Winter Training with the 100th Mechanized Brigade’s “Marder” Crew
The 100th Mechanized Brigade’s “Marder” IFV on a training mission outside Toretsk. // Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
The engine on the 100th Mechanized Brigade’s infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) roars to life in the snowfields outside of Torestk, some 40km from Donetsk city. It’s December, and the snow marches forward alongside the long, cold approach of Christmas – the type of cold that chills your exposed skin down to the bones, and makes you curl your toes to see if you can still feel them.
Some tree cover would be nice, but today we’ve had no such luck. We’re riding in an open field alongside the 100th Mechanized in their “Marder”, a German-made Cold War-era IFV, for a training session on Berlin’s contribution to the war effort. It’s very windy.
Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
These vehicles first entered service with the West German Bundeswehr in the 1970s, during the Cold War’s height. They were designed by arms manufacturer Rheinmetall AG, a staple of the German defense industry that traces its roots back as an ammo manufactory for the German empire in the late 19th century. This means their products have been facing down Russian ordnance for over 100 years and counting, since the start of the First World War. And with the modern Russian Federation still retaining the majority of the former Soviet Union’s remaining armor reserves, there’s still plenty of opposition downrange for the Marder to showcase its skills.
Most Marder IFVs stayed within the ranks of the German military, with no exports until the late 1970s, when several chassis were exported to Brazil. Today, these IFVs are sent in aid packages to Ukraine to face down the same Soviet BMPs they would have taken on 50 years ago. Walking across the battlefield in Ukraine often feels like entering a living museum, where weapons from the interwar period are on full display alongside modern and experimental radar and drone technology.
Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
The door on the back of the metal box, with the Rheinmetall logo welded onto the hatch, lowers mechanically at a slow, methodical pace. Once it’s down, I enter alongside the crew, and the ambient temperature rises steeply, thawing my previously frozen fingers. The reinforced steel armor and diesel engine provide sufficient shelter and heat, quickly allowing us to get comfortable. One crew member says he often works up a sweat in this machine, and that during the summer, it can actually get uncomfortably hot. Ventilation is limited, and opening a hatch during combat operations is not an option, especially considering the advent of FPV drone-dropped grenades, which see the open hatch as a perfect bullseye to aim for. This particular Marder has been up-armored with anti-drone cages on its sides, suggesting that the crew takes this threat very seriously.
The Marder also fits up to 8 infantry members, providing much more room and comfort than similarly classed vehicles. This is a war swimming with Soviet-era tech, with no chassis as well-known or plentiful as the BMP, which entered service roughly a decade before the Marder. Mass production of these vehicles enabled the Soviet Union to solidify its mechanized warfare operations, the basis of their military doctrine. While both Russia and former Soviet territories like Ukraine have these vehicles in large supply, their protection and comfortability level leave much to be desired. The BMP was intentionally designed to be lightweight and low-cost, which meant sacrificing a more comfortable operating environment and additional layers of armor plating. While BMP models stand at a weight of roughly 10 tons, with the latest BMP-3 weighing 18 tons, the Marder stands in comparison at 30 tons – which makes the BMP look like a tin can in comparison.
Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
As we start towards the training range, I can feel the chassis jerk forward. Inside, though, we remain relatively stable as the vehicle traverses up and down multiple inclines. There are small window slits along the vehicle’s body which allow us to look out, but with every window a potential weak spot, not much is visible.
As a workaround, the vehicle’s turret sports a small camera hooked up to an internal screen, showing what the driver needs to see. Ammunition tubs sit in rows lined up next to the driver, and interlocking 20mm shells climb upward towards the chamber of the turret gun. The vehicle also comes equipped with a secondary mounted MG 3 machine gun, which fires NATO-standard 7.62 rounds, plus an ATGM launcher, provided missiles are provisioned in advance. However, with such munitions in short supply and needed for combat operations at the front, today’s training mostly encompasses the main gun and secondary MG.
Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
Once we arrive at the range, I wait for the exit hatch to lower, and think how much seconds like these count when trying to unload a crew into a trench. When we finally exit the vehicle, cold rushes in and chills our bones once more. Later, during the ride back atop the Marder, when operating my camera with frozen fingers became nearly impossible, I suddenly come to understand the comfort of riding on a frontline transport inside one of these machines.
Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
As we arrive at the range itself, infantry scatter around the field, in the midst of their small arms training exercises. They practice their aim with standard-issue AK-74s against various opposing forces: stacks of tires, cardboard boxes, and little metal targets. By my count, the enemy is losing badly, and with the arrival of our armored IFV, the cardboard boxes are sure to get routed in short order.
I previously embedded in Luhansk with a BMP-2 crew, but as our IFV shoves its way through the training ground past crowds of exposed soldiers, I can see just how large the Marder is in comparison – perhaps 18 inches taller than the 8-foot BMP. The Soviets sought to prioritize a smaller vehicle profile, one of many sacrifices made in pursuit of a low-cost, low-profile design portfolio. This has exposed significant operational downsides.
Another point of difference is the main cannon’s fire rate. As the Marder crew pushes forward, the gunner opens up a barrage of 20mm rounds. Each cycle sends a loud crack reverberating across the landscape, and spent casings spew from the side of the vehicle as the cannon shells kick up dirt down range. I previously watched the BMP-2 mow down trees in the Serebryansky forest at a rate of 300 – 500 rounds per minute, but the Marder pours out between 800 and 1,000 rounds across the same timeframe. The trees face this brutal onslaught for a bit longer, before the crew switches over to their secondary-mounted MG 3 to drum down targets closer up range.
Photo credit: Dylan Burns for OffBeat Research
After the training session is completed, and I’d stepped in every single sneaky, snow-covered mud puddle within my general radius, we stop to talk with the gunner of the Marder crew, a man in his 30s from western Ukraine whose work has been mostly constrained to the Donetsk region. He says the team will often assist in transporting infantry to and from the front line, offering fire support as they do so in order to cover the dismounting soldiers. This also means providing medical evacuations for soldiers, both wounded and killed. Keeping with Russia’s long tradition of conducting double-tap strikes on first responders, the team has also been attacked by drones while working, and has sustained several direct hits from enemy drones – but the up-armored cages have done their job, and in all cases, the crew was able to escape unharmed. The gunner also told us that the crew trained for several months on the American-made Bradley system, in case their current ride was ever to experience a total loss.
Ukrainian armored crews far prefer this system to many of the older Soviet alternatives like the BMP systems, he says – but even a BMP is better than the common case of civilian vehicles painted green, which are utilized for troop transport to pick up slack when there aren’t enough armored transport vehicles available. More than anything, he said, there is a desire for Ukraine’s Western allies to provide additional armored vehicles like the Marder, so crews providing the essential role of troop transport and medevac from the front have a fighting chance against shrapnel and enemy drones. Most importantly, human lives are at stake.
