MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. The state trials of the latest armored personnel carrier and infantry fighting vehicle based on the Bumerang standardized wheeled platform will begin in the summer of 2020, the press office of Military Industrial Company (the platform’s developer and manufacturer) told TASS on Tuesday.

"According to the plan, we will enter the state trials in the summer of 2020," the press office said, replying to a question about the pace of the work on the Bumerang combat platform.

Military Industrial Company CEO Alexander Krasovitsky told TASS on December 3 that the company had completed jointly with the Defense Ministry the preliminary trials of the prototypes of the K-16 armored personnel carrier and the K-17 infantry fighting vehicle based on the latest Bumerang wheeled platform. The prototypes confirmed the characteristics stated in the combat vehicles’ technical specifications, he stressed.

Military Industrial Company has also started assembling new prototypes at its production facilities as part of the Bumerang R&D work for holding state trials. Also, the Military Engineering Center in Nizhny Novgorod (part of Military Industrial Company) is already assembling a full-size mock-up of the combat vehicle based on the ready-made armored hull for ballistic trials and anti-mine resistance tests, he added.

The combat vehicles underwent tests already in the summer and now a certificate of preliminary trials has been signed, following which the new armor can enter state trials, the press office said.

Bumerang experimental design work

The Bumerang is the latest standardized wheeled platform for multiservice forces developed by Military Industrial Company. The platform was used as the basis for developing the K-16 armored personnel carrier, and also the K-17 infantry fighting vehicle unveiled for the public at the Victory Day Parade in Moscow’s Red Square in 2015. The combat vehicle’s baseline version is outfitted with a combat module with a 30mm automatic gun and a Kornet anti-tank missile system.