Finished the Script for the BMP-2 Unit Guide (Patreon)

I forgot to post the script for the last video! So, sorry about that. Here's about 4000 words of details about the BMP-2. It's a first draft, so subject to change, I'm sure I've missed some things and not given others the attention they deserve.On the other hand, the BMP-2 is a pretty well-covered vehicle in general and information is widely available so hopefully the focus on the problems of actually using the thing without it spotaneously incinerating will set the video apart.History

The BMP is rooted in the Cold War environment of the 1950s where both NATO and the Soviet Union were expected to use tactical nuclear weapons. This threat had two important consequences.

Firstly, units needed to be fast moving and well-dispersed to avoid presenting easy targets for nuclear weapons. Speed and mobility were key.

Second, the resulting battlefield was likely to be heavily contaminated by nuclear fallout. While infantry would always be necessary, their survival in this kind of environment was questionable.

The solution to both of these key issues was to fully mechanise the Soviet Army. Rifle Infantry would become Motor Rifle Infantry, travelling in and potentially fighting from armoured vehicles that provided the speed and protection necessary for infantry to function on the nuclear battlefield.

This created a design requirement that ultimately spawned two vehicles: the cheaper, wheeled BTR, and the more expensive, tracked BMP.

The BMP-1 was in many respects a revolutionary vehicle. Armed with a 73mm low velocity gun and AT-3 ATGMs, it had a formidable anti-tank capability, whilst being able to transport nine men who could fight from inside the vehicle using a series of firing ports.

But it was also a product of its time. Designed in the first half of the 1960s, the BMP was expected to fight on a battlefield with a very different antitank threat than we think of today. In particular, the antitank capability of enemy infantry- equipped with either light, short-ranged weapons or recoilless rifles analogous to WW2 antitank guns- was not only limited, but anticipated to be severely curtailed on the irradiated nuclear battlefield.

As such, the BMP was designed to withstand heavy machinegun fire from the front and not much else.

As the Cold War ground on and both sides reached the nuclear parity that would restrict the use of nuclear weapons for fear of retaliation in kind, conventional warfare was back on the menu.

This, combined with developments in infantry antitank weapons- particularly early ATGMs- put the BMP-1 in an awkward position. The 73mm main gun was not an effective weapon at suppressing or destroying enemy infantry and became even less effective as antitank weapons forced the vulnerable BMPs to keep well behind their supporting tanks thanks to its low velocity.

Combat experience in the 1973 Yom Kippur War highlighted many of the BMP-1’s shortcomings and led to development of the BMP-2.

The most obvious change was the replacement of the 73mm gun with a 30mm cannon: a weapon much better suited to engaging enemy infantry. Less obviously, there were several ergonomic changes to the interior- including a larger, two-man turret- and an improved armour package.

Entering service in the early 1980s, the BMP-2’s most obvious improvement over its predecessor was a change in main armament. The 73mm low velocity gun was replaced with a stabilised 30mm high velocity autocannon in an enlarged, two man turret. Other improvements included enhanced armour protection and a more powerful engine to take into account the extra weight.

Up to 26,000 vehicles were made between the Soviet Union, its satellite states and other licensed manufacturers. It’s seen combat service around the world and spawned a wealth of variants.

But despite this, the BMP-2 still suffered from some fundamental design problems. It was still poorly protected- even to the point that new explosive reactive armour packages were too dangerous to mount. The interior was still cramped, a particular problem even in the new turret, where space to cram in new equipment and optics was severely limited.

This was apparently obvious to the Soviets, as evidenced by development of the BMP-3 in the very late stages of the Cold War, but the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged the now Russian army and the military industrial complex supporting it into a pit from which it has struggled to climb out of.

Whether the BMP-3 was intended to fully replace the BMP-2 is hard to tell- they are very different designs- but the back hole of the 1990s effectively made that impossible and the BMP-2 remains in service with the Russian Army in vast numbers to this day.

There have been attempts to modernise and upgrade the design, primarily for the export market, but the vast majority of BMP-2s remain unmodified.

Technical Characteristics in CM

So, how does this all translate into Combat Mission? I’m going to be using Combat Mission Black Sea for this, but most of what I’m going to cover is also going to be relevant to the BMP-2 in Cold War and Shock Force.

Mobility

In terms of mobility, we can wheel out the Vehicle Mobility Test again, in which the BMP-2 scored 499 points. This is very comparable to the Bradley, at 498, and sits in between the more powerful BMP-3’s 448 and the wheeled BTR-82’s 542.

Notably, but anecdotally because it’s not a big enough sample size, the BMP-2 only bogged twice in the ground test, which would make sense because tracks and a light weight of about 14 tonnes should translate into low ground pressure.

It’s also amphibious, though like all amphibious vehicles in CM it’s slow in the water and you really don’t want to be crossing any water obstacles under fire.

Firepower

Moving on to firepower, the BMP-2’s main armament is the 30mm 2A42 cannon. Firing APDS, this can penetrate the frontal armour of the Bradley inside 750m if it gets lucky. Lighter vehicles like Strykers and Humvees are fair game, while tanks like the Abrams are pretty much non-penetrable but susceptible to potentially crippling subsystem damage.

The high explosive-incendiary round is effective when on target, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the shells have a pretty high velocity and a resultant long-thin beaten zone. So engaging enemy infantry in the open at range might not as effective as you might expect. Shooting up taller targets capable of intercepting more incoming rounds- like buildings and to a lesser degree foliage- is much more effective.

The cannon has a dual feed, so it can easily swap between ammunition types. In Combat Mission it’s loaded with 160 rounds of APDS and 340 rounds of HE-I.

Mounted coaxially with the cannon we have a PKT machinegun, and the entire weapon mount is stabilised so it is possible to engage on the move.

The BMP-2 is also armed with an AT-5 ATGM. This is mounted on top of the turret and can fire a missile out to 4000m with wire-guided SACLOS guidance. This means it can’t be fired on the move and the vehicle has to remain stationary while the gunner guides the missile to the target.

The warhead is single-stage HEAT, so it will be defeated by explosive reactive armour, but if it can find a gap or engage a target without ERA, it’s entirely capable of knocking out other IFVs and posing a non-negligible threat to armour.

The BMP-2 carries 4 AT-5s in total and despite being mounted on the roof, the missiles can be reloaded under cover.

This is a respectable amount of firepower, but exploiting it can be difficult thanks to the BMP-2’s optics, which we’ll get to in a little bit.

Protection

In terms of protection, the BMP-2 is proof against .50 calibre machinegun fire from the front, thanks to a great extent to the extremely shallow angle of the nose, but that’s about it.

50. calibre fire from outside the frontal arc will punch straight through the side or rear armour, anything larger will just ignore it and even the smallest HEAT warheads such as those on 40mm HEDP grenades will poke holes in it, no problem.

With regards to post-penetration effects, there is little protection for the crew or passengers, and while it’s not susceptible to catastrophic detonations in the same way as the BMP-3, the fact that it is easily penetrated means that its onboard ammunition and fuel is likely to burn or cook-off.

Walk-Around

Finishing off the technical characteristics with a walk-around, starting with the rear section of the hull. This is where most of the BMP’s dismounts live. They enter and exit via two rear doors, with space for six passengers behind the turret sitting back-to-back. Each rear door has a periscope and a firing port for the passenger’s individual weapon, there are three more periscopes and firing ports on each side of the hull.

These allow the passengers to fight from the vehicle, which is a significant capability on a nuclear battlefield where leaving protected vehicles is hazardous. In practical terms, it’s difficult to actually spot targets through the narrow periscopes, never mind actually hit them, especially if the vehicle is moving, but it’s non-trivial capability.

It’s not an issue in Combat Mission, but the rear compartment is very cramped when all six seats are taken. There is not a lot of room back there, a problem which is exacerbated by the back-to-back arrangement and the low overall height of the vehicle. It’s very common for BMP passengers to avoid travelling inside the vehicle- not just as a protective measure, but because the ergonomics are so bad.

While we’re here, as an infantry-fighting vehicle, the BMP-2 does carry extra ammunition for its dismounts. In Combat Mission this load amounts to 5 PG-7VL rockets for the RPG7, 4 RPG-26 1-shot disposable light antitank weapons, over a thousand rounds of 7.62x54R and over two thousand rounds of 5.45mm.

Also worth noting here is that the bulges in the rear doors are fuel tanks, which go along with another fuel tank between the side-facing seats. These are features that have contributed to the BMP’s reputation as a firetrap- that’s perhaps a bit overblown.

Fuel is surprisingly good at absorbing incoming rounds and is harder to set on fire than you might expect. So the fuel tanks in the doors actually serve to increase the BMP-2’s rear protection, providing their full, and to be honest, the fire risk presented by the centrally mounted fuel tank between the seats is probably less of a concern than the fact that any enemy rounds reaching it are Swiss-cheesing the vehicle.

There are two more fuel tanks as well: the BMP-2 has a significant emphasis on range. On a full tank, it can drive for about 600km without having to refuel. Again, this is a reaction to that nuclear battlefield. The longer vehicles can operate on a single fuel load, the less often they have to concentrate with refuelling assets.

On the rear deck we have two more hatches, these don’t work in Combat Mission, but in reality they’re useful for air guards and getting out if the rear doors are blocked or inoperative. In between them and the turret we have the fuel filler cap and a big air intake.

Coming round to the front deck, we have a swimming deflector in the stowed position, then this shallow front slope covered in ridges. The ridges serve sort of like spaced armour to degrade heavy machinegun rounds skipping over the slope.

Past this we have a pretty conventional IFV layout. The engine is on the right side of the BMP-2, given away by the big grilles. On the left side we have two hatches.

The forward hatch is for the driver’s position. He’s got three periscopes to see in his front arc, then one covered his left. The central front scope can be swapped out for some night vision equipment, but we’ll get on to the BMP-2’s night fighting capabilities in a moment.

There are some shortcomings here: the flat nose of the BMP means that the driver has a pretty substantial bind spot to his front and being located on the left side of the vehicle, he would have a poor view to his right even if he did actually have a periscope looking that way. It’s worth noting that these aren’t problems restricted to the BMP, they’re pretty common by-products of having the engine and driver side-by-side up front.

Behind the driver’s position we have the old commander’s position.

This is where the vehicle-slash-squad commander sits in the BMP-1 and some of the reasons why they moved that position in the BMP-2 should be obvious. Sat right behind the driver, the commander had a very poor view, not just because he’s situated at the side of the vehicle even further back from the long nose, but because the BMP is a pretty low-slung vehicle. The hull is only about the height of man, so the commander’s view has no added elevation or anything like that.

This was clearly sub-optimal, so in the BMP-2 the commander’s position has been moved from here to a better position in the new, enlarged turret. The space is still left over though, so there is seventh passenger seat up front behind the driver. This is accessible internally by a narrow corridor that runs between the side of the hull and the turret basket, but that’s something of a last resort and access is usually via the hatch on top.

Suffice to say, it’s not a great position. It’s only got two periscopes, covering front and front left, so you really can’t see a lot from it.

Moving on to the turret, we obviously have the weaponry we covered earlier: the 30mm cannon, coax and ATGM.

On BMP-2s left side, we have the gunner position. The gunner’s primary sight is the forward facing optic, this is a combined day-night sight for the cannon and coax. In addition to that there are three viewing prisms around the gunner’s hatch, covering front-right, front left and left, plus an additional prism mounted in the hatch itself that allows the gunner to see behind the turret via some mirrors.

Finally for the gunner, the AT-5 ATGM has its own optics directly underneath the launcher. This runs down through the turret roof and has its own sighting assembly separate to the gunner’s primary sight. In other words, the gunner can’t launch and guide the AT-5 through the same sight he uses to fire the cannon and coax, he has to physically switch to a different eyepiece inside the turret, which has all kinds of problems from a spotting and target acquisition perspective.

Next to the gunner in the turret we have the new commander’s positions. From up here, the commander has a much better view than he did down in the hull in the BMP-1. He has a similar array of periscopes to the gunner, covering front-left, front, front right and rear, but the commander’s sighting array is mounting in the hatch itself and can rotate, so it’s not as restrictive as it looks.

Both of the turret hatches open forwards, giving the crew some extra protection against small arms if they’re opened up.

On top of the commander’s hatch we have an IR spotlight, this rotates with the spotlight and gives the commander his own source of IR illumination. The gunner has his own attached to the cannon mount.

All three crew stations have night vision capability, but the spotlights give away the fact that this relies primarily on active IR illumination. This suffers from that fact that turning the spotlights on immediately gives your position away to anyone with an optic that can see in the infra-red. That was less of a problem in the early 80s. These days, passive night vision equipment is very common, especially amongst the BMP-2’s Western competition.

As usual with night vision equipment, it’s difficult to be certain exactly what’s going on in Combat Mission and how it’s modelled, but in relative terms the BMP-2 is significantly outclassed by more modern, NATO IFVs with thermal imagers.

Finally on the sides of the turret, we have a set of smoke launchers. In game, these give the BMP-2 the ability to pop smoke twice in the classic Soviet ‘offensive’ style where the smoke grenades are launched about 100m ahead of the vehicle to create a screen behind which the vehicle has room to manoeuvre.

The downside is that the smoke takes some time to fully bloom and it’s not multispectral, so any opposition out there with thermal imagers will see right through it.

In context

It should be clear from going over the crew positions that one of the BMP-2’s weaknesses is its situational awareness. This is a problem for all armoured vehicles, especially older designs, but the BMP-2 has a specific problem in how it’s crewed.

Doctrinally- for what that’s worth- the BMP-2 is a core component of the motor rifle squad. The squad leader is in command of both the vehicle and the dismounts. This means that when the squad is mounted, he sits in the commander’s position up in the turret where he has the best view and can make use of the BMP’s radios.

When the squad kicks out its dismounts… the squad leader gets out to join them. This has two very important consequences.

Firstly, while the men in the rear compartment deploy from the rear of the vehicle and should, in theory, have some protection from enemy fire thanks to the hull of the BMP, the commander has to open his hatch up in the turret and clamber out in a much, much more dangerously exposed fashion.

Secondly, the BMP now has no one occupying the commander’s position. That means that the coordination offered by a third man who can provide the situational awareness the other crew members need to focus on their jobs is gone. The commander can no longer assist the gunner in scanning for and identifying targets, he can no longer help the driver navigate, make best use of terrain or avoid obstacles, including -now that they’re deployed on either side of the vehicle- friendly dismounts.

In addition, the spotting potential of the vehicle is not only now decreased, but limited in certain directions- remember the driver and gunner have limited capacity to see to their right.

Obviously, losing the vehicle commander when the squad dismounts is a serious problem, but again, we’re dealing with a legacy doctrinal element. On the nuclear battlefield and in keeping with the kinds of high-tempo, mobile operations favoured by the Soviets, dismounting is a last resort.

The expected norm was to fight mounted, in which case this commander problem never manifests.

Variants

That’s a quick once-over of the BMP-2. In Combat Mission Black Sea there are two variants: the BMP-2K and the BMP-2M.

BMP-2K

The BMP-2K is the command vehicle variant. This is essentially a standard BMP-2 with extra radio equipment and a few very minor changes.

It’s easily identifiable by the extra aerial mounted on the hull and less easily identifiable by the deletion of some of the rear compartment firing ports.

In Combat Mission terms, the main difference is the BMP-2K’s access to satellite PDA communications, principally the Russian Constellation-2M system.

BMP-2M

The BMP-2M, meanwhile, is a variant that attempts to drag the BMP-2 out of the 1980s and bring in more modern AFV features.

These modernisations are substantial, but limited to the turret, which has been upgraded to feature the Berezhok combat module. Most obviously, the centrally mounted AT-5 has been removed and two dual AT-14 Kornet pods added to the turret sides.

The AT-14 is a much more modern and capable missile than the old AT-5 and can reach out to 5000m with a tandem HEAT warhead. In this configuration, each pod can fire both missiles in quick succession, the intent being for the second missile to penetrate any Active Protection Systems mounted on the target in the reload/reset period after the first missile is intercepted. The missiles are SACLOS guided, riding a laser beam instead of trailing a control wire, and the BMP-2M carries no reloads.

The gunner controls the AT-14s via a new sighting complex, so he no longer has to swap optic when he swaps weapons. This is the new doghouse on top of gunner’s position. It incorporates both night vision and thermal imaging channels, can exploit data from a new laser rangefinder and is generally a massive step forward on the previous primary sight.

Hand-in-hand with this, the active IR spotlights for both gunner and commander have been deleted, but the gunner has lost all his supplementary forward facing periscopes.

He retains the rear-facing viewing prism, but this now appears to be pretty useless because there is a new weapon mounted on the rear of the turret.

This is an AGS-17 30mm automatic grenade launcher. It’s a comparatively low-velocity, high trajectory compared to the 30mm cannon which can chuck high explosive grenades out to a theoretical range of 1700m, though as usual it’s probably significantly more effective closer in.

The AGS-17 is fed from a 250 grenade belt that sits in an ammo can on the turret roof- this is what’s blocking the gunner’s rear view. There are apparently no reloads carried on board.

The commander’s hatch hasn’t seen any changes, but though the field of view of the hatch periscopes suffers from all the extra gubbins bolted to the turret roof, the commander has received his own independent thermal viewer.

This is fixed to the back of turret, next to the AGS-17 and behind the commander’s position. This is another significant uptick in capability- provided there is actually someone in the commander’s seat- though in Combat Mission terms, the spotting capacity of all the individual crew positions is aggregated, so it’s hard to tell how much of an effect it has.

Less visibly obvious, but featuring in the Combat Mission UI, the BMP-2M also incorporates the Constellation-2M system and has access to satellite comms.

Finally, with the AT-14 pods fitted to the sides of the turret, the smoke launchers have had to move. They’re now in two clusters of three, one on each turret cheek. They work the same way as the standard BMP-2 launchers except they now emit multi-spectral smoke that is opaque to thermal imagers.

All the other elements of the BMP-2M remain unchanged, it’s basically gotten a heavily upgraded turret.

Battlefield Use

All these technical features basically boil down to two salient points when we start thinking about how to use the BMP-2 down at the tactical. In simple terms, it can’t take a hit and it can’t see much.

Again, these are problems accepted in the design intended to be mitigated by doctrine.

Soviet doctrine specifically keeps BMPs in the second or third line of attacking formations, 3-400 metres behind the tanks.

When an attack goes in, pre-identified or suspected enemy positions are hammered with massed artillery, obscured by smoke and engaged with direct fire. What defending anti-tank weapons still in the fight will likely focus their attention on the more heavily protected tanks and not the vulnerable BMPs.

That’s the theory. The reality is that even under ideal circumstances, dispersion, suppression and obscuration serve to fragment the battlefield into a series of smaller engagements that can leave the BMPs exposed.

And the ever-increasing range, lethality, accuracy and ease of use of modern AT weapons means that the chances of small enemy infantry teams being able to take advantage of such exposure has ramped up.

It’s worth noting that this is a serious problem for all armoured vehicles. It’s an unbiased feature of the modern battlefield. But because the BMP-2 is so lightly armoured and cannot have that armour improved by applique countermeasures like ERA, it is definitely at the lower end of the survivability scale.

In a similar vein, the BMP-2 is intended to be used en-masse, with the vehicles operating in company and battalion strength to overcome the poor spotting potential of individual vehicles. Again, the reality of a fragmentary battlefield makes this a questionable assumption for any kind of armoured vehicle, but the BMP-2 comes from a set of design principles that exacerbates the problem.

In theory, the BMP-2M’s improvements should mitigate spotting problems, but it’s a very difficult aspect of Combat Mission to test and- anecdotally- they certainly suffer from poor spotting capability relative to their US opposition in Black Sea.

Outside of that particular doctrinal use case for the BMP-2, there is the Bronegruppa, or armoured group concept.

This developed through Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Here, Motor Rifle units were usually conducted operations where the doctrine intended for conventional warfare against NATO in Europe was just not applicable. Afghanistan didn’t only require different operations- convoy escort, sweep and clear actions, ambushes- but these often took place in the mountains, in villages and in the dense green zones where it was difficult or impossible for the BMPs to remain in the close proximity to their dismounts as mandated by doctrine.

In this context, BMPs could act as battle taxis, getting their dismounts as far forward as they could under protection from small arms fire, and then work together in their platoons and companies in what was effectively a light tank role. Unshackled from their infantry, the BMPs could form a distant base of fire, manoeuvre to isolate enemy positions or stand by as a mobile reserve.

The BMP could certainly prove effective in that role, but the antitank threat environment of 1980s counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is obviously an order of magnitude less than that of the modern conventional war we see in Combat Mission. The Bronegruppa concept might seem more sensible than the old Soviet doctrinal concepts, but it still suffers from a lot of the same problems.

And the point, like I keep saying, is that these are generic armoured vehicle problems. There are a lot of very capable antitank weapons out there on the modern battlefield that present challenges to much more heavily armoured tanks, never mind IFVs with their roots in the 1960s.

So to some extent, it’s not so much that the BMP-2 is a bad vehicle as it is that all vehicles in the same class face serious challenges. These challenges can be overcome by shaping the situation to increase the safe area of operation. The issue for the BMP is that, as an older vehicle designed for a battlefield that never materialised and having failed to keep up with developments in military technology, it has a very small margin for error.

To put it another way, the BMP-2’s survivability onion has some very thin layers towards the middle. Mistakes will be punished, punishment will generally be fatal.