Pbv 302

PBV3029..JPG (40137 bytes)

 9907 hits on target since 1999-02-20

Ever since the first world war the need for some sort of APC (armored personel carrier) has been evident to accompany the tanks into action. The first attempt was to make 50 Mk IV tanks into a Mk IX APC with 50 infantrymen in each in 1918. The results are unknown. Between 1918 and 1939 it was mostly Great Britain and France that experimented with troopcarries but the resuluts were not encouraging and they reverted to have their tanks supported by common "leg"infantry. The germans however had developed the Sdkfz 250 and 251 halftracks that were great successes. The americans followed suite with the very successful M3 halftrack. The first fully tracked APC was the canadian Ram Kangaroo that simply was a "deturreted" ordinary Ram tank. In Sweden the KP-bil m/42 was developed by armoring a truckchassi and adding all-wheel drive. A simple but succesful solution but with some limitations.

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The KP-bil m/42 in original version

After the war it was appreciated that despite the relative success of the halftracks it was better to go for either fully tracked or fully wheeled vehicles and to accept the inherent sttrengths and weaknesses in the concepts rather than to produce an inbetween that has neither. The americans went through the M75 and M59 APC:s and finally produced the M113 that has been built in over 50000 vehicles. The germans started with their own Spz Hs 30 but adopted the M113 and later the succesful Marder in the seventies. Britain prodoced the wheeled Saracen and in the sixties the tracked FV432 that basicly is a copy of the M113. The Soviets developed the wheeled BTR-152 in 1946 and in the fifties the BTR-50 tracked APC. In the sixties the wheeled BTR-60 came that has since been developed into the BTR-70, the BTR-80 and finally the BTR-90. In the late sixties the BMP-1 was introduced.  In the fifties Sweden recognized the evolving threat of nuclearcapability and chemical warfare that demands dispersed deployment and thus high mobility to quickly concentrate the dispersed forces to neutralize an amphibiuos landing or airborne assault as well as the fact that the battlefield would be littered with lightly armed but mobile APC:s. The KP was not the answer to these problems. In 1961 a new vehicle, the Pbv 301, was ordered. It was a rebuilt Strv m/41 and only a stopgap vehicle. It was armed with a 20 mm automatic cannon and the infantry squad could fight mounted which made it revolutionary nevertheless.

The Pbv 301

 Just as the Pbv 301 were started to be delivered the army ordered the successor Pbv 302 to be delivered starting in 1966. The requirements the vehicle had to meet were :

A number of proposals were studied from Hägglunds, Bofors, Landsverk as well as foreign concepts. For final evaluation the Hägglunds proposal and the american M113 were selected. In the trials the Pbv 302 showed itself to be clearly superior. It is probably the only combat vehicle ever to have gone unmodified from prototype into seriesproduction. The first vehicle was delivered in Febuary 1966.

The Pbv 302 weighs 13,5 tons and thus offers protection against small arms fire as well as artilleryfire. It has shown itself to withstand heavy mashinegun fire from most angles. While unable to stop anti-tank weapons it has also proved to be able to take hits from anti-tankmissiles with only minor damage as result. It is a very resilient vehicle and although a tankmine will damage it severly it has proven to offer protection better than anticipated. Add on ceramic armor and anti-spall liners have been developed and were used in Bosnia.

The Volvo Penta 6-cylinder THD-100 B Diesel gives 270 hp which gives the vehicle a top speed of 65 km/h,  the top speed swimming is 7 km/h. The transmission is a Volvo Penta R-60 with 8 forward gears and two reverse gears. The tracks exist in two versions. The american M113 track and the swedish M70 track. The vehicle has torsionbar suspension.

The Pbv 302 is armed with a 20mm automatic cannon m/47D Hispano-Suiza HS 804 that was used on the fighter aircraft J-29 Tunnan. When the guns were mounted they still were accopmpanied by the gunbooks from the aircraft telling all about how many round fired at what date and which aircraft. The gun is gasoperated and initially had a rate of fire of 540 rounds a minute. This was lowered to 480 round a minute. Muzzlevelocity is 800 meters/second. Semiautomatic fire as well as full automatic is possible. Until the late eighties renovation there were two types of ammuntion. The AP round used  10-round magazines and the HE  linked belts of 135. The belt was fed via a beltfeeder that was complicated and required lots of maintainance to work well. Today both have been discarded and 30 round magazines are used. The two different sorts of amunition are being replaced by a singe multi-purpose MPHC-T round. The standard procedure when engaging a hard target is to fire single rounds until a hit is scored (almost always with the first round) and then groups of three rapid single shots are fired until the target is knocked out. At close range full automatic fire can be used. Soft targets are engaged with full automatic fire 3-6 round bursts that are aimed slightly short of the target to achieve maximum schrapnel density on target. The turret can be traversed with two different speeds. The gunner has 8x magnification in his sight. A Ksp 58 (MAG 58) can be mounted above the automatic cannon in peacetime since there are no blank round for the cannon. In doublesided maneuvers fire is marked by firing the mashinegun via the normal drills. It can also be used in early gunnery drills to save money by firing 7,62 mm tracers in stead of the much more expensive 20mm amunition. The vehicle is also fitted with smokedischargers for close protection. The anti-airsight has been changed from a simple ringsight to a much more modern system that is complicated but allows good hitpropability against slowmovers.

The infantrysquad can fight either mounted or dismounted. In the case of a mounted assault the combathatches are opened by the commander and the infantrymen engage the enemy with assaultrifles, mashineguns and handgrenades as well as the gun of the Pbv itself. While 8 men can be seated in the fighting compartment, three on each side can stand in the open hatches.

Mounted assault

The Pbv 302 is used by ATGM units as well as by mechanized infantry units. These are different internaly to accomodate the Rb 56 BILL system and only seats five soldiers in the fighting compartment. 

There are several different versions in use.

Two more vehicles were developed using the Pbv 302 as basis.

Neither of the two above mentioned are in active service having been replaced by further purchases of Bgbv 81 (Centurion ARV) and Brobv 971 (BLG 60 bridge on T-55 chassi). The Bgbv 82 was not a great success while the Brobv 941 simply had reached the end of their useful servicelife.

The Pbv 302 has been an extremely successful design that is still thought of as a splendid vehicle. A bit short on performance against hard targets of today it is a sure killer of soft targets and with good mobility, ease of maintainance and high reliability as well as inexpensive to operate it will continue in service for a few years to come. It is no longer used for armoured infantry duty, having been replaced by the more modern CV90, but serves as a vehicle for pioneers, logistics and other similar purposes. It is still on active duty in international service such as KFOR in Kosovo. Canadian soldiers in Bosnia were very impressed with it comparing it to the (in their opinion ancient) M113. Such a modern vehicle was only in their dreams. When told that it was a thirty year old vehicle they refused to believe it.