The unique Ukrainian combat vehicle has arrived at the front

Ukraine’s first – and so far only – BMPT-62 Terminator armored fighting vehicle is in front-line use, just weeks after the vehicle first appeared in photos during construction.

The heavily protected destroyer now belongs to the Ukrainian Army’s 128th Mountain Brigade, the elite unit that spent most of Russia’s 15-month war over Ukraine fighting Russian forces in the south.

The 128th was at the forefront of the southern Ukrainian counterattack in October. Today, it is helping stabilize Ukraine’s front line in Zaporizhia Oblast just east of the Kakhovka Reservoir, which drained five billion gallons of fresh water into the western floodplain of the Dnipro River on Wednesday after Russian forces apparently blew up the reservoir’s dam.

If and when the 128th Mountain Brigade retaliates for this act of environmental sabotage, the Terminator could play a significant role in supporting the brigade’s T-72 tanks and BMPs.

The BMPT-62 is Ukraine’s answer to the very rare Russian BMPT Terminator AFV. Destroyers are not tanks: their weapons are very small. They are not infantry fighting vehicles either, as they lack passenger compartments. No, they are specialized vehicles whose main role is to escort tanks and IFVs, giving rapid firepower and thick armor to a combined arms team.

Where the Ural Transport Engineering Design Bureau, the Russian vehicle maker, based the BMPT on the hull of a surplus 49-ton T-72 tank, Ukrainian engineers were paid for by the Ural Transport Engineering Bureau. Sirhi Pritola Charitable Foundation In Kiev – they built their own Terminator on the 41-ton hull of an ex-Russian T-62.

This means that the Russian version of the three-person vehicle is the better-protected and better-armed version. The Ukrainians smoothed out this flaw by adding Kontakt-1 reactive armor blocks to the BMPT-62’s hull and turret.

The Russian destroyer has a turret with two twin 30 mm automatic cannons. The Ukrainian gun turret, borrowed from a Russian BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle, houses a single 30 mm automatic cannon.

Ukrainian Terminator designers have added to the vehicle masses of Kontakt-1 reactive armor, which explodes on impact and can add the equivalent of hundreds of millimeters of steel to 100 millimeters of steel, wearing the baseline T-62 at the front of its hull. .

The 128th BMPT-62 appears to be the first Ukrainian Terminator, but it may not be the last. Ukrainian forces captured 45 Russian T-62s and hundreds from BMP-2s.

With $46,000 in donations funneled through the Serhiy Pritula Charitable Foundation, technicians have converted at least one former Russian T-62 into an engineering vehicle. That leaves just over 40 T-62 chassis that the Ukrainians can convert into additional destroyers.