Tanks are not just for blowing stuff up. No, really. The US military's M1 Abrams, for example, underpins the M104 Wolverine bridge-layer. And anyone that's watched Top Gear has seen some of the crazy stuff a tank chassis can get up to. In Mother Russia, rather than exploding things in the distance, there are tanks that exist to put out fires.
This is the Omsktransmash JMP, and it's what happens when you pluck a bit of Soviet-era armor and convert it to fight fires. There's a very, very large V-shaped plow on the front, and the on-board water tanks can hold up to 1,320 gallons of water which can then be sprayed at conflagrations up to 330 feet away. And if you just need to get as much water on a target as possible, the main "monitor" can eject nearly 1,600-gallons per minute (which sounds like a lot, so something may have been lost in translation/conversion). Based on these stats alone, it wouldn't be hard to picture one of these hulking things battling a Californian wildfire.
Of course, Russian tank parts aren't exactly common in the US. The JMP is cobbled together from two pieces of Soviet-era armor – the T-72, which is kind of like the AK-47 of the tank world, and the slightly newer T-80. It's not clear which parts of which tank are featured here, but the result backs up our idea of using one of these to battle forest fires. Fully loaded and on smooth pavement, it can do 25 miles per hour and cover distances "no less" than 155 miles, according to Omsktransmash's website. It's operated by a crew of just three. So yes, it'd be very good for wildfires.
But that's only one of the tasks it's designed for. According to a Google translation from the company's website, in addition to forest fires, this brute was built to "extinguish fires and conduct rescue operations in the arsenals, bases and warehouses storing explosives, [and] clearing the aisles to the fire."
According to Jalopnik, Omsktransmash has already built two JMPs, both of which are slated for delivery to the Russian military.
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This is the Omsktransmash JMP, and it's what happens when you pluck a bit of Soviet-era armor and convert it to fight fires. There's a very, very large V-shaped plow on the front, and the on-board water tanks can hold up to 1,320 gallons of water which can then be sprayed at conflagrations up to 330 feet away. And if you just need to get as much water on a target as possible, the main "monitor" can eject nearly 1,600-gallons per minute (which sounds like a lot, so something may have been lost in translation/conversion). Based on these stats alone, it wouldn't be hard to picture one of these hulking things battling a Californian wildfire.
Of course, Russian tank parts aren't exactly common in the US. The JMP is cobbled together from two pieces of Soviet-era armor – the T-72, which is kind of like the AK-47 of the tank world, and the slightly newer T-80. It's not clear which parts of which tank are featured here, but the result backs up our idea of using one of these to battle forest fires. Fully loaded and on smooth pavement, it can do 25 miles per hour and cover distances "no less" than 155 miles, according to Omsktransmash's website. It's operated by a crew of just three. So yes, it'd be very good for wildfires.
But that's only one of the tasks it's designed for. According to a Google translation from the company's website, in addition to forest fires, this brute was built to "extinguish fires and conduct rescue operations in the arsenals, bases and warehouses storing explosives, [and] clearing the aisles to the fire."
According to Jalopnik, Omsktransmash has already built two JMPs, both of which are slated for delivery to the Russian military.
Related Video:
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