Translated by Ollie Richardson

14:15:49
27/07/2017

riafan.ru

The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on his microblog on Twitter spoke about the successful testing of the latest unmanned Phantom-2 armored personnel carrier. All of this looks like a pathetic attempt by Kiev to show the possibilities of the “defence industry”, considers the military expert of the Center for Strategic Trend Studies Vladimir Neyelov.

“Powerful and effective, and already confirmed its reliability during successful tests,” bragged the head of the Ukrainian State.

According to journalists of the information resource “112 Ukraine”, the unmanned armored troop-carrier passed through modernization taking into account those ideas that were proposed earlier by military engineers during the design of the “Phantom-1”. So, the new armored personnel carrier was built on the base of a 8х8 wheel arrangement instead of 6х6 in the first version of the combat vehicle.

“The changes allow the placing on it of a more useful load and the installation of more powerful weaponry,” it is said in the material of the media agency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90K9kNukux8

Looking at the video, it is possible to notice that the latest Ukrainian equipment is built on the base of the scheme of classical Soviet armored troop-carriers, however instead of a tower “Phantom-2” has a weapons pole with an installed 20-barreled unit of unguided B-8V20A rockets, which is usually mounted on Mi-24 assault helicopters.

“The Ukrainian comrades more than once tried to show to the whole world that their ‘defence industry’ is alive and ready to deliver arms and military equipment to the UAF. But in practice there is no progress, therefore the army of Ukraine uses the same samples of arms and military equipment that weren’t sold in the 90’s and remained in warehouses. Nevertheless, the top military-political leadership of Ukraine constantly states the need for a transition to new standards of arms, as the army is equipped with outdated military equipment that leads to big losses. Military operations in Donbass serve as confirmation of this,” said Neyelov, explaining the situation.

For this reason the Ukrainian command repeatedly supported the idea of a transition of army to robotized and unmanned equipment. And here, Kiev offers its own experience on this subject.

“For the last three years the UAF several times stated that they developed some samples of unmanned military equipment, which in practice ended in nothing. So we have all grounds to believe that this video is profanation, and the new armored personnel carrier is garbage that won’t be delivered to troops,” continued the Russian military expert.

Besides this, the Ukrainian authorities continue to go on about the need for a transition of the troops to the military standards of the North Atlantic Alliance, which now tries to introduce unmanned military systems.

“They really want to move to NATO standards, but they cannot do this independently. It is for this purpose that not only reform of the UAF is necessary, but also support of the military bloc of NATO, which isn’t expected any time soon. And in general, it is more similar to pathetic attempts to show to the alliance the possibilities of the ‘defence industry’. By the way, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ukrainian engineers use wires to control the ‘Phantom’, although they still have Soviet capabilities that allow to use radio-controlled systems. But considering that state that the Ukrainian military industrial complex is in, I very strongly doubt that in this respect Kiev can offer something serious,” concluded the military analyst.

“Ukroboronprom” reported that now they actively prepare the new unmanned option of an armored troop-carrier to pass through tests with an large-caliber automatic machine gun and an integrated high-precision missile armament.

As a reminder, in May Petro Poroshenko reported about the successful testing of a new Ukrainian missile. The leader of the country attached to his post on his microblog on Twitter a video showing the launch of the missile, however no specifications were provided. In addition, on July 21st the press service of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine reported that at the Goncharovsky training ground the novelties of the Ukrainian military industrial complex were presented to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Aleksandr Turchynov.

It is also worth noting that earlier the special representative of the US State Department concerning Ukraine Kurt Volcker in an interview to the BBC said that the authorities of the United States actively consider the question of possible deliveries of lethal arms to Ukraine.

Copyright © 2022. All Rights Reserved.