BMP-3

The latest Metal Box. Very shooty. Much dakka.

In Team Yankee

Announced by Battlefront. No game play information available.

https://www.team-yankee.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=6844

In Real Life

The BMP-3 is, as the name implies, the third main iteration of the BMP family of Infantry Fighting Vehicles. First produced in the mid 1980's, the BMP-3 was an evolutionary step forward and a solidified standard as to how the Soviets viewed Infantry Fighting Vehicles and their role in warfare. Unlike it's predecessors, the BMP-3 was based off an entierly new, decidedly less pointy chassis, but still featured the staples of Soviet IFV design, albeit refined for the 1980s battlefield.

Like all Soviet IFVs before it, the BMP-3 was designed first and foremost to be with the tanks smashing their way through NATO defensive lines to reach the Rhine as quickly and as effectively as possible. This means speed, relative low profile compared to NATO counterparts, a natural capacity for amphibious movement across rivers, and firepower. This coming at the expense of crew ergonomics, passenger space and capacity, and armour thick enough to protect against shell fragments, rifle rounds, grenades, and not much else, even a .50 cal can cut right through it. Though naturally it's sealed to prevent your favoured Nuclear, Chemical, or Biological nasties from getting in.

In essence, it is a speedy, glass cannon. And it packs quite the punch for it's trade offs.

When looking at the previous two iterations of the BMP line, as well as the American Bradley, it can only be assumed two camps developed as to how the BMP-3 should be armed. One side, traditionalists to the original BMP would point out that the ability for infantry, when not paired with tanks, to still have access to a pretty decent 76mm high explosive or HEAT shell from their friendly neighborhood IFV when needed would give troops exceptional support against hard targets. The other side of the coin would point out that larger caliber weapons neccessarily mean less ammo can be stored, and that an autocannon like in the BMP-2 is much more flexible and capable in performing suppressive fire and with a much greater number of rounds that can be thrown down range. Then like a great Orthodox saint of communism, vodka, and deep battle theory, one man would simply ask: "Why not both?"

Much applause, bottles of vodka being opened, and songs in praise of the heroes of socialist science would be made at this suggestion, and the design put into place, with the extra spicy addition of the vehicle being designed to fire barrel launched ATGMs as a Soviet cherry on top, along side some hull mounted machine guns. The result is far and away the most heavily armed IFV on the planet at the time, with the vehicle's armament alone straddling the line between that of an IFV and a dedicated light tank, and a price tag to boot.

Though compared to the hellspiral that was the Bradley's development, the BMP-3 sounds like a relative bargain.

Though not a heavyweight in terms of punishment it can receive, the BMP-3 has a weapon for nearly every occasion, and can slug a ridiculous ammount of firepower for it's size and role.

The original version of BMP-3 has a turret fitted with a low-velocity 100mm gun (which can fire conventional shells or 9M117 Bastion / AT-10 Stabber ATGMs), a 30mm autocannon and a 7.62mm machine gun. Two additional 7.62mm machine guns are mounted in the hull facing forward