Ukraine makes exactly one oddball Kevlar-E fighting vehicle

The Ukrainian army’s weirdest infantry fighting vehicle shouldn’t have survived this long. That it has survived might be an argument for the Ukrainians to make more copies.

The sole Kevlar-E IFV was just a prototype for a class of new armored vehicle—for export, primarily—when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, Forbes reports.

It was an emergency. Kharkiv-based vehicle-maker UkrInnMash handed the approximately 20-ton Kevlar-E to the army—and it promptly rolled into action in defense of its home city, which lies just 25 miles from the border with Russia.

A year later, Kharkiv still is free, and the Kevlar-E—remarkably—still is in action. A photo that circulated online on Feb. 3 depicts the unique IFV in what could be the combat zone outside Kharkiv.

The eyebrow-raising tale of the one-off Kevlar-E is the umpteenth example of the Ukrainians’ wartime ingenuity. Or desperation, if you’re being less charitable. The Kevlar-E isn’t the only one of Ukraine’s lonely prototype vehicles to go to war.

The Kevlar-E is an oddity. It’s the hull of an early-1970s-vintage 2S1 self-propelled howitzer with the turret and 30-millimeter gun of a BMP-3 from the late 1980s. But with a few enhancements. In particular, thicker armor offering protection from heavy machine guns.

The idea, when UkrInnMash designed the Kevlar-E around 2017, was to cobble together an infantry fighting vehicle that the firm could pitch as a replacement for some of the many thousands of 1960s-vintage BMP-1 IFVs that were, and still are, in service all over the world. Including in Ukraine.

The BMP-1 is obsolete. Its low-pressure 73-millimeter gun is all but useless in a hard fight. Its armor is thin. From the right angle, even a determined machine-gunner can take out a BMP-1.

The BMP-1’s main virtue, 60 years after it entered service, is that it’s abundant and cheap. So the Kevlar-E also had to be cheap. That meant making it with existing components from Ukrainian companies. “A new platform would take a substantial amount of money to develop from scratch,” UkrInnMash representative Andrii Hryshchenko said.

Better gun. Thicker armor. Besides price, those were UkrInnMash’s criteria in developing the Kevlar-E. Adding a Shturm turret to a beefier 2S1 hull satisfied all the criteria, but also produced an ungainly-look IFV with at least one important flaw. It has space for just six infantry in addition to the three crew. Compare that with the eight infantry a BMP-1 carries, and the seven a BMP-3 can fit.

But the reduction in troop capacity is the compromise the Ukrainians made in order to develop, from existing components, a new IFV with a good balance of firepower and protection—and one that cash-strapped customers should be able to afford.

The capacity compromise hasn’t yet proved fatal for the sole Kevlar-E, which survived 12 months of war and apparently still is in working condition. Whether Ukraine reads the protoype’s success in combat as a sign it should build more Kevlar-Es is an open question.

There’s at least one good argument for making more. The Ukrainian army owns hundreds of old 2S1 howitzers whose guns are wearing and whose 122-millimeter ammunition is in short supply.

As newer Western-made howitzers gradually replace the aging 2S1s, UkrInnMash could pop off the 2S1s’ turrets, gut their interiors and install Shturms and infantry seats. Voila—instant IFVs to replace a few of the many death-trap BMP-1s that the Ukrainian army at present has no choice but to continue using.