The thinly-protected, 1950s-vintage BTR-50 might not be the worst vehicle the Russian army has sent in a direct assault on Ukrainian positions, but it’s probably the oldest.
And while it’s safer for Russian troops to ride in a 70-year-old BTR-50 with its 10-millimeter-thick armor than to ride in, say, a brand-new Chinese golf cart, it’s still an ominous sign for Russia that more BTR-50s are appearing on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its 28th month.
“Without mechanized units fully equipped with proper combat vehicles like tanks, achieving swift and decisive penetration of defenses will be very challenging,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained. “This limitation is likely to result in slower and more limited advances, hampering the overall progress of Russian forces.”
The BTR-50 is a 15-ton, diesel-fueled armored tractor with two crew and space for up to 20 passengers. It usually packs a heavy machine gun.
The Soviet Union developed the BTR-50 in the early 1950s. It entered service in 1954 and, for the next 12 years, was the Soviet army’s main fighting vehicle. BTR-50 crews would haul soldiers into battle, protect them as they dismounted and then support them with its machine gun.
The BTR-50 is lightly-armed and thinly-armored by even 1960s standards, however. When the heavier, and more heavily-armed, BMP-1 debuted in 1966, thousands of BTR-50s cascaded to second-line units. The BTRs hauled artillery, engineers and anti-aircraft guns until MT-LB tractors began displacing the older vehicles from those roles, too.
The present-day Russian military had few uses for a BTR-50 until, around 15 months into the wider war in Ukraine, Russia’s monthly losses of modern armored vehicles exceeded Russia’s monthly generation of reasonably modern replacement vehicles—either through production of brand-new vehicles or the recovery, from long-term storage, of vehicles from the 1980s or later.
The Kremlin began pulling BTR-50s out of open storage in early 2023. It seems Russian commanders initially assigned the vehicles to rear-area support roles and kept them away from the front line. But then, in late 2023, BTR-50s began showing up in Russian assault groups in the east.
Six months later, the Russians have lost in battle at least four BTR-50s that the analysts at Oryx can confirm. One got hit by a Javelin anti-tank missile while attacking Ukrainian lines west of Novomykhailivka on or right before Sunday.
The Ukrainian army’s 79th Air Assault Brigade holds the line in that area—and that brigade’s anti-tank missileers are notoriously bloodthirsty. It’s unsafe to send a modern T-72 tank with hundreds of millimeters of armor against the 79th Air Assault Brigade; it’s suicide to send a BTR-50 with just 10 millimeters of armor.
That BTR-50’s doomed assault is indicative of a wider problem. Tens of billions of dollars worth of fresh military aid the United States and the European Union are on the way to Ukraine. Perhaps hoping to capture additional territory ahead of that aid arriving, the Russians launched a new offensive two weeks ago—rolling south across Ukraine’s northern border with Russia.
This offensive, apparently targeting Kharkiv—Ukraine’s second-biggest city, just 25 miles south of the border—captured a few small border villages before running into a wall of Ukrainian mechanized brigades firing those first consignments of fresh artillery shells coming from the United States.
Sustaining offensives in the north and east in addition to positional fighting in the south has proved difficult for the Kremlin. Big advances in the north would require “a large number of vehicles,” according to Frontelligence Insight. Even as it mobilizes tens of thousands of fresh troops every month, Russia is struggling to equip them with modern vehicles.
A BTR-50 is as old as a combat vehicle gets without coming directly from a museum. And it’s only slightly more protected than a golf cart. When a Ukrainian anti-tank missile team spots a BTR-50 rolling toward it, it’s not just bad news for the crew and occupants of that BTR-50. It’s also bad news for the whole Russian war effort.
Sources:
1. Frontelligence Insight: https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/frontlines-situation-report-may-17th
2. American Infantryman: https://t.me/usinfantryman1/17043
3. Oryx: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
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