The BMPT-62 of the 128th Mountain Brigade.
Via Militaryland.net
Ukraine’s first – and so far only, it seems – BMPT-62 Terminator armored fighting vehicle is already on the frontline, just a few weeks after the vehicle first appeared in photos during construction.
The well-protected Terminator is now part of the Ukrainian Army’s 128th Mountain Brigade, an elite unit that has spent much of Russia’s 15-month war against Ukraine fighting Russian forces in the south.
The 128th Army was at the forefront of Ukraine’s southern counter-offensive as early as October. Today it is helping to anchor Ukraine’s frontline in Zaporizhia Oblast east of the Kakhovka Reservoir, which dumped five billion gallons of fresh water into the western floodplain of the Dnipro River on Wednesday after Russian troops appeared to have blown up the reservoir’s dam.
Should the 128th Mountain Brigade seek revenge for this act of environmental sabotage, the Terminator could play an important role in supporting the brigade’s T-72 tanks and BMP fighting vehicles.
The BMPT-62 is Ukraine’s answer to Russia’s own very rare BMPT Terminator IFV. The Terminators are not tanks: their guns are too small. They are also not infantry fighting vehicles, as they lack passenger compartments. No, they are niche vehicles whose primary role is to escort tanks and armored personnel carriers and provide fast firepower and strong armor to a combined arms team.
While Russian vehicle maker Ural Transport Engineering Design Bureau built the BMPT on the hull of a surplus 49-ton T-72 tank, Ukrainian engineers – reportedly paid for by the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation in Kiev – built their own Terminator on the hull of a 41 Ton heavy ex-Russian T-62.
That is, the Russian version of the three-person vehicle is the better protected and better armed version. The Ukrainians have mitigated this imbalance by adding blocks of Kontakt-1 reactive armor to the hull and turret of the BMPT-62.
The Russian Terminator features a turret with two 30mm autocannons. The Ukrainian Terminator’s turret, borrowed from a captured Russian BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle, has a single 30mm autocannon.
The designers of the Ukrainian Terminator added blocks of Kontakt-1 reactive armor to the vehicle, which explodes on impact, and the equivalent of hundreds of millimeters of steel to the 100 millimeters of steel that a base T-62 carries on the front of its hull can add .
The 128th’s BMPT-62 is apparently the first Ukrainian Terminator, but it may not be the last. Ukrainian troops captured at least 45 Russian T-62s and hundreds of BMP-2s.
With $46,000 in donations channeled through the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, technicians converted at least one ex-Russian T-62 into an engineering vehicle. That leaves just over 40 T-62 hulls that the Ukrainians could convert into more Terminators.
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