The Russian state’s TASS news agency reported that the Russian Army set up its first ever regular company of ‘Terminator’ tank support fighting vehicles that entered service with the Central Military District’s 90th Guards Tank Division stationed in the Urals. The 90th Tank Division’s units are stationed in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions. The new tank support fighting vehicles will be engaged in large-scale drills in June next year. The first regular company of nine tank support fighting vehicles in the Russian Armed Forces was introduced into the table of organization and equipment of a tank regiment of the military district’s armored division.
‘Terminator’ arrived for the Urals Tank Division in December last year for operational evaluation and for the personnel to learn to operate the new armor. The trials crowned with success and Russia’s top brass made a decision to set up a regular company of ‘Terminator’ tank support fighting vehicles. The Russian Defence Ministry finally ordered the BMPT in August 2017. Deliveries of more than 10 vehicles were begun in early 2018. On December 1, 2021, the first in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation BMPT company of nine combat vehicles was introduced into one of the tank regiments of the tank division of the Central Military District.
The BMPT “Terminator” is an armored fighting vehicle (AFV), designed and manufactured by the Russian company Uralvagonzavod. When used in urban terrain, each main battle tank (mbt) is deployed with two ‘Terminator’. Outside of urban warfare that ratio is reversed with one ‘Terminator’ protecting two mbts. This results from the complexity of fighting in urban terrain and the need for a versatile anti-personnel platform that can engage multiple targets at once and on different height levels. The introduction of such a vehicle makes urban fighting less stressful on mbts and can relieve them of some of the workload so that they can concentrate on their main objective of engaging other mbt and hardened targets.
The ‘Terminator’ tank support fighting vehicle is built on the chassis of the widely-used T-72 main battle tank. Due to the multiple weapons systems found on the ‘Terminator’, this vehicle is able to fire at multiple targets simultaneously. The armament includes an unmanned turret armed with: four launchers for the 130 mm 9M120 Ataka-T anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), two 30 mm 2A42 with 850 rounds, either two AG-17D or two AGS-30 30 mm grenade launchers with 600 rounds and one 7.62 mm PKTM machine gun with 2,000 rounds. These features significantly help increase the combat effectiveness of tank units and decrease their losses from enemy close-combat assets.
