Russia's rarest armored fighting vehicle (AFV) just broke cover for the first time this year. The heavily armed BMP-T Terminator is back! Just don't expect it to make much, or any, difference on the ground in Ukraine.

The BMP-T exists to escort tanks and shoot up the infantry ambushers who hunt them. The problem for the 90th Tank Division, the sole confirmed user of the 48-ton, five-person vehicle, is that infantry ambushes are rare these days. The main threats to Russian tanks are mines and drones. And to mines and drones, the BMP-T is just another target.

A photo circulated online recently depicting a BMP-T with add-on anti-drone protection. It's one of just 20 or so the Russian vehicle-maker Uralvagonzavod has ever produced for the Russian army. That makes it one of the rarest fighting vehicles in an army with tens of thousands of tanks, BMP-2s and BMP-3s and other AFVs.

The BMP-T is special. It's not as well-armed or well-protected as a tank, but it's better-armed and better-protected than a standard BMP infantry carrier. With its small turret cradling twin 2A42 30-mm cannons firing 300-g shells at a rate of around 200 rounds a minute, the BMP-T can lay down a lot of firepower.

"The most important thing is to support the tanks," a BMP-T commander told the Russian state newspaper Izvestia. That emphasis on tank support is why the BMP-T doesn't carry infantry passengers, unlike other BMP models that are primarily infantry carriers.

Ukrainian forces have destroyed or damaged several BMP-Ts since the type first rolled into action no later than early 2023. Late last year, Uralvagonzavod produced a small batch of new BMP-Ts to complement the initial batch of 12 vehicles.

Don't expect many more BMP-Ts to roll off the factory floor. It's not that Uralvagonzavod isn't hard at work. The factory is churning out hundreds of new T-90M and T-72B3M tanks every year, complementing the thousands of older tanks that Russian forces have pulled out of long-term storage for refurbishment, upgrade and further use.

The ongoing production and restoration, combined with a sharp reduction in Russian vehicular attacks in Ukraine, have allowed the Kremlin to make good heavy losses in Ukraine, and then some. Russian forces have lost no fewer than 14,000 AFVs in 53 months of wider war. But Russian industry has built or restored ... at least 14,000 replacement AFVs.

De-mechanization

All that is to say, Russia's war on Ukraine de-mechanized the Russian army. But then the army re-mechanized by redoubling production and mostly pausing mechanized attacks in favor of infantry-led assaults across the drone-patrolled, mine-infested gray zone.

Exactly what the Russians are saving all those vehicles for is unclear. Maybe they're preserving them for some future conflict. Or maybe they're just waiting for more favorable conditions along the 1,200-km gray zone threading across eastern and southern Ukraine.

Those conditions may never come as Ukraine deploys more drones and lays more mines. The same unit that operates the BMP-Ts, the 90th Tank Division, learned this the hard way on 22 July. Perhaps sensing that the terrain around Shakhove in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast was too rough for infantry traveling on foot, the 90th Tank Division and elements of the 8th and 41st Combined Arms Armies attacked with armored vehicles for the first time in months.

A clutch of upgraded T-72B3A tanks with Arena-M anti-drone defenses led the attack. The Arena-M uses radar to detect incoming enemy munitions and then fires tiny projectiles at the munitions from an array of 12 launchers. The Arena-M works against small drones, but it's useless once it fires all 12 projectiles. To knock out the T-72B3As near Shakhove on 22 July, all the Ukrainians had to do was launch more than 12 drones per tank.

The BMP-T doesn't have active protections in the class of the Arena-M. It would've been even more vulnerable to drones, and even more useless in the doomed assault near Shakhove. The Russians have settled on two vehicle types as they rebuild their mechanized forces: tanks for leading assaults and BMPs for carrying infantry behind the tanks.

Where does the BMP-T fit in this construct? The infrequency with which BMP-Ts have appeared anywhere near the gray zone in the past year is the strongest sign that the fast-firing vehicles don't fit anywhere. They're vanishingly rare because they're increasingly useless.