Must Read: Russian Tank Mechanic reveals Ukrainian warfare superiority in interview; laments fighting against Ukraine

Igor from Omsk speaks his mind about Russia's armor and battlefield problems

Photo of Igor

(This interview originally ran 21/11/22 in a Premier Mediavest publication. Company information is at the bottom of the story. All photos are owned by Premier Mediavest)

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Igor is a native of Omsk, an armored vehicle maintenance specialist serving in the zone of a special military operation.

He told how military operations help to improve the equipment of the Russian army, why electrics are more reliable than electronics, and whether it is necessary to adopt Western technologies in the military sphere.

Rembat, also known as a repair battalion, is such a “hospital” for military equipment. Everything intended to ride and shoot, and for various reasons that has lost this ability, is brought here. The division is located on the territory of the former industrial zone. Its workshops are crammed with machinery for various purposes and with a variety of "injuries". Moreover, judging by the appearance, the main reason for the repair is not combat damage, but mainly technical problems.

How long have you been in the repair business? What is the most common thing to deal with here? 

I am a tanker by profile, in 2012 I graduated from the Omsk Tank Engineering Institute, I have been working on tanks and with tanks all my life. 

Now here we are in a workshop for the repair of electrical equipment - electrical units, starters, generators, checking their functionality. Here we have everything for charging batteries, for checking starters for all types of armored vehicles - tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers. Because monitors and some electrical units are interchangeable between infantry fighting vehicles and new-style tanks. 

We also have repair trips. Still sometimes we go to training grounds, we train volunteers from the army corps of the DPR and LPR on old models of tanks - T-62. Well, we help repairmen in the DPR, although sometimes, on the contrary, we learn from them. They, of course, are not very rich with resources, but they are good with technical creative thought. They take, for example, MTLB [light armored multi-purpose transporter-tractor - approx. ed.] and rearrange him a tower from a non-repairable BMP-1. It turns out such a "motorcycle league" (military slang nickname for MTLB) of a new type. And all the electrical equipment inside works. 

Sometimes even representatives of the plant come and watch how they do it. This is the result of accumulated experience, in the DPR and LPR there are already many people who have been doing this for 8 years, have become real experts in this matter.

And what is your favorite tank?

Purely aesthetically - T-90. My second favorite is the T-80 OD, however, they are not being produced now, they are only being modified. And so this is the best tank specifically for the Siberian regions, for the Far East. 

Firstly, it has a loading mechanism - not an automatic machine, but a mechanism, there is a cassette. Secondly, it is kerosene, it starts in any frost. For the North, this is a wonderful machine, but here it is also used. It has a peculiarity - the engine does not like dust very much, but they have already learned how to install additional filter elements, so that in the conditions of the local dusty summer it now works without problems. 

Did the special operation reveal any features of the equipment used?

Of course, any military action is the most reliable training ground. And we need to watch how both our equipment and the enemy show themselves. I observed Ukrainian tanks of a new type. At work, we often encountered the downed. They also have their own advantages, something can be borrowed and implemented. For example, sighting systems. 

The sights and optics that we have on the tower are still quite large, and the armor shield that protects them is a bit thin. Therefore, a sniper with a good rifle can blind a tank simply by knocking out the optics. Roughly the same with night vision devices. Our antenna inputs require modernization, I would remove our whip antennas already. On the other side of the enemy tanks there are "Motorroll" communication systems: a small antenna on the tower, it is not visible, and the connection is even better. In general, there is always something to upgrade and improve. The development of technology is a constant process, and as soon as you freeze in such complacency that we have all the best, you immediately begin to lag behind.

Specialists from Tagil are now working here, they came from the St. Petersburg plant, we shared our experience on the "eighties" [tank of the T-80 series - ed.]. There is a dialogue.

Yes, we cope with those malfunctions, damages that happen. But we also give our proposals that, for example, it is better to make such and such a pipe like this. And the guys who are now participating in the special operation will say, for example: return the mechanical monitor to the driver's control department.

Now there is an electronic one, it is modern and aesthetically pleasing, of course, but I think that a mechanical one is better. Practice shows that aesthetics is not needed in combat operations. Everything must be iron and condo.

Isn't electronics better and more accurate? 

My opinion, as a practice, electronics is more vulnerable. There is, for example, electromagnetic ammunition, which, with a microwave pulse, simply burns all the tank's electronics in an instant. Yes, now only we have this, but sooner or later others will do the same. And, in the end, there are simply places in nature of deposits of magnetic ore, a car drives past such a mountain, and the electronics begin to glitch.

And with mechanics, this will never happen. And everything is much easier to maintain, especially in combat conditions. It all sounds as if out of date, but the realities of full-fledged hostilities, like here, are very different from any international arms exhibitions, where you need to exhibit all the most modern, stuffed with electronics to the eyeballs. When, in combat conditions, the crew itself can eliminate quite a lot of breakdowns, this is much better than if, for any reason, you need to drag the tank to the repair base, where some kind of electronics specialist, almost a computer hacker, must conjure over it.

But in other armies, there is more and more electronics in technology, and this does not bother them.

In other countries, people are already marching to gay pride parades (laughs). No, it is clear that progress cannot be stopped. Moreover, there are a lot of military branches and types of equipment, where about everything consists of electronics - missiles, drones, and in general all aviation, even observation devices for infantry. But I am in favor of leaving mechanics to the maximum in armored vehicles where possible.

Serious hostilities are always a lot of problems with supply, logistics, and the supply of spare parts. If you return 3 units of equipment with a simpler filling from a repair battalion to service, in the same time that you can hardly repair one with some kind of complex electronic unit, then all the benefits from using this tricked-out electronics will simply disappear.

How do you assess the preparation of the enemy? In general, what do you think of the people on the other side?

About preparation. It is clear that now, when they are supplied with foreign equipment, they are trained by the Americans, the French, and the British. Now there are already imported armored vehicles, not to mention artillery systems, etc. But initially, all the equipment they had was Soviet, the Kharkov Tank Plant is one of the largest centers of tank building in the USSR, with its very serious technical school, traditions.

And here, in general, people like us work, especially the older generation, who once, perhaps, even studied with us in Omsk, Novosibirsk or Moscow. In general, this is the same blood with us, the same heads and souls. The problem is all in the puppeteers, after all, someone is pulling the strings. It would be better to deal with them in due time, now there would be less trouble for everyone.