BMD-3
Infantry vehicle
The BMD-3 (Boyevaya Mashina Desanta , Russian: Боевая Машина Десанта, lit. 'Combat Vehicle of the Airborne') is a light infantry fighting vehicle originating in the Soviet Union that is fully amphibious and air-droppable with crew inside. It is intended to be used by airborne and air assault units. It is not an upgraded BMD-1 but a completely redesigned vehicle with a hydropneumatic suspension, new hull, a more powerful 2V-06-2 diesel engine and fitted with the complete turret of the BMP-2.
Development
Even before the start of the BMD-2's production, a new model of airborne infantry fighting vehicle was already envisaged by the Soviet military planners. This new type would first replace the BMD-1, and later the BMD-2. Two configurations were considered: one using the same armament as the future BMP-3, and another equipped with the BMP-2's turret. The latter option was chosen, because it would allow for a lighter vehicle (12.5 tonnes, compared to 18 tonnes for the other one). Six Object 950 prototypes were built in 1985 and 1986. The vehicle was manufactured at the Volgograd Tractor Factory in Volgograd, starting in 1990, the last year before the fall of the Soviet Union. While orders for several hundreds of BMD-3s were originally planned, the poor financial situation of the 1990s resulted in severe reductions of these orders.
“BMD-3” enters the record as infantry vehicle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what BMD-3, Infantry and vehicle can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“BMD-3” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, BMD-3, Infantry and vehicle provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2473235. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1986 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “BMD-3” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.