Defense Ministry offers purchasing fine quality steel to unblock production of APCs for army
Ukraine's Defense Ministry has said it is possible to settle the issue of armor standard incompliance for assembling hulls of BTR-4 armored personnel carriers for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine through the direct purchase of Finnish armored protection steel.
As deputy chief of the directorate of the military representative offices of Defense Ministry of Ukraine Dmytro Kolesnyk said at a briefing in Kyiv, as of today none of the contracted 45 armored hulls of the BTR-4s has been assembled so far.
According to him, only 30 steel sheets among 40 sheets are with special marking today.
"Only 30 are marked in a proper way. Some sheets have double marking, some sheets are not identified at all," the ministry's representative said adding that the mentioned 40 steel sheets have 16 kinds of cast when producers of the armored vehicles, as a rule, try to buy similar cast steel.
"I am not saying that this is not Finnish steel, not production...It is simply necessary to find a way out of this conflict situation. And first you need to buy real iron – Miilux armored steel," Kolesnyk said.
As reported, Ukraine's Defense Ministry acceptance office No. 85 at the state-run Ukroboronprom concern's Kharkiv-based Morozov Design Bureau is continuing to block the production of new BTR-4 armored personnel carriers (APC) for the Armed Forces of Ukraine using NATO-standard steel purchased in the European Union, Ukroboronprom's press service has said.
The press service said the Defense Ministry is of the opinion that the chemical composition of the steel from Finland for the APCs (Miilux Protection 500) contains more sulfur and phosphorous than provided for in GOST standards [technical standards adopted by the Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)]. Therefore, it cannot be used for the APCs.
Ukroboronprom is publishing official protocols of tests and documents confirming the characteristics of the European armor, with the clarification that private Ukrainian arms manufactures today produce the Kazak and Varta armored vehicles using the Finnish steel, which is also used in the production of Ukraine's coastal anti-ship missile complex Neptun (Neptune).