BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here
Edit Story

Ukraine Is Getting Dozens Of Special Marshland Transports. They’re Very Useful ... And Highly Vulnerable.

Following

Germany is donating to Ukraine dozens of lightweight, low-pressure infantry and cargo carriers. Swedish firm Hägglunds, now part of BAE Systems, designed the tracked, articulated BV-206 to crawl across snow.

But the 4.5-ton BV-206 works equally well on marshy terrain. And it just happens there’s at least one region of Ukraine that’s pretty marshy: Kherson Oblast. A possible locus of Ukraine’s widely-anticipated 2023 counteroffensive.

On June 1, Berlin announced it would give Ukraine 64 BV-206s. The batch of carriers brings to more than a thousand the number of tanks, fighting vehicles, personnel carriers, engineering vehicles and transport trucks Germany has pledged to the Ukrainian war effort.

In this mix of German-supplied vehicles, the BV-206 with its 130-horsepower gasoline engine is unique. It’s much lighter than, say, a 31-ton Marder fighting vehicle is—but also much more capacious, with seats for 17 crew and passengers, compared to just nine in a Marder.

It’s that lightness—combined with long, wide tracks—that makes the BV-206 special. It can crawl across soft ground without sinking. While the same lightness translates into minimal armor protection, there are scenarios where a lack of protection is a reasonable price to pay for excellent cross-country mobility.

Consider the British military’s 1982 campaign to liberate the Falklands from Argentinian forces. The Royal Marines landed a few BV-202s—predecessors of the BV-206s—and relied on them to maintain the supply line between advancing infantry and their beachhead, nearly 60 miles away.

“Their tracked BV 202s performed superbly on the terrain and could handle the marshy off-road trek across the island,” California think-tank RAND explained. “Those units without the BV 202s, such as the [British Army’s] Welsh Guards, advanced much more slowly.”

It’s not for no reason that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps adopted BV-206s for Arctic operations starting in 1983. Four decades later, thousands of BV-type vehicles, including the latest BVS-10s—are in service with dozens of armies and civilian agencies.

British forces deployed their BVS-10s to Afghanistan around 2006 and quickly discovered the limits of the vehicles’ design. “Several ... were destroyed by large [improvised explosive devices], creating a crisis of confidence in the vehicle,” vehicle-consultant Nicholas Drummond and his coauthor Jed Cawthorne explained.

Unless it’s careful, Ukraine risks the same outcome with its own BV-206s. If and when Ukrainian brigades counterattack in marshy southern Ukraine, they could deploy BV-206s for urgent transport missions across soft, roadless terrain.

But they shouldn’t deploy the vulnerable vehicles anywhere the Russians can take aim at them.

Follow me on TwitterCheck out my website or some of my other work hereSend me a secure tip