Russian Army Receives New Terminator Combat Vehicles For City Warfare

The Russian Army has received a new batch of BMPT Terminator tank support combat vehicles, which are designed to operate alongside main battle tanks to provide direct fire support. General director of the Uralvagonzavod tank factory Alexander Potapov observed that the facility “is fulfilling a large order for BMPTs — the demand for this vehicle is high.” “It was always believed that the main strike force of the Ground Forces was the tank. Now we can say that BMPTs have joined them,” he added. The vehicle has played an increasingly prominent role in Russian Army operations in the Ukrainian theatre, and is based on the chassis of the T-72 and T-90 for common maintenance. The type’s standard armaments configuration is two 30mm cannons, two 30mm grenade launchers, four 130mm Ataka anti-tank guided missiles, a 7.62mm machine gun, and two smoke grenade launchers.

The Terminator was developed specifically in response to the heavily losses faced by Russian armour against Western-backed Chechen Islamist insurgent groups in the 1990s. The design has been incrementally upgraded, with the latest variant unveiled early in 2025 benefitting from greater survivability due to its expanded dynamic protection, additional side armour, counter-drone cage armour, and new electronic warfare systems. A significant benefit the vehicles have over main battle tanks is a greater ability to engage large numbers of spaced out low value targets, such as drones or low level infantry. The vehicles’ advanced digital fire control systems allow up to three separate targets to be engaged simultaneously. It remains uncertain whether as the defence sector has surged production of main battle tanks, the increase in production of BMPT vehicles has been proportionally high. Although the vehicles were previously developed by converting the chassis of Soviet-built T-72s, as reserves of these older tanks run increasingly low, the possibility remains that they may be newly built using the chassis of the T-90M tank which is a heavily improved variant of the same design. A variant based on the T-14 tank chassis, which has yet to enter service, has also been pitched.