Photo: YouTube
Talk about not one, but two very expensive malfunctions: 2 BMD-2 armored vehicles fell out of the sky during a drill at the Tsentr-2019 international armed forces exercises, when their parachutes failed to open.
The good news is that there was no personnel inside the vehicles at the time. The bad news is that they were completely destroyed upon impact with the ground, after the 5,000 feet drop.
An investigation into both incidents is now underway, the Daily Mail reports, citing one source as saying that some safety issues may have caused them. Apparently, the winds were too strong for the drop, which could have impeded the chutes to open on the 2 vehicles.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense has confirmed the mishap but would not go into details, saying only that, “due to malfunctioning parachute systems two vehicles got damaged as they hit the ground. The landing was unmanned. There were no casualties.”
Footage posted to social media shows how one of the BMD-2s plummets to the ground, after it’s dropped from the IL-76MD aircraft. While the others are floating thanks to the open parachutes, this one goes down at rapid speed and crashes into a cloud of dust and debris. Photos from the scene show how badly both 7-ton armored vehicles were damaged.
The BMD-2 or the Boyevaya Mashina Desantais (literally “airborne combat vehicle”), is a soviet-era airborne infantry fighting vehicle first introduced in 1985. It can be transported by An-12, An-22, Il-76, An-124 airplanes and Mi-6 and Mi-26 helicopters, and dropped out of the sky thanks to the specifically designed rocket parachute PRSM-915. Dropping a BMD-2 can be done with or without the crew.
The Mail says that 8 countries, including Russia, India and China, were present at the Tsentr-2019 event and that Vladimir Putin himself was there for most of the time. However, it is uncertain if he personally witnessed the double mishap of the BMD-2.
An investigation into both incidents is now underway, the Daily Mail reports, citing one source as saying that some safety issues may have caused them. Apparently, the winds were too strong for the drop, which could have impeded the chutes to open on the 2 vehicles.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense has confirmed the mishap but would not go into details, saying only that, “due to malfunctioning parachute systems two vehicles got damaged as they hit the ground. The landing was unmanned. There were no casualties.”
Footage posted to social media shows how one of the BMD-2s plummets to the ground, after it’s dropped from the IL-76MD aircraft. While the others are floating thanks to the open parachutes, this one goes down at rapid speed and crashes into a cloud of dust and debris. Photos from the scene show how badly both 7-ton armored vehicles were damaged.
The BMD-2 or the Boyevaya Mashina Desantais (literally “airborne combat vehicle”), is a soviet-era airborne infantry fighting vehicle first introduced in 1985. It can be transported by An-12, An-22, Il-76, An-124 airplanes and Mi-6 and Mi-26 helicopters, and dropped out of the sky thanks to the specifically designed rocket parachute PRSM-915. Dropping a BMD-2 can be done with or without the crew.
The Mail says that 8 countries, including Russia, India and China, were present at the Tsentr-2019 event and that Vladimir Putin himself was there for most of the time. However, it is uncertain if he personally witnessed the double mishap of the BMD-2.
In the Center-2019 exercise, the Russian BMD-2 crashed when the parachute did not work. pic.twitter.com/hzKNG1dlUL
— Caesar (@Ninja998998) September 23, 2019
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