Director of the War Department of the Come Back Alive Foundation, Andrii Rymaruk, has commented on the work of mobile repair stations restoring Ukrainian HMMWVs.

Andrii Rymaruk discussed the work of repair stations in the podcast of the UT-2 Youtube channel.

The Director of the War Department shared that the transfer of mobile repair stations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine was an important step that intended to solve the issue of repairing a growing fleet of American army SUVs.

“We observe an increasing number of HMMWVs in Ukraine. We already have two thousand vehicles that break down, and they need to be repaired,” says Rymaruk.

Before the beginning of the full-scale invasion, around three hundred HMMWVs were in service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They were transferred from the United States as part of international technical assistance. And on the territory of Ukraine only one service center was equipped to maintenance the vehicles.

However, over this year, the fleet of these vehicles has grown from a few hundred up to two thousand. This has caused a crisis and a shortage of repair capacity. As a solution to the problem, mobile repair stations were created.

“The guys do not have appropriate tools, they constantly need to drive around the units. We talked with the Central Automobile Department, shared our experience, received feedback and designed the vehicle. We have designed a vehicle that goes to the frontline and in any field conditions conducts the current, medium and thorough repair of equipment,” Andrii Rymaruk explains.

$2.5 million was spent on the project and to date 186 HMMWVs have been repaired due to the stations.

“Most of them were impossible. Sometimes we made one out of two vehicles, two out of three. Even those vehicles that had been blown up on anti-tank mines in two weeks were already returning to service,” says Rymaruk.

He adds: “We already have the first feedback: Americans say, “How do you even return such vehicles to life?,” They are stunned by this idea.”

According to Rymaruk, American technicians are used to not saving parts and changing all the faulty units at once. However, our specialists are very practical and scrupulous about limited resources, repairing broken nodes and applying every recovered part.

The idea to create mobile repair stations has many advantages and one of them is speed. Thus, the unit does not remain without transport for a long time.

The vehicle returns quickly, because it is the repair station that comes and repairs the equipment directly in the unit. It also saves money that the state would spend transporting the broken HMMWV across the country for repairs.

“I am very impressed by this project, it is cool when you have the opportunity to create something, bringing added value. You set the pace, you show the state how to do it,” says Andrii.