About the BTR-70

The BTR-70 is an eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier. BTR stands for Bronetransportyor (literally "armored transporter"), originally developed during the late 1960s under the industrial designator GAZ-4905. On August 21, 1972, it was accepted into service and would later be exported to the Warsaw Pact and other allies. Introduced as a successor to the earlier BTR-60, it most closely resembles a BTR-60PB. Other improvements include heavier armor plating and tires less prone to puncture. In other respects, the vehicle is very similar to the BTR-60PB, with a more powerful petrol engine configuration and armament of a primary heavy machine gun and secondary PKT machine gun on a roof-mounted turret.

The model consists of 8 grey sprues, 10 brown sprues (indi track links), 1 clear sprue, and a small decal sheet containing 4 small dials for the dashboard. The bottom hull, hood/grill, and main cab come as individual parts.

The instructions are clearly drawn and consist of eight pages with eight steps, plus a parts map. There is also a color profile sheet.

The molding is crisp and free of flash, pin marks, and sink marks. The model is very well detailed and engineered, and the fit is extremely good throughout.

The cab has steering levers, gearshift, and hand brake. However, they are on the left hand side and should be on the right. (Thanks to Ian Sadler for showing me drawings from the manuals). Some modelers may want to fix this. The cab doors are separate pieces. I have them pressed into place with no glue as I plan to show at least one open when I get the model on a base.

Background

Designed in the 1950/60’s with production beginning in 1967, the T-64 was more expensive and technically complex than the T-72 which entered production shortly after. It had a crew of three and featured an electro-hydraulic autoloader for the main gun that initially was 115 mm but later upgraded to 125 mm smoothbore to maintain fire superiority over the NATO tanks then being produced. The smaller crew allowed the tank to be designed with a lower profile and drop in overall weight by 6 tons, but increased the workload for the crew in everyday tank maintenance. The T-64 was constantly updated throughout its production run of 13,000 that ended in 1985. It was a basis and test bed for development of the T-80 tank. The T-64 would only be used by the Soviet army and never exported, and upon the breakup of the Soviet Union it would remain in the arsenals of constituent republics. The largest operator of T-64s outside of Russia currently is the Ukraine.

It has been 35 years since a Japanese firm named Peerless released their 1/35th scale kit of the Raupenschlepper Ost (RSO), a fully tracked vehicle designed to help deal with the thick mud of the Eastern Front’s “roads” which eventually turned to slippery, icy mud with the coming of winter. The Peerless kit (Peerless/Max in North America) molds eventually found their way to Italeri, where they soldier on to the present day. This kit of the RSO/01 is Dragon Models’ second release in a series of RSO vehicles, this kit being a standard cargo version. It is a state-of-the-art kit that surpasses the Peerless/Italeri kit in every category.

Scaled for the ART OF TACTIC games, Zvezda has created another niche for the plastic modeler. Nine parts make up the tiny tank, ten if you add the game flag. All the parts are nicely detailed and the overall fit is pretty good. My only gripe would be the sprue connections could have been more user-friendly. I will point out that during construction I did use glue, just to tighten up the seams; maybe the typical gamer would not be bothered by this, but, as a typical modeler, it bothered me…but not a big deal. I spent around 30 minutes on the build before it went to the paint shop. Also included in the box is a game flag (to be attached to the tank) and game card. There are no decals or painting charts provided with the kit.