Imagine leaning your back against a fuel tank while riding into combat in a vehicle so uncomfortable it feels like it was designed to kill you. Now add 40 rounds for the main gun sitting right next to that fuel. Armor thin enough that pretty much anything heavier than a rifle round could go through it. Those were just some of the problems if you were unlucky enough to be inside a BMP.
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| The BMP Crew |
Why It Was Built This Way
After World War II, Soviet infantry riding into battle on trucks were fully exposed to enemy fire, and trucks couldn't keep up with tanks on rough terrain. Early solutions like the BTR-152 were just armored hulls bolted onto truck chassis. The BTR-50 added tracks but was open-topped. The BTR-60 was an 8-wheeled vehicle that still worked as a battle taxi: drive infantry close, they get out, the vehicle backs off.
But the Soviets weren't preparing for a conventional war. NATO, outnumbered in Europe, planned to use tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviets fully expected any future war would involve widespread nuclear strikes on both sides. If you're a soldier standing on irradiated ground exposed to chemical agents and blast, a battle taxi that drops you off doesn't solve your problem. You need to stay inside.
This nuclear assumption created three requirements. The vehicle had to be hermetically sealed with NBC filtration. It needed its own fire support heavier than a machine gun, because nuclear weapons made massing forces suicidal and small units needed their own firepower. And infantry had to fight from inside without opening a hatch.
By the time the BMP entered service, the nuclear scenario was already becoming less likely. But those design choices stuck around for decades to haunt everyone inside.
The Design That Would Kill Its Own Crews
The winning design, Object 765, became the BMP-1. The engine sat at the front right with the driver at front left, freeing the entire rear for troops. Eight soldiers sat on two benches running along the center, back to back, facing outward toward firing ports in the hull walls
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| BMP-1s |
Between those two rows of benches, functioning as their shared backrest, sat the main fuel tank. 330 liters of fuel plus batteries and electrical equipment, right there in the middle of the infantry compartment. Additional fuel was carried inside the hollow rear exit doors. Standing instructions said to drain those door tanks in combat zones and fill them with sand. This was rarely done.
The main armament was a 73mm smoothbore gun with no stabilizer, so it couldn't fire accurately on the move, and accuracy collapsed beyond about 500 meters. It had an autoloader with 40 rounds sitting inside the crew compartment, right in front of the fuel tank the infantry were leaning against. The anti-tank guided missile on top required the operator to physically steer it with a thumb stick the entire flight, and reloading it meant opening a hatch that broke the NBC seal the entire vehicle was designed around.
Maximum frontal armor was 33mm. Sides were 14 to 19mm, protecting only against small arms and fragments. The vehicle weighed 13 tons and could swim propelled by its tracks. Something had to give for that weight, and what gave was protection.
About 40,000 were produced across all manufacturers, making it the most produced infantry fighting vehicle in history, exported to roughly 50 countries.
Afghanistan: Brotherhood Grave of Infantry
The Soviet army entered Afghanistan in December 1979 equipped almost entirely with BMP-1s. Over nine years of mountain guerrilla warfare, every design compromise was exposed. Russian soldiers came up with a new meaning for BMP: Bratskaya Mogila Pekhoty, which translates to Brotherhood Grave of Infantry.
RPG vulnerability was catastrophic with 95% of hits penetrating the armor regardless of where they struck. Pretty much any RPG hit destroyed the whole vehicle and killed everyone inside. The shaped charge jet burned through the armor and couldn't miss the fuel tank sitting in the middle of the compartment. Seconds after a hit, the fuel ignited first, then the ammunition, and the whole thing went up along with everyone inside.
The 73mm gun was useless in the mountains. Its elevation limit of 15 degrees meant it simply couldn't engage Mujahideen positions on ridgelines above the valleys Soviet convoys passed through. Crews improvised, mounting anti-aircraft guns in place of turrets.
The BMP-2 was rushed into production and sent to Afghanistan. Its two-man turret with a 30mm autocannon that could elevate to 74 degrees finally let crews shoot back at targets on high ground. Troops praised it. But what it didn't fix mattered just as much: same basic hull, same fuel placement, same armor.
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| The BMP-2 |
This is where a practice started that would define BMP operations for the next four decades. Infantry chose to ride on top of the hull rather than inside. An RPG hit while you're inside meant near certain death. Riding on the outside at least gave you a chance of being thrown clear by the blast.
Desert Storm and the Technology Gap
In 1991, the American M2 Bradley, developed directly as a response to the BMP-1, went up against the vehicle it was designed to defeat. Bradley thermal sights could identify targets beyond 3,000 meters in the dark through sandstorms. Iraqi BMP-1 optics were effective to about 900 meters using active infrared that revealed the BMP's position to anyone with thermal viewers. Bradleys were engaging Iraqi BMPs before the Iraqis even knew they were there.
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| American M2 Bradley |
A Russian study later showed that the Bradley's 25mm armor-piercing round gave double the penetration of the BMP-2's 30mm round.
No Fix in Sight
The BMP-3 was supposed to be the definitive answer. It combined a 100mm gun, a 30mm autocannon, and a coaxial machine gun in one turret, arguably the most heavily armed infantry fighting vehicle ever fielded. But its light tank ancestry put the engine in the rear, forcing infantry through two tunnel-like passages over the engine compartment to exit. The hull was aluminum alloy, which burns and melts into the crew compartment when hit by shaped charges, even worse than steel. Fuel was stored in the front hull. Only about 2,000 were produced compared to tens of thousands of BMP-1s and 2s.
In Ukraine, BMP losses have reached industrial scale. Russia's total armored vehicle losses stand at roughly 14,000 units with BMPs making up a major portion. FPV drones have become the dominant armor killer. The practice of riding on top continues more than four decades after it started in Afghanistan. Soldiers have welded external compartments onto BMP hulls, basically makeshift boxes on the roof, because they refuse to ride inside.
The Kurganets-25, a next-generation replacement, never reached serial production. Russia decided to just upgrade existing BMP-2s instead. After decades of crews burning inside these vehicles, there is pretty much no solution in sight.
330 liters of fuel as your backrest. 40 rounds of ammunition next to it. Armor that stops rifle bullets and not much else. Russian soldiers renamed it the Brotherhood Grave of Infantry in Afghanistan and started riding on top instead of inside. Four decades later, in Ukraine, they're still doing the same thing. The BMP was designed for a nuclear war that never came, and the compromises made for that scenario have been killing its crews in every war since.
Written by Andreja Rakočević, a military history writer and co-creator of the RogerRoger YouTube channel.