Russian Troops' Nasty Choice: Burn Inside Vehicle or Blow Up On Top Of It

This photo is of Russian infantry riding atop an infantry fighting vehicle in Ukraine. It was taken by a Ukrainian drone just before it blew them up. 

Russian soldiers have learned that they can either be burned alive inside their IFV when it hits a mine - or blown up by a Ukrainian drone while sitting on top of it. Most choose the latter option, but neither is optimal. JL

David Axe reports in Forbes:

Russian troops learned the hard way to ride on top of, rather than inside, their flimsy and flammable infantry fighting vehicles. Now they’re learning the hard way riding on top of an IFV is dangerous, too. Drones slaughter exposed infantry clinging to the outsides of their vehicles. Ukraine’s explosives-laden drones are barreling into Russian troops perched atop their BMP and BTR vehicles, blowing off heads and limbs and sending burning bodies and parts of bodies flying. Russian BMPs and BTRs don’t protect against mines. So Russian infantry traveling inside a fighting vehicle means death from immolation. Traveling outside a fighting vehicle means risking dismemberment by an explosive drone.

Decades ago, Russian troops learned the hard way to ride on top of, rather than inside, their flimsy and flammable infantry fighting vehicles.

Now they’re learning the hard way why riding on top of an IFV is dangerous, too. Ukraine’s explosives-laden drones are barreling into exposed Russian troops perched atop their tracked BMP and wheeled BTR vehicles, blowing off heads and limbs and sending burning bodies and parts of bodies flying.

It didn’t take long for Russian—well, Soviet—soldiers to discover that their IFVs were deathtraps. The Soviet and Russian armies’ standard fighting vehicle, the BMP, lacks the heavy armor and clever shaping that protects the best new Western-style infantry vehicles from rockets, mines and artillery fragments.

After a few BMPs each carrying three crew and eight infantry ran over mines in Afghanistan during the Soviet war there in the 1980s, the infantry took to riding on top of the vehicles instead of inside them. Better to risk bullets and shell fragments than to wait for a mine to turn a thin-skinned BMP into a crematorium.

There was precedent for this practice, of course. An American M-113 is as vulnerable to mines as a BMP is. During the Vietnam war in the 1960s, Viet Cong mines blew up M-113s and sometimes cooked all dozen or so people inside. “As the size of the mines increased, most soldiers resorted to riding on top of the personnel carrier rather than in it,” U.S. Army major Douglas Baker noted in a 2012 thesis.

The Russian army’s institutional memory from the Afghanistan war explains why, during Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, it was standard practice for infantry to ride on top of their BMPs and BTRs. That memory endured through the invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2015—and Russia’s wider war on Ukraine starting in 2022.

But technological developments since 2022 have put the infantry in a cruel bind. Twenty-two months into the wider war, two-pound FPV drones each hauling a pound of explosives are everywhere all the time along the 600-mile front line.

The drones slaughter exposed infantry clinging to the outsides of their vehicles. One recent video of a Ukrainian FPV strike might be the most horrifying. On Dec. 24, the Ukrainian 501st Marine Battalion posted a video depicting an FPV strike on a Russian infantry squad riding on top of a BMP rolling toward the Ukrainian bridgehead in Krynky, on the Russian-held left bank of the Dnipro River.

In the split second before the drone strikes, two Russian soldiers notice it. But it’s too late for them to do anything to stop the coming blast.

The U.S. Army warns against riding on top of an IFV. “By riding on, not in, vehicles, the infantry gives up its best protection,” one U.S. Army field manual explained. But that’s easy for the Americans to say: their M-2 IFVs offer good protection against mines.

Russian BMPs and BTRs don’t protect against mines. So Russian infantry now are in an impossible situation. Traveling inside a fighting vehicle means risking death from immolation. Traveling outside a fighting vehicle means risking dismemberment by an explosive drone.