Not on tanks or APCs. Engineers had them on their excavators but they generally don’t need to be as mobile. M1 could handle mud pretty well as long as you weren’t traversing a side slope. Then you would slide quickly.
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If you look at the video I posted earlier it does look like the track has been modified. Starting about the one minute mark. Pads have been removed in pairs. I hadn’t seen it done before.
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I started freeze framing randomly when it cut to the view of the track scrolling over the drive sprocket. I finally caught one where the tread blocks had clearly been removed at 1:27
I have zero personal experience with this, it’s all hearsay and anecdote for me.
I am grateful for your observations and experience, and especially the pointer to the video.
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Actual PSA from 1986, cued to the good bit.
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The guy slapping the gun barrel right after the collision: “Go go go! We don’t have insurance, man!”
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so which big candy manufacturer will give me swervers the chocky to fill the gap back
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Definitely not a tank, if we’re being technically correct (the best kind of correct). Looks like an APC with…something mounted on top, but I have no idea what. Probably not artillery, though; it’s too high.
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BTW:
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It’s neither. It’s a БМД, an armored vehicle class that doesn’t have a clear equivalent in English-speaking countries, to the best of my knowledge. It’s an amphibious, air-portable variant of an IFV, intended for use by airborne troops.
It’s most likely a БМД-3, but I’m puzzled by the massive construction bolted onto the top. That doesn’t match any БМД-3 configuration I could find.
Point of order: An APC (BTR/БТР) is intended primarily for troop transport, and its armament is pretty light and intended for self-defense. An Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV/БМП) is more heavily armed and armoured and its purpose is to provide combat support to the infantry.
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The Fast & The Furious: Smolenskaya Drift
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“Always with the negative waves!”
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My guess would be either a SAM launcher or a jumbo mortar.* Partly because there appear to be several identical ones in the convoy, and the other likely possibilities (antenna with mast, recovery crane) wouldn’t have large numbers of identical appearing vehicles in the same unit.
- they have a long barreled 240 mm mortar, but I haven’t seen a mounting like this.
Seems kind of a weird size for a SAM launcher. Not big enough for medium range, too big for short range. Never mind the question of whether deploying a medium-range SAM battery via airborne drop makes sense.
Mortar, I’m kind of looking at the relative weights and wondering how they would’ve managed to finagle that. The Tyulpan 240mm self-propelled mortar weighs in at 30t, of which 3.6 is the gun itself. The combat weight of the BMD-3 is 13t. Each shell for the mortar weighs in at 130Kg at a minimum (the rocket-assisted shells and cluster munitions weigh in at about twice that. And no, Russia still hasn’t signed up to the convention on cluster munitions).
Even if you stripped the BMD armaments to almost nothing, how many shells could you reasonably carry?
Size sure looks right, though. (2S4 Tyulpan in transport configuration)
Except then there’s the question of the deployment mechanism… (S24 Tyulpan in combat configuration) 
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It looks like an engineer corp LAV to me, but it could be something totally different in Russia.
This! Also the reason why the British Scorpion tanks have rubber treads, (and can go up to 70kph on paved roads).
/helmets on!
In a previous life I drove an M113 APC in the Canadian Armed Forces. One March morning driving in somewhere in the hilly parts of the Gaspe peninsula, I started down a road on the shaded side of a steep hill. The sun hadn’t melted the thin layer of snow/ice yet. All was fine until I gently pulled on the tiller bars to slow down a bit, at which point both tracks locked up and I started to slide. Worse, on releasing the tiller bars, the tracks didn’t start turning again; more friction in the drive train then on the rubber pads/snow & ice.
We slid about 50m, slowly pirouetting, eventually sliding off the pavement. Once the tracks hit the gravel shoulder they regained traction and we stopped rather abruptly. It probably looked awesome from outside. And would have been more enjoyable without having my crew commander screaming in my headset to stop.
Standard procedure in icy conditions was to replace every 5th rubber pad with a steel cleat; these would have prevented the slide, but we were operating “in the economy” (on public land) so couldn’t use them, as they rip up the pavement.
Not sure if it matters, but the CAF version of the M113 used a different track than the American version.
/helmets off!
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Yes! On CAF versions of the M113, it’s a relatively easy task involving a large drift pin and a small sledge hammer. Or I should say “pin, drift, large” and “hammer, sledge, small” in proper Backwards Army Talk.
Much worse was pulling the track off and putting if back on again. Involved the same large drift pin and sledge hammer, plus a honking big torque wrench. But trying to get the connecting clamps off the pins (I forget the proper terminology) was very difficult, required a lot of hammering while lying on the ground. Made even worse in the winter due to the cold.
Even worse: the “official” kit for the vehicle did not include penetrating fluid (eg, WD-40). But many a driver carried a can specifically for this purpose.
Luckily, pulling a track in the field was a fairly rare occurrence. I only had to do it once. Which was plenty, thanks.
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Oversteer is better because you don’t see the wall that kills you.
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In former soviet Russia, you get hit in car, you say tanks.
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