With and without a hood: a relapse of the Russian car industry
KamAZ of Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Schneider, blown up in Syria. Source: atas.info
The machine is not for war
In dry reports of the Ministry of Defense, the tragedy in Homs is described as follows:
"On September 9, in the province of Homs, the Syrian Arab Republic, during a reconnaissance by the Russian military police of the route of a humanitarian convoy, an explosive device installed on the side of the road was detonated."
As a result, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Schneider died. The very first photographs clearly show that the explosion occurred under the front right wheel of KamAZ, and if the officer was sitting in the passenger's seat, then he had no chance to escape. The explosion tore the cabin and ripped out the wheel and part of the suspension.
If we speak in official language, there is no “living space” in the cockpit. By the nature of the damage, it can be assumed that a device equivalent to an anti-tank mine exploded under KamAZ. Similar tests were carried out in Kubinka during the first Chechen campaign. By the way, in "Ural" the dummy got off with ankle injuries.
Source: vk.com
It should be noted that the military police used an armored modification of the KAMAZ-5350-379 truck.
An armored capsule MM-501 is installed in the back of the car to protect personnel from small arms weapons according to the 5th class of protection. The armored truck has been used for quite some time in hot spots, including in Syria. The developer and manufacturer is the Nizhny Novgorod company Asteys, which produces, in particular, the Patrol armored vehicles for the needs of the Russian Guard. By the way, the National Guardsmen are entitled to a bonnet modification of KamAZ.
Source: vk.com
The key disadvantage of the KamAZ that hit a land mine in Syria was the cabover layout.
In fact, no changes were made to the KAMAZ cabin to increase explosion resistance. This is largely due to the design of the cabin itself - it cannot be turned into an MRAP cabin without a radical redesign.
In fact, engineers will have to take a whole range of measures - build a U-shaped armored bottom, raise the driver's and passenger's seats a few tens of centimeters up, and weld the seats themselves through shock absorbers to the ceiling. Naturally, no one will dare to make such changes, it is easier to create the car from scratch.
For example, how it is implemented on "Remdiesel-63968" Typhoon-K ". But this is a car of a completely different class, purpose and cost. By and large, such a reformatting of KamAZ is not necessary - just do not let the cars go to the front line.
Cabover-less vehicles have nothing to do in modern hotspots with high IED saturation. Moreover, the army has trucks that were originally adapted for mine warfare on the roads.
According to media reports, Tornado-U is already in Syria. But, apparently, there are not enough cars. Source: ianed.ru
This is the Ural-4320 bonnet family and, first of all, the Ural-63706-0011 or Tornado-U variant with a high armored cabin.
The Ural vehicles, as you know, from the very beginning were designed exclusively for military needs. In the early 50s, NAMI prepared a draft design of the car, which for many years became a real standard for military off-road vehicles. A powerful gasoline engine (albeit gluttonous), optimal weight distribution along the axles, centralized pumping of wheels and axle housings in one line, reducing resistance in the rut. The bonnet layout also added important bonuses - ease of maintenance and increased resistance to mines.
We are talking about the notorious "one and a half meters" of life.
Why didn't such a car go in the convoy on September 9 instead of KamAZ? In the photo - "Ural Federal-42590". Photo: Vitaly Kuzmin. www.vitalykuzmin.net
Most likely, in the post-war years, no one really thought about a possible confrontation with the enemy's AFU. The methods of warfare were very different, and engineers were more concerned with anti-nuclear protection than with TNT under the wheels. The traditional bonnet layout was then much easier to manufacture.
Another advantage of "Ural" and others like him was resistance to frontal shelling. With a successful combination of circumstances, the driver and passengers can take cover behind the engine compartment of the truck - not every bullet is able to overcome it.
Miass or Naberezhnye Chelny?
The military modification of KamAZ was born in completely different conditions.
In Naberezhnye Chelny, a plant was being built, originally intended for civil trucks, which were simultaneously developed at the Moscow ZIL. In fact, the model under the name ZIL-170 was supposed to replace the old man ZIL-130, but all the documentation was transferred to the new mega-plant. In many ways, this was the reason for the further collapse of the Moscow enterprise, once the most advanced in the country.
However, the capital simply did not have such areas for large-scale production of trucks. And in Naberezhnye Chelny, a full-cycle plant was created, not without the help of American companies, which produces cars practically without third-party contractors. KamAZ has become a real plant of strategic importance, which was so loved in the Soviet Union.
And for a reason they loved, I must say.
Even during the Great Patriotic War, factories with a large number of subcontractors did not cope with the production of defense products in the best way. Either here the supplier fails, or elsewhere a deficit is formed.
A similar situation, for example, happened at the Krasnoe Sormovo tank plant, which for some time generally produced T-34s with gasoline engines due to shortages of V-2s. And on the Chelyabinsk Tractor, for example, this was not observed - all manufacturers concentrated in the local "Tankograd" ...
So for the domestic automotive industry, KamAZ has become a kind of "Tankograd". And it is quite understandable that the KamAZ-4310 army truck, which appeared soon after the civilian 5320, turned out to be very convenient.
High unification with peaceful products made the car economically profitable, and this made it possible to relatively quickly saturate the army with modern trucks. The Miass plant in this stories acted as a complete antipode.
Most of the time "Urals" entered the army exclusively, and the capacity of the enterprise was often not enough to meet the needs of the military. Miass did not have its own motor production, a considerable part of the components came from other enterprises. As soon as Ural was switched to diesel, it generally became dependent on a competitor from Naberezhnye Chelny.
By the way, in the late 70s there was an attempt to build a new cabin for the Ural within the framework of the Land project. As a basis, the factory workers took a KAMAZ analogue and docked their own engine compartment. But no one was eager to share the cabin with competitors, and "Land" remained a small-scale technique.
A similar blowing up of the Azerbaijani KamAZ in Nagorno-Karabakh. Source: vk.com
Kamaz vehicles are certainly needed by the Russian army. But the practice of using it almost on the front line of defense often ends in tragedies similar to those on September 9 in Syria. In addition, there is a reluctance of the factory workers to rework the design of a 45-year-old truck. The bonnet variants of KamAZs are being developed so far only by the previously mentioned company "Asteyz", but most of the equipment goes to the Russian Guard. At the last forum "Army-2021" from Naberezhnye Chelny, they again brought a new variation of the "Mustang-M" from Remdiesel ("combat" division of KamAZ) with an armored cabin.
The developers do not cover the mine action properties of the vehicle.
An example is the blowing up of the Ukrainian "Ural" with an anti-tank mine. Differences from the KAMAZ picture are noticeable. Source: twing.com
However, both KamAZ and Urals are just military equipment, which will not lead itself to mines. Questions arise about the organization of the very "reconnaissance" during which the officer died.
Why was KamAZ, weakly protected from IEDs, in the convoy?
Surely the number of vehicles included heavy Typhoons and armored personnel carriers, but, as you know, the combat effectiveness of a unit is determined by the weakest link. This turned out to be the KamAZ of Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Schneider.
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