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 Scipio Americanus wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
I love tanks, even though I don't know actually that much about tank design, but isn't a box shape a pretty bad design choice? It seems to me that those large, flat sides are a very inviting target and would be extremely easy to penetrate.

As I've been pointing out above, it depends on your purposes. For an APC or IFV, having a high profile and flat sides is largely just unavoidable. The Soviets (as always) tried their best to minimize profile with the BMP series, but (as usual) at the cost of giving the crew/passengers a horrendously uncomfortable and cramped ride. In the West we went for taller IFVs and APCs to make sure the infantry would be capable of more than just stumbling around and vomiting when they finished their ride to the battle zone.

Ah, the BMP metal coffin. In case you didn't know that's the one you see, usually with the soldiers riding on top instead of inside, because, well.....it sucks.

The BMP-1 was a metal coffin because it was built in an era of metal coffins for infantry transports. The M113 that America had was just as fragile and didn't even give you the benefit of some fire support.

Just because something is revolutionary does not mean it doesn't suck. Here is an idea, lets store all the fuel in the doors thus making sure nobody can escape a flaming coffin. Talk about Ronsin lighters? I think I rather be in a BTR (the hard top ones) instead of a BMP.

 Kain wrote:

 Andrew1975 wrote:

The BMP-1 was a metal coffin because it was built in an era of metal coffins for infantry transports. The M113 that America had was just as fragile and didn't even give you the benefit of some fire support.

Just because something is revolutionary does not mean it doesn't suck. Here is an idea, lets store all the fuel in the doors thus making sure nobody can escape a flaming coffin. Talk about Ronsin lighters? I think I rather be in a BTR (the hard top ones) instead of a BMP.

The BMP-1 was as well armored if not better so than the M113 which it completely outclassed.

It is obsolete today because it's a damn old design.

If it were bad, the Red Army would have never used it.

Common Russian phrasing on the BMP Bratskaya Mogila Pehoty loosely translated to Common Grave of the Infantry

I never said it sucked compared to the m113, I just said it sucked. Flaming doors make poor transports, now sure you could fill the doors with sand instead, so there is some saving grace. I'm sure there are other factors involved, but I've seen many many more burned up BMPs than I've seen burned up M113s. I personally knew some guys who rode these into Chechnya, lets just say they were less than thrilled with the performance and I believe at that time they would have been in the better bmp3.

The red army has used plenty of less than optimal equipment. The red army motto is that quantity is a quality of its own. Rarely has red army equipment had the best performance, reliability sure, ease of maintenance, ok, numbers yep....performance.....no.