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13 May 2015, 11:38

Russian engineers to make combat vehicles invisible to enemy thermal scopes

Infantry fighting vehicles with electric transmission will be less visible to thermal scopes
BMP-3 fighting vehicle (archive) ITAR-TASS/Alexander Alpatkin
BMP-3 fighting vehicle (archive)
© ITAR-TASS/Alexander Alpatkin

MOSCOW, May 13. /TASS/. Russia’s Concern Tractor Plants (CTP) will present by the end of the year a prototype of electric transmission for infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) that will make armored vehicles invisible to the enemy’s thermal scopes, the concern’s Vice President and co-owner Albert Bakov told TASS on Wednesday.

He said that the current IFV engines are heating strongly, so the vehicles can easily be detected with a thermal imager. IFV models with electric transmission will be less visible to such systems, he said.

"The fighting vehicles are eventually equipped with systems, which require more power. And if there is a need for a powerful generator, then the sound idea to make electric transmission for the vehicle has emerged," Bakov said.

"We are working on this, and I think we’ll come up with a prototype of such transmission by the year end," Bakov said.

According to him, the electric transmission will be tested in the BMP-3 fighting vehicle. "We have already made an electric-driven combine harvester and, having tested this system on it, we will try to install this engine on the existing BMP-3 hull," he said.

The Concern Tractor Plants Manufacturing Group is Russia’s largest producer of facilities and spare parts for light and heavy engineering and off-road machinery. The holding company’s products are used in key industries within Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as well as on a worldwide basis.

The manufacturing group operates numerous design and production facilities in Russia’s eight regions, as well as in Germany, Denmark, Austria and Malaysia. Operational management is performed at the holding company’s headquarters in Cheboksary, Russia. Within this organisational structure, Concern Tractor Plants produces manufacturing equipment, agricultural machinery, spare parts, OEM parts, railroad machinery and special-purpose machinery.