Russian unit uses MT-LB like kamikaze vehicle filled with 3.5 tons of TNT to blow up Ukrainian army stronghold.

Russian soldiers of the engineer-sapper unit of the Central Military District used a captured MT-LB tracked armored personnel carrier to destroy a stronghold of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This unprecedented operation has been reported by the press service of the Russian Ministry of Defense, even if no assessment of the result could be made, even by drone, and no report from the Ukrainian side could confirm the result.
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MT-LB armored personnel carrier (Picture source Wikipedia)

An armored personnel carrier captured from the Ukrainians, presumably an MT-LB, was loaded with about 3.5 tons of TNT, as well as five FAB-100 aerial bombs, and sent to an enemy stronghold located behind a line of trees. A video released by the Russian state-owned TASS news agency shows the compartment of a vehicle stuffed with a bomb and explosives. It is said that, once the vehicle had arrived at about 300 meters from the target, the driver pulled the hand throttle to keep the speed and then jumped out of the vehicle, leaving it driving straight toward the Ukrainian stronghold. A ground-fired weapon like a rocket-propelled grenade stroke out from the trees and hit the tank, the impact unleashing a massive explosion and secondary blasts. Or was the MT-LB remotely blown up too?

"About 300 meters from the enemy, the driver put the car on manual gas, sent it to his side, and jumped," said a Russian officer who oversaw the operation according to an account in the Russian state-run RIA Novosti news agency; the Russians claimed the operation killed a "significant" number of Ukrainians, a claim that couldn't be independently verified.

As Hugo Kaaman, a researcher who tracks VBIEDs, pointed out: car bombs are typically used by technologically inferior forces that lack an air force capable of blasting their enemies' redoubts and heavy vehicles. Russia, of course, does have powerful air forces. But Ukraine has effectively forced them to fly far from the battlefield, evening the odds on the ground.

British soldiers with captured German Goliath tracked mines (Picture source: U.S. Signal Corps)

The kamikaze tanks have some similarities with the way ISIS militants used car bombs to attack convoys and to terrify their enemies. Much before that, in World War 2, the Germans used small remotely-controlled (by wire) kamikaze tracked vehicles called Goliath. The Gikiath Leichter Ladungsträger Goliath (Goliath Light Charge Carrier) was a series of two unmanned ground vehicles used by the German Army as disposable demolition vehicles during World War 2. These were the electrically powered Sd.Kfz. 302 and the petrol-engine powered Sd.Kfz. 303a and 303b. They were known as "beetle tanks" by the Allies. They carried 60 or 100 kg (130 or 220 lb) of high explosives, depending on the model, and were intended to be used for multiple purposes, such as destroying tanks, disrupting dense infantry formations, and the demolition of buildings or bridges. Goliaths were single-use vehicles that were destroyed by the detonation of their warhead.

The control box was connected to the Goliath by a 650-metre (2,130 ft), triple-strand cable. The cable was stored on a cable drum in the rear compartment of the Goliath. The cable was used for steering the vehicle left/right, forwards and reverse (reverse on the electric-driven 302 version only) and to ignite the explosive charge. Each Goliath was disposable, being intended to be blown up with its target. Early model Goliaths used two electric motors but, as these were costly to make (3,000 Reichsmarks) and difficult to maintain and recharge in a combat environment, later models (known as the SdKfz. 303) used a cheaper two-stroke gasoline engine.

The interior of a Goliath, SdKfz. 303, showing the petrol engine, control cable reels and the space for the warhead (Picture source: U.S. Department of Ordnance - Catalog of Enemy Ordnance Manual Vol. 1 - 1945)

Defense News June 2023