Ukraine's T-55 Heavy Fighting Vehicle Is All Alone On the Battlefield
There were several efforts to turn tanks into fighting vehicles in Ukraine; none caught on
Ukraine’s unique BMP-55 fighting vehicle—a turretless T-55 tank modified to carry infantry—was spotted somewhere presumably near the front line. Not exactly recently, it seems, as the photos depict the approximately 30-ton vehicle covered in snow on a winter landscape.
The heavy fighting vehicle is one in a whole class of tank-based IFVs that Russia, Ukraine and Israel, among other powers, have developed over the decades. Few of the types have entered serial production—the Russian BMP-T is the major exception—and there’s no evidence the BMP-55 will defy this trend.
The BMP-55 is a 1950s-vintage T-55 tank with its turret removed, its chassis reversed and a rear hatch installed, leaving space and access for eight or 10 passengers: an infantry squad, basically.
At least twice since the late 1990s, Ukrainian industry tried to sell foreign buyers on the concept of a T-55-based armored personnel carrier or infantry fighting vehicle. The main selling point: the chassis’ thick armor, tough enough to resist auto-cannon rounds.
The pitches made sense. Israel had successfully converted T-55s it captured from Arab armies—during the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and other conflicts—into super-heavy Achzarit APCs.
The Israelis produced around 300 Achzarits and steadily upgraded them through several major conflicts, including Israeli incursions into Gaza in 2004 and 2008. The latest Achzarit Mark II has a new Detroit Diesel engine and a Rafael remotely-controlled turret for its machine gun.
Ukraine was poised to duplicate this vehicular recycling effort. The Kharkiv Tank Plant in northeastern once built T-55s; as recently as the 2010s, Ukraine apparently still had hundreds of the old tanks in storage. Ukrainian factories produce a wide array of small turrets for machine guns and auto-cannons.
The Kharkiv Armored Repair Plant was the first enterprise to actually build a working BMP-55 prototype, around 2009. But it never found a buyer—not even Ukraine itself. When Russia widened its war on Ukraine in 2022, the Ukrainians pivoted to foreign-made armored trucks and IFVs, such as the German Marder and American M-2, for battlefield mobility.
Not worth it
Bespoke tank-based IFVs apparently aren’t worth the time and effort it takes to produce them. Especially given how vulnerable any vehicle is to the tiny drones that are everywhere all the time over the front line in Ukraine.
Ukrainian workshops did convert a few captured Russian T-62 tanks into fighting vehicles and engineering vehicles. And a handful of Ukrainian APC and IFV prototypes—one based on a T-64 tank, another combining the chassis of a 2S1 self-propelled howitzer with the turret and 30-millimeter gun of a BMP-3 IFV—found themselves on the front line.
The BMP-55 appears to be a new member of this use-it-or-lose-it club. Some Ukrainian unit has taken ownership of the vehicle because … why not? It’s not doing anyone any good sitting in some warehouse in Kharkiv.
And it’s not like the vehicle is terribly hard to maintain. The Ukrainian armed forces operate hundreds of vehicles with T-55 chassis, including IMR engineering vehicles. They could even source spare parts from the six or seven old Russian T-55s they’ve knocked out.
Read more:
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