Russian soldiers have at their disposal the self-propelled anti-tank missile system (ATGM) Bulsae-4 M-2018 NLOS ATGM manufactured by North Korea. Later it turned out that this complex has Soviet roots, writes military expert Sergei Marzhetsky.
According to him, Bulsae-4 is a "Korean with Soviet genes." Marzhetsky added that the ATGM is an armored vehicle with a 6x6 wheel arrangement, visually resembling a shortened Soviet BTR-80A.
The KPA army initially relied on light armored vehicles of Soviet and Chinese production. These were BTR-40, BTR-50, BTR-152 and BTR-60PB. Chinese comrades supplied Pyongyang with the YW531A tracked amphibious armored personnel carrier, from which the North Korean Tracked 323 armored personnel carrier originated.
He recalled that as part of the partnership agreement between North Korea and Russia in the military industry, signed in 2001, Pyongyang received a batch of BTR-80A. North Korean engineers studied its technical characteristics and used it in the production of their own wheeled armored vehicles.
So, in 2010, the DPRK presented the M2010 floating wheeled infantry fighting vehicle. It is a combination of technical solutions and components from the BTR-60PB, BTR-80A, BTR 323 and the PT-76B light floating tank. The basic version of the infantry fighting vehicle received licensed copies of the Vladimirov large-caliber tank machine gun (KPVT), the Kalashnikov modernized tank machine gun (PKMT) and the 9K310 Igla-1E man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) as weapons.