Russian army creates special overhaul and evacuation regiments.

The Russian Defense Ministry is upgrading the overhaul of faulty hardware. Special overhaul and evacuation regiments are being created, the ministry told the Izvestia daily. The new units are equipped with mobile overhaul workshops and heavy prime movers. They have a modular scheme and receive tools and evacuators according to the set task. The regiments can revive damaged vehicles hundreds of kilometers from the deployment base.

Prime mover REM-KS on Voshchina BAZ-6910-021 chassis (Picture source: Vitaly Kuzmin)

The first overhaul regiment was created in the Central Military District of the Urals in late 2018. The second is being set up in Siberian Yurga. In the future, all districts will have new regiments. "Any modern army should have a mighty and independent system for the evacuation and overhaul of combat vehicles. Such a system existed up to 2003. There were overhaul bases, brigades, battalions and companies. They were manned with professionals capable of various overhaul levels. They later tried to outsource the services, but the experience was unsuccessful," former head of armaments of the Russian armed forces Colonel-General Anatoly Sitnov said.

The new regiments will comprise two battalions in charge of evacuation and overhaul. The former will have heavy 8x8 wheel alignment prime movers REM-KS on Voshchina BAZ-6910-021 chassis created by Bryansk Automobile Works for the units. They have a spacious cabin for additional crewmembers, special equipment and sleeping places.

The overhaul battalions will have several mobile workshops. They are modular and can select the necessary tools, spare parts and expendables depending on the mission. In combat conditions, each regiment forms several combined mobile overhaul groups which will operate autonomously and overhaul the damaged hardware at the frontline. If necessary, they will evacuate the hardware to rear workshops.

The regiments will later have reconnaissance companies capable of detecting damaged hardware on the battlefield and assessing its state. They will be armed with the latest technical reconnaissance MTR-K vehicles on Typhoon-VDV protected chassis with 4x4 wheel alignment and the carrying capacity of 3 tons. The vehicles will be armed with Kord machineguns, navigational and night vision devices, round-view monitoring system and drones.

The armed forces pay specific attention to hardware maintenance. The industry is designing a new overhaul vehicle for the S-500 air defense system. It is a unified mobile diagnostic, maintenance and overhaul complex for the air and missile defense, the Izvestia said.