page_title: Infantry fighting vehicle
section_title: Early Cold War
hierarchical_section_title: Infantry fighting vehicle / History / Early Cold War
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Reportage Bundeswehr Leopardpanzer, Munsterlager, KTrS III [Munsterlager, Truppenübungsplatz in der Lüneburger Heide]
context_page_description: An infantry fighting vehicle, also known as a mechanized infantry combat vehicle, is a type of armoured fighting vehicle used to carry infantry into battle and provide direct-fire support. The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe defines an infantry fighting vehicle as "an armoured combat vehicle which is designed and equipped primarily to transport a combat infantry squad, and which is armed with an integral or organic cannon of at least 20 millimeters calibre and sometimes an antitank missile launcher". IFVs often serve both as the principal weapons system and as the mode of transport for a mechanized infantry unit.
  Infantry fighting vehicles are distinct from armored personnel carriers, which are transport vehicles armed only for self-defense and not specifically engineered to fight on their own. IFVs are designed to be more mobile than tanks and are equipped with a rapid-firing autocannon or a large conventional gun; they may include side ports for infantrymen to fire their personal weapons while on board.
context_section_description: The infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) concept evolved directly out of that of the armored personnel carrier (APC). During the Cold War, there was an increasing trend towards fitting heavier and heavier weapons systems on an APC chassis to deliver suppressive covering fire as infantry debussed from the vehicle's troop compartment. With the growing mechanization of infantry units worldwide, some armies also came to believe that the embarked personnel should fire their weapons from inside the protection of the APC and only fight on foot as a last resort. These two trends led to the IFV, which had firing ports in the troop compartment and a crew-manned weapons system. The IFV established a new niche between combat vehicles which functioned primarily as armored weapons-carriers and APCs.
  During the 1950s, Soviet, US, and most Western European armies had adopted tracked APCs. In 1958, however, the newly-organized Bundeswehr adopted the Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 (also known simply as the SPz 12-3), which resembled a conventional tracked APC but carried a turret-mounted 20 mm autocannon that enabled it to engage other armored vehicles. The SPz 12-3 was the first purpose-built IFV. The Bundeswehr's doctrine called for mounted infantry to fight and maneuver alongside tank formations rather than simply being ferried to the edge of the battlefield before dismounting. Each SPz 12-3 could carry five troops in addition to a three- man crew. Despite this, it lacked firing ports, forcing the embarked infantry to expose themselves through open hatches to return fire.
  As the SPz 12-3 was being inducted into service, the French and Austrian armies adopted new APCs which possessed firing ports, allowing embarked infantry to observe and fire their weapons from inside the vehicle. These were known as the AMX-VCI and Saurer 4K, respectively. Austria subsequently introduced an IFV variant of the Saurer 4K which carried a 20 mm autocannon, making it the first vehicle of this class to possess both firing ports and a turreted weapons system. In the mid-1960s, the Swedish Army also adopted a variant of the Pansarbandvagn 302 APC which carried a 20 mm autocannon. Following the trend towards converting preexisting APCs into IFVs, the Dutch, US, and Belgian armies experimented with a variety of modified M113s during the late 1960s; these were collectively identified as the AIFV. The first US M113-based IFV appeared in 1969; known as the XM765, it had a sharply angled hull, ten vision blocks, a cupola-mounted 20 mm autocannon. The XM765 design was rejected for service but later became the basis for the very similar Dutch YPR-765. The YPR-765 had five firing ports and a 25 mm autocannon with a co-axial machine gun.
  The Soviet Army had fielded its first tracked APC, the BTR-50, in 1957. Its first wheeled APC, the BTR-152, had been designed as early as the late 1940s. Early versions of both these lightly armored vehicles were open-topped and carried only general-purpose machine guns for armament. As Soviet strategists became more preoccupied with the possibility of a war involving weapons of mass destruction, they became convinced of the need to deliver mounted troops to a battlefield without exposing them to the radioactive fallout from an atomic weapon. The IFV concept was received favorably because it would enable a Soviet infantry squad to fight from inside their vehicles when operating in contaminated environments. Design work on a new tracked IFV began in the late 1950s and the first prototype appeared as the Obyekt 765 in 1961. After the Soviets had evaluated and rejected a number of other wheeled and tracked prototypes, the Obyekt 765 was accepted for service; it entered serial production as the BMP-1 in 1966. In addition to being amphibious and superior in cross-country mobility to its predecessors, the BMP-1 carried a 73mm smoothbore cannon, a co-axial PKT machine gun, and a launcher for 9M14 Malyutka anti-tank missiles. Its hull was also heavily armored enough to resist .50 caliber armor-piercing ammunition along its frontal arc. Eight firing port
caption: West German troops aboard a Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30, the world's first IFV. (1965)
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