Russia wants to create an amphibious tank on wheels

By Boyko Nikolov

MOSCOW, ($1=73.19 Russian Rubles) – According to the Russian state corporation Rostec, the precision weapons holding of this company plans to develop a new floating fire support vehicle on a wheeled chassis, learned BulgarianMilitary.com, citing Defence24. Its design is to use the existing manned tower module and a wheeled undercarriage capable of floating.

This information was provided by the deputy chief designer of the Volgograd Tractor Plant, which is part of the KurganMaszZawod concern, which in turn is part of the Rostec precision weapons holding. The said turret is to be the one from the recently developed and recently tested light floating tank destroyer 2S25M Sprut-SDM1. In turn, the chassis has not yet been specified, but it is to have an adequate reserve of buoyancy and several different possible options are mentioned here, depending on the assumptions made.

The turret of the 2S25M Sprut-SDM1 vehicle is armed with the 125mm 2A75 smoothbore gun [with the option of using the 9K119 Refleks anti-tank guided missiles] and two 7.62mm PKTM tank machine guns [one coupled to the gun and the other in a remote-controlled module) armament on the top of the tower]. Thanks to this, it has firepower similar to that of the Russian MBTs such as the T-90MS, with about 2.5 times lower weight and higher mobility. In addition, thanks to the use of a wide range of various types of modern 125 mm caliber ammunition, its firing range is to be up to 5 km. The latest version is also equipped with an improved fire control system with a panoramic day-night commander’s sight with a thermal vision channel and the Sosna-U gunner’s sight.

Interestingly, the new structure, which the Russian arms industry has not yet had in its current offer, is to be developed mainly with potential export customers in mind. The Russian army is to be interested mainly in tracked cars of this type due to their traction properties in difficult terrain, which is common in Russia. Undoubtedly, this type of Russian construction could be of interest to numerous buyers in South America, Africa, or Southeast Asia. Recently, the aforementioned newest 2S25M Sprut-SDM1, which was presented in February this year, has also been added to the Rosoboronexport offer. at the IDEX-2021 trade show in the UAE.

So far, armed with tank guns, fire support vehicles on a wheeled chassis [called “tanks on wheels”, among others because under the limits of disarmament agreements they are formally recognized as tanks], the so-called wheeled tanks were the specialty of a small number of countries. In Europe, structures of this type have been developed and put into service by France and Italy for years. These include the French AMX-10RC armored reconnaissance vehicle [de facto wheeled tank destroyer] and the B1 Centauro wheeled tank destroyer, also used in Spain. Belgium also has a small number of fire support vehicles to replace the Leopard 1 tanks. France and Belgium, however, are introducing Jaguar vehicles with 40 mm autocannons and ATGM launchers, which can replace both the AMX-10RC and the Piranha III vehicles armed with 90 mm cannons. Italy is implementing the second generation of the Centauro car.

These types of vehicles are usually developed for expeditionary missions and fire support of motorized infantry units operating on wheeled combat vehicles. In the world, a similar design called Type 16 Maneuver Combat Vehicle [MCV] was developed by Japan, and a similar design is currently being developed by Taiwan. Also the U.S. The Army used the M1128 Mobile Gun System [MGS] fire support vehicles for the Stryker Brigade Combat Team for some time but recently decided to retire them by the end of the fiscal year 2022.

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