In one of their videos, russian occupiers showed at least one BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle. It was equipped with blocks with reactive armor. The time and place of the action as well as direction of the frontline are unknown. Until now, the actual appearance of russian BMP-3s with reactive armour on the battlefield has not been recorded.
It is interesting to note that russians have developed such vehicles with reactive armour, given that previous attempts to improve the protection of BMP-3 IFV have been unsuccessful for occupiers.
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It is known that in September 2022, russian JSC Kalashnikov Concern announced that it was working on reactive armour kit for BMP-3 IFV. The declared weight of the kit was 4.4 tons, and its function was to protect the turret and hull in the front projection from Soviet-made rocket-propelled grenade and ATGMs, 14.5 mm bullets and shots from autocannons of 23 mm and 30 mm caliber.
It seems that in this case it was about using the developments created in the early 2010s as part of the OKR Karkas-2 project. One of its variants involved the installation of a 4C24 reactive armour kit designed specifically for light armored vehicles. It seems that this 4C24 kit we can see on BMP-3 IFV in the footage above.
Therefore it is quite logical to assume that the footage above could show a prototype BMP-3 with reactive armour.
But in one of our publications about the production of russian BMP-3s, we mentioned that russians had showed footage of production of these armored vehicles. It showed that additional elements had been welded onto the turrets on the split armor. At the same time, special attention was drawn to the clarification from russian publication of Novosti VPK that production of BMP-3 in russia is planned to be equipped with reactive armour in the future.
Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the possibility that BMP-3 IFVs with reactive armour may become more massive on the battlefield, and it will be more difficult to hit such vehicles.
Earlier Defense Express reported about what Ukrainians had done with French AMX-10RC APCs and why it had not worked.
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