Ukrainian Engineers Localized Production of Spare Parts for Western Armored Vehicles

Ukrainian engineers are restoring armored vehicles that Western partners had sent for dismantling for spare parts.

This was reported in an interview with Militarnyi by Major Ihor Simutin of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one of the best specialists in vehicle repair in the Logistics Forces.

According to him, at a certain stage of the war, the US began to saturate the Ukrainian fleet with fourth-category equipment in order to use it for spare parts for the existing fleet. This applies in general to M-ATVs and HMMWVs.

“At the first stage, HMMWVs were taken from US military units in storage, most of which were serviceable. But in order to saturate us more, they began to supply fourth-category vehicles,” Simutin said.

The fourth category of serviceability means that the equipment is formally considered unfit for use. The only category worse than this is the fifth category, which is essentially scrap metal.

However, the repairmen refused to dismantle them and returned such vehicles to service.

“We repaired one of two or three, and then we even got those and continued working on them,” the officer added.

Some of the armored vehicles arrived in Ukraine directly from their previous service locations in arid regions of the world. During technical inspection and flushing of the systems, Ukrainian engineers found specific ‘Iraqi clay’ and fine sand in the tanks and filters.

In addition to sand, some units of equipment had clear signs of having been in water.

In parallel with the repairs, the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched a large-scale program to localize the production of spare parts.

“All types of rubber products, all silent blocks, bushings, dust covers, armored windshields of any class, plastic elements, plastic hoods, metal roofs, metal doors, radiator cores, radiators of any type, repair of all types of engines and automatic transmissions — all of this is localized in the Armed Forces,” Simutin listed.

This was a necessary step to reduce dependence on long delivery times for original components from abroad.