- The Russian military is converting old infantry fighting vehicles into makeshift artillery pieces.
- The improvised gun is supposedly inaccurate and will shoot up several inches off the ground when fired.
- Russia continues to struggle to supply its military with weapons.
The Russian military appears to be building an improvised gun using the main armament of an old BMP-1 armored fighting vehicle.
One video circulating on social media shows a soldier firing what appears to be a 73mm 2A28 Grom cannon from a BMP-1 mounted on a makeshift wheel carriage, while another shows a group of soldiers towing the improvised gun into position.
The crude equipment may reflect the losses of heavy equipment Russia has suffered during its invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Sunday that Russia has lost 14,937 artillery systems and 15,645 armored fighting vehicles since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Russia is still fully capable of developing new artillery systems and reviving Soviet-era weapons, but it will be difficult to maintain loss rates and the firepower needed on the front lines.
The improvised 2A28 cannon might serve as a temporary solution to dwindling supplies, but it is highly likely to be inaccurate.
One video shows the device, which is designed to be fired from a stabilized armored turret, leaping up from the ground with each shot.
The unarmoured guns are also highly vulnerable to Ukrainian drone attacks, which have proven effective in countering Russian heavy tanks.
This is not the first time that the Russian military has resorted to using makeshift devices.
In March, a video was released showing Russian troops using flimsy golf cart-like vehicles to transport soldiers to the front lines.
In April, another video showed Ukrainian forces attacking a Russian tank using an “improvised electronic warfare system,” Rob Lee, a senior policy fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote for X at the time.
Lee said the system “was reportedly effectively countering a large number of FPVs operating on different frequencies before being shut down.”
Russia has previously deployed “Turtle Tanks,” which have simple metal roofs, to protect against incoming weapons such as drone attacks.
“I know people are laughing at this but I don’t think it’s a far-fetched adaptation,” Lee wrote in another post on X.
“The Russian military is adapting to the unique conditions of the battlefield, where Ukraine has a large number of FPVs but a lack of ATGMs, anti-tank mines and artillery,” he said. “So it makes sense to sacrifice the observation capability and the turret rotation capability of one platoon per tank, which can jam the frequencies of many FPVs at once.”
