In Development: BMP-2M Berezhok

Commanders!

The second prize of the upcoming Tales from the Dark Battle Path will be a Russian Armored Fighting Vehicle called BMP-2M Berezhok.

Now, you might be already familiar with the story of the BMP-2 and if you are not, we recommend reading the following articles as they form the foundation of this one:

• Painful Birth of the BMP-2 – Part 1
• Painful Birth of the BMP-2 – Part 2
• BMP-2 in combat

In short, the BMP-1/2 platform has been around for a very long time and will likely continue to be a common sight on pretty much every active battlefield due to its ubiquity even though it is by now completely obsolete and offers almost no protection against current threats. The Russians themselves as the inheritors of the Soviet legacy have replaced it with the BMP-3 a long time ago and have even developed upgrades to its successor.

But despite this replacement, hundreds or even thousands of BMP-1/2s remain mothballed across Russia, awaiting their reactivation and restoration. For the BMP-1s, the upgrade is called BMP-1AM Basurmanin (replacing the original BMP-1 turret with the one from BTR-82A). But the BMP-2 upgrade is different. It too consists of a turret replacement but the B05Ya01 Berezhok combat module is very different. Thus upgraded, the vehicle is known as BMP-2M (or B-22).

This combat module was developed in Tula and features the classic 30mm 2A42 autocannon combined with two Kornet ATGM twin-tube launchers, 30mm AG-30M grenade launcher and, of course, modern optics (“Redut” fire control system, B09S02 gunner sight with a thermal imager and a commander panoramic sight with laser rangefinder). The vehicle weighs 16 tons or 17 tons with extra armor (675-sb3KDZ) that protects its sides against heavy machinegun fires and RPG-7 rockets.

The first version of the BMP-2M was unveiled in 2005 and immediately caught the attention of Algeria. A contract was signed to modernize 300 BMP-2s this way (it’s unclear how many were truly modernized but the estimates vary between 100 and 200). Russia ordered its own BMP-2Ms in 2020 in order to replace the losses of lighter BMD class vehicles in the Ukraine conflict.

The BMP-2M is currently in use by the Russian military (notably the VDV) and is still in production. Overall, it seems that around 200-300 were built in total (including the Algerian contract) so it is nowhere near as common as the BTR-82A. To makes things even more complicated, there are two other BMP-2Ms developed by Kurganmashzavod – these are called BMP-2M (sb4-2) and BMP-2M (sb4-3) and are intended for export only. They are offered with additional set of cage armor that has since made its way to the Russian BMP-2M configuration.

In Armored Warfare, the BMP-2M will be a Tier 9 Premium Armored Fighting Vehicle.

In its most basic configuration, the vehicle is pretty much what you might expect – a fragile platform with a lot of firepower consisting of a single 30mm autocannon and two double Kornet launchers similar to those on the T-15.

There will be an additional armor upgrade that will noticeably increase its protection but the vehicle will still be quite fragile. In this sense, it’ll be a counterpart to the BTR-82A, just one Tier higher and with more focus on burst damage than sustained DPM. The mobility will of course be solid, but the highlight will of course be the amount of damage this vehicle will deal in battle. And it will be a lot thanks to its two potential (upgrade) configurations.

Once you unlock them using the Workshop mechanism, you’ll be able to choose between two weapon configurations in addition to the basic autocannon and ATGM combo:

• Grenade launcher configuration
• ATGM configuration

The grenade launcher configuration will add a third weapon (fourth, if you count the coaxial machinegun) to your arsenal – 30mm AG-30M grenade launcher. At first sight it sounds like something very weak but it’s anything but.

For one, the grenades use a very narrow arc of flight, which means they will be arriving from above. You still need to keep the enemy in your line of sight to use them but they will devastate anything with a thin roof that’s trying to hide behind a hill with only a tiny bit of the turret peeking out.

Additionally, this grenade launcher will be fitted with a silencer (yes, that’s a thing that was recently developed) so you don’t lose any camouflage firing it. On the downside, these grenades fly fairly slowly so hitting a moving target with them will not be easy. Two shell types will likely be available (HE and HEAT) with enough performance to ruin the day of anything that’s not a Main Battle Tank (and even then they’ll be useful, you just need to aim better).

The ATGM configuration will, on the other hand, replace the grenade launcher with an additional twin-tube Ataka ATGM launcher (that was also an experimental thing). And you know what that means – thermobaric warhead ATGMs and all the fun that comes with them.

With so many weapons at its disposal, the BMP-2M will be all about weapon management to make sure you squeeze every last drop of damage from the platform. It’ll take some getting used to but we’re sure experienced players will master it in no time.

We hope that you’ll enjoy this vehicle and, as always:

See you on the battlefield!