Ukrainian soldiers use quite an interesting piece of russian armored military equipment, the BMO-T heavy fighting vehicle intended for flamethrower squads. This unique vehicle was featured in one of the recent videos filmed by Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen.
Multiple OSINT conflict researchers have noticed this footage, the vehicle has also been checked as captured by the Oryx community who's counting russian losses in Ukraine.
Read more: The 10 Most Interesting russia’s Weapons, Which Got Destroyed or Became a Trophy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The information about this vehicle caused so much attention first of all because there were only about 10 BMO-T vehicles in the russian military in total distributed among several army units – Defense Express covered all that in an earlier article.
Now, however, the fleet of these AFVs is reduced to a mere half of the initial quantity as at least 4 of them were visually confirmed to be either destroyed or, as we can see now, captured. No less interesting is that Ukrainians use this BMO-T for towing damaged equipment, at least in the provided footage.
BMO-T is an armored combat vehicle, primarily designed to accommodate up to 7 troops armed with RPO-A Shmel single-use "flamethrowers" – thermobaric grenade launchers, with up to 30 shots stowed inside the vehicle. The vehicle is based on the T-72 tank chassis.
There is no footage or records of how this vehicle had been used by the russian forces but we do have media showing destroyed BMO-Ts. The first unit was lost in April 2022 when it fell into a ditch dug by Ukrainian soldiers and got destroyed by them subsequently.
The second BMO-T was eliminated in May and the third followed in August 2022.
The fourth was put out of order in the Kharkiv Region during the swift counteroffensive of the Ukrainian forces in September 2022. Oryx checked this one as destroyed, although we can assume its condition was still good enough to be repaired by Ukrainians:
Regardless of whether it was restored or not, this makes at least 4 to 5 vehicles of BMO-T type lost by russians in Ukraine, it amounts to 40-50% of the entire fleet of these specialized vehicles. Perhaps we won't even have the opportunity to find out how they were used in combat before they all got wiped out.
Read more: Technical Maintenance Hub Leopard 2 MBT Has Started Operating in Poland
