Early October 2023, reports appeared that russia's BMD-3 armored fighting vehicles had been de-mothballed and assigned to newly formed units of the air assault forces. However, over a year later, these rare vehicles, with only a little more than 100 units in existence, remain conspicuously absent from the battlefield against Ukraine.
There has been no confirmed use of BMD-3s in combat even once, and generally, this armored vehicle has barely been mentioned ever since. The only relatively recent appearance is somewhere on the road in russia, noticed by the btvt2019 community.
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First of all, we should outline what exactly makes these BMD-3s special, and why these vehicles are almost never mentioned in the context of the full-scale war between russia and Ukraine.
To begin with, the BMD-3 is a rare asset within the russian armed forces, with only 137 units produced between 1990 and 1997 — far below the original plan to manufacture 700 vehicles annually.
But then production and subsequent maintenance of BMD-3 turned out to be too expensive for the russians at the time. For instance, producing a BMD-3 required 1.1 times more labor than manufacturing BMD-1 and BTR-D vehicles of the same class. The engine alone demanded 1.5 times the labor, significantly driving up costs.
Specifications of the BMD-3:
- combat weight: 13 tons;
- crew and passenger capacity: 3 and 5 personnel, respectively;
- speed: up to 70 km/h or 10 km/h when crossing a water obstacle;
- operational range: 330 km, respectively;
- armament: 2A42 automatic cannon (30mm, 500 rounds capacity), two machine guns of caliber 7.62mm and 5.45mm (4,000 rounds total), AGS-17 grenade launcher (290 rounds), Konkurs ATGM (8 missiles).
The current state of Russia's BMD-3 stockpile remains uncertain. While reports from early 2023 confirmed that some vehicles had been preserved in long-term storage, the actual number of usable units could be even lower than the original 137.
Besides, russian defense industry officials stated that production of the BMD-4M — the BMD-3's successor — continues.
With this in mind, the russian command might have reserved BMD-3s for training purposes or to equip reserve units within russia’s airborne forces instead of deploying these older vehicles in active combat.
These factors may explain why, in over a year since the announced de-mothballing, the russian invasion forces have never used the BMD-3 in battles against the Ukrainians, even though they face an objective shortage of armored vehicles on the frontline.
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