vehicles that can prevail in battle thanks to their maneuver superiority and strong firepower.
Many of the world’s leading militaries, such the United States, or its NATO allies — and now also Russia as well — put their stakes on equipping their special forces with light combat off-roaders. But Ukraine, which has been paying the wages of the Kremlin’s four-year-long proxy war in the Donbas, is still very far from taking any practical steps in this domain.
However, engineers and veterans of the Azov Regiment, part of Ukraine’s National Guards, propose their own answer to this problem. Through 2018, they, by their own efforts, have developed and constructed a brand new design of a light strike vehicle for highly mobile combat teams, which, as they hope, the Ukrainian military desperately needs to add to their armory in the Donbas war zone.
After nearly a year of engineering, production, and tests in the challenging terrains of Ukraine’s Azov Sea coastline, the constructors proudly presented the vehicle’s first working prototype on Dec. 8 at a National Guard firing range near the village of Stare some 50 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
The prototype has got no special technical title yet, but the designers call it simply, and lovingly, The Buggy.
Modular platform
Approximately since after the Gulf War of the early 1990s, various types of fast attack vehicles have gradually become workhorses for many of the most prominent special operations forces, such as the United States Navy SEALs, or British Special Air Service (SAS), especially since their activities involved scouting missions or hit-and-run raids in difficult terrain such as the desert.
Russia, amid its expansion of the past few years, also progresses in this direction, mastering their own designs of fast attack vehicles for its Spetsnaz forces in Syria and in the Arctic.
In Ukraine’s arsenal, this class of military hardware was never fully presented, although some marine and airborne units successfully operate a number of Humvee armored cars, a loosely allied species of light combat vehicles provided by the United States as part of its military aid.
The design of Azov’s Buggy appeared to be a mixture of the Humvee, with its off-road power, and sand-rail desert patrol vehicles with their lightness, high mobility and speed.
The uncovered prototype hosted a 360-degree turret chest with a 12.7-millimeter DShK-M heavy machine gun. However, according to the designers, in next few months, they will also present three new variants of weapon set for the vehicle, featuring a 30-millimeter AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, or a 120-millimeter mortar, or an anti-tank guided missile complex, respectively.
“It is a universal platform in which one can install various weapon sets for certain needs for specific combat missions, such as scouting and reconnaissance, medical evacuation, troop transportation, communications support, et cetera,” the constructors told the Kyiv Post.
Besides, a new digital module for stabilization and fire control was being developed to ensure proper functioning of anti-tank weaponry on the Buggy.
If incorporated in the military, such a fast attack vehicle should be in extremely high demand for Ukraine’s Special Operations formations, as well in more conventional airmobile and infantry ranks, the developers believe.
“Everyone understands that a modern war is a highly mobile war,” said Serhiy Yakymchuk, a retired Azov company leader and one of the Buggy project’s masterminds. “The edge of it is that the whole force depends on the speed of every single battle squad in it. And besides, small combat teams are also getting more and more important with every year.”
Through the dirt
Since the Buggy was designed to be operated in the stiff and road-less terrains of Ukraine’s east, the constructors opted to put their stakes on high engine yield and strong running gear.
So far, the prototype features a 4×4 drive, independent suspension, and a 2.5-liter, 99-horsepower turbo diesel engine. The 1,600-kilogram vehicle carries up to 1,000 kilograms of working load and can gain the speed of up to 145 kilometers per hour on a highway, or up to 110 kilometers per hour in road-less terrain, with a maximum cruising range of 500 kilometers.
The designers said that during its drive tests, the Buggy demonstrated very high terrain-crossing capacity. In particular, thanks to the design of the front-wheel drive, the vehicle can jump over obstacles up to 1.2 meters high as its wheels clash with it at an angle of 90 degrees.
The vehicle’s running gear was designed in compliance with the so-called Lamborghini protocol, in compliance to which the Buggy’s weight was equally spread among all four wheels, with imprecision reaching no more than around 1 percent.
“This gives us very high reliability,” said Oleksandr Gordeyev, a military engineer and one of the Buggy’s designers. “This car is very hard to get rolled over.”
Besides, he added, an operator can regulate the vehicle’s suspension stiffness to adjust it for the most comfortable carrying of certain weapons while riding off-road terrains in combat.
In general, during the public tests at the firing ground, the vehicle demonstrated considerably effective absorption of shocks as it dashed through banks of snow and sand, to the extent that it could potentially ensure delivering rather comfortable rifle fire by its crew members in high-speed driving.
Military engineer Oleksandr Gordeyev presents a new fast attack vehicle prototype at a firing range near the village of Stare on Dec. 8, 2018. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Quickly in, quickly out
Another feature that differs Buggy from its elder American kin is that it falls short of protecting its crew with any armor, for the sake of higher mobility and agility of troopers in combat.
The framework was intentionally designed to let soldiers get in and out of the vehicle easy and fast.
“This seems to be a very minor detail,” engineer Gordeyev explained. “But you should try and step into a car with your full combat gear on. You can’t jump in or out when you need to, and you’re much less functional. For that purpose, we build the framework with special loose entrances so that a soldier in full combat gear could slip in very quickly and easily.”
Besides, he added, due to the absence of armor screens, the vehicle is much less noticeable for enemy fire.
“It is important to bear in mind that given the fact that virtually all armies in the world now use munitions of hard-alloy materials, the light armor on vehicles is nothing but just self-deception. Instead of that, we propose to take advantage from speed, maneuvering capacity, and combat readiness.”
“The whole crew is the vehicle’s eyes, and all of them, except for the driver, can deliver fire during the movement.”
The constructors also stressed that the Buggy is a volunteer project and that most of its running gear components had been constructed with parts designed and produced by the Azov’s engineering team and other volunteering constructors, including war veterans.
They were not ready to unveil the total cost of production of their vehicles, but, according to them, equipping the Ukrainian military formations with the Buggy would be much cheaper than procuring similar troop carriers abroad.
