[Shephard] Almost three years after the high-profile public debut of Russia’s new armoured platforms – the Armata, the Kurganets-25 and Bumerang families – their large-scale procurement for the Russian military still appears to be a distant prospect.At the time, observers noted that these vehicles would give Russia a significant technological edge over NATO forces.
But this now appears to have been presumptuous. The vehicles have suffered from funding problems, technical issues and conceptual changes that have caused serious delays to the development effort, and the follow-on launch into production and fielding into regular service.
The Armata heavy tracked platform, developed by Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), is the flagship of the Russian armour recapitalisation effort. It covers a family of three combat vehicles using a common tracked platform – the T-14 MBT, T-15 heavyweight IFV and the T-16 armoured recovery vehicle.
The T-14 has been described as a revolutionary combat vehicle with unmanned turret and crew accommodated in an armoured capsule in the hull for better protection. The tank has all-new sophisticated passive and active protection systems and is equipped for network centric operations.
Officially, the T-14’s development effort is proceeding forward on schedule, and this has been claimed by the Russian Land Forces commander-in-chief, Col Gen Oleg Salykov in November 2017.
He also reconfirmed previously released information that an experimental batch of 100 vehicles is set to be delivered for field testing with that effort slated for completion by 2020. Russia's TASS news agency reported in February 2018 that Russian officials had confirmed an order for two battalions of T-14s and a battalion of T-15s, possibly the test batch vehicles.
There is even more uncertainty surrounding the T-15 IFV, with elements such as the turret configuration still unknown.
The Kurganets-25 medium-class tracked platform, developed by Traktornye Zavody, appears to have the most criticism levelled against it among all the new generation platforms in development.
It was used as the basis for the B-11 IFV and B-10 APC, both criticised by Russian military officers during 2015 for their significant size, much larger than today’s BMP-2 and BMP-3 used by the Russian Land Forces. A redesigned platform was expected to begin testing in 2017 but there is little evidence that this test effort has started.
In the recent years, the Russian MoD has invested heavily in upgrading its existing armour inventory such as the T-72 MBT and BMP-2 IFV and continues to place orders for newly-built T-90 MBTs and BMP-3 IFVs.
These hefty investments in proven designs are a likely sign that the army’s next-generation armour platforms, including the Armata, Kurganets-25 and Bumerang families, are still being regarded by the Russian military leadership as distant prospects.