Russian - Manufactured Armored Vechicle Vulnerability in
Urban Combat - A Chechnya Experience
cut / paste from www.fas.org, some of you may have seen this.
In December 1994, the Russian Army entered the breakaway Republic
of Chechnya and attempted to seize the Chechen capital of Grozny
from the march. After this attempt failed, the Russian Army spent
two months in deliberate house-to-house fighting before finally
capturing the city.(1) The dispirited Russian conscript force was
badly mauled by the more mature, dedicated Chechen force, and the
war drags on to this day. During the first month of the conflict,
Russian forces wrote off 225 armored vehicles as nonrepairable
battle losses. This represents 10.23% of the armored vehicles
initially committed to the campaign. The Russians evacuated some of
these 225 hulls to the Kubinka test range for analysis.
General-Lieutenant A. Galkin, the head of the Armor Directorate,
held a conference on their findings on 20 February 1995. The
Minister of Defense attended the conference.(2) The results of the
conference convinced the Russian Minister of Defense to stop
procuring tanks with gas-turbine engines.(3) Further, the analysis
disclosed Chechen anti-armor tactics and the vulnerabilities of
Russian armored vehicles in urban combat.
Chechen Anti-armor Techniques
The Chechen forces are armed with Soviet and Russian-produced
weapons, and most Chechen fighters served in the Soviet Armed
Forces. The Chechen lower-level combat group consists of 15 to 20
personnel subdivided into three or four-man fighting cells. These
cells consist of an antitank gunner (normally armed with the RPG-7
or RPG-18 shoulder-fired antitank rocket launcher), a machine
gunner and a sniper.(4) Additional personnel serve as ammunition
bearers and assistant gunners. Chechen combat groups would deploy
these cells as anti-armor hunter-killer teams. The sniper and
machine gunner would pin down the supporting infantry while the
antitank gunner would engage the armored target. Teams deploy at
ground level, in second and third stories, and in basements.
Normally five or six hunter-killer teams simultaneously attack a
single armored vehicle. Kill shots are generally made against the
top, rear and sides of vehicles. Chechens also drop bottles filled
with gasoline or jellied fuel on top of vehicles.(5) The Chechen
hunter-killer teams try to trap vehicle columns in city streets
where destruction of the first and last vehicles will trap the
column and allow its total destruction.
The elevation and depression of the Russian main tank guns are
incapable of dealing with hunter-killer teams fighting from
basements and second or third-story positions and the simultaneous
attack from five or six teams negate the effectiveness of the
tank's machine guns. The Russians attached ZSU 23-4 and 2S6
track-mounted antiaircraft guns to armored columns to respond to
these difficult-to-engage hunter-killer teams.(6)
Initial Russian vehicle losses were due to a combination of
inappropriate tactics, underestimation of the opposing force, and a
lack of combat readiness. The Russians moved into Grozny without
encircling it and sealing it off from reinforcements. They planned
to take the city from the march without dismounting. Due to
shortages in personnel, the Russian columns consisted of composite
units and most personnel carriers traveled with few or no
dismounts. These initial columns were decimated.
As the Russians regrouped, they brought in more infantry and began
a systematic advance through the city, house by house and block by
block. Russian armored vehicle losses dropped off with their change
in tactics. Russian infantry moved in front with armored combat
vehicles in support or in reserve. Some Russian vehicles were
outfitted with a cage of wire mesh mounted some 25-30 centimeters
away from the hull armor to defeat the shaped charges of an
antitank grenade launcher as well as to protect the vehicle from a
Molotov cocktail or bundle of explosives. The Russians began
establishing ambushes on approach routes into a selected area and
then running vehicles into the area as bait to destroy Chechen
hunter-killer teams.(7)
Vulnerabilities of Russian armored vehicles
Shoulder-fired antitank weapons and antitank grenades knocked out
the bulk of armored vehicles and each destroyed vehicle took an
average of three to six lethal hits.(
Fuel cells
and engines are favorite aiming points for Chechen antitank
gunners. The following illustrations have a grey area imposed which
shows the area where 90% of the lethal hits occur
The BMD-1 is a personnel carrier assigned to airborne forces. As
such, it is lightly armored.
It was vulnerable to front, rear, flanking and top-down fire. The
front portion of the turret is reinforced and, consequently, not
vulnerable, but the rear of the turret is.
There is more armor on the BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle.
However, its top armor is weak, its fuel tanks are within the rear
doors and the driver's compartment is vulnerable.
The BTR-70 wheeled armored personnel carrier showed many of the
same vulnerabilities as the BMD and BMP.
Sixty-two tanks were destroyed in the first month's fighting in
Chechnya. Over 98% (apparently 61 tanks) were knocked out by rounds
which impacted in areas not protected by reactive armor. The
Russians employed the T-72 and T-80 tank in Chechnya. They were
both invulnerable to frontal shots, since the front is heavily
armored and covered with reactive armor. Kill shots were made at
those points where there is no reactive armor--the sides and rear
and, on top shots, on the drivers hatch and the rear of the turret
and rear deck. Early in the conflict, most Russian tanks went into
combat without their reactive armor. They were particularly
vulnerable to damaging or lethal frontal hits without it.(10)
Conclusions
The Chechen forces developed effective techniques to defeat Russian
armored vehicles on the streets of a large city. Many of their
techniques can be adapted by other armed forces which might fight
Russian-manufactured armored vehicles (or other types of armored
vehicles) in urban combat. These techniques are:
1) Organize anti-tank hunter-killer teams which include a machine
gunner and a sniper to protect the anti-tank gunner by suppressing
infantry which is accompanying the armored vehicles.
2) Select anti-armor ambush areas in sections of the city where
buildings restrict and canalize the movement of armored
vehicles.
3) Lay out the ambush in order to seal off vehicles inside the kill
zone.
4) Use multiple hunter-killer teams to engage armored vehicles from
basements, ground level and from second- or third-floor positions.
A problem with the RPG-7 and RPG-18 antitank weapons are the
backblast, signature and time lapse between shots. The Chechens
solved the time lapse problem by engaging each target
simultaneously with five or six anti-tank weapons (obvious
requirements for a future anti-armor weapon for urban combat is a
low-signature, multi-shot, recoil-attenuated, light-weight weapon
which can be fired from inside enclosures. The AT-4 and Javelin do
not appear to meet these requirements). (** So much for LAW
replacement)
5) Engage armored targets from the top, rear and sides. Shots
against frontal armor protected by reactive armor only serve to
expose the gunner.
6) Engage accompanying air-defense guns first.
still think it's a good idea to replace all our amx with large
MBT?
