Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are supported by Iran, crafted a new combat vehicle on Toyota Land Cruiser 79-series chassis equipped with a weapon turret of a Russian-made BTR-80A armoured personnel carrier.
The crazy Land Cruiser Frankenstein features a weapon turret mounted with a quick-firing, dual-feed 30mm 2A72 automatic cannon and a coaxial 7.62mm machine gun. The cannon has a muzzle velocity of 960m/s and can fire at a rate of 330 rounds per minute.
The turret is called BPPU and is equipped with sights 1PZ-9 (day) and TPN-3 or TPN-3-42 “Kristall” (night). In production and service since 1994.
These combat infantry vehicles were purchased by the Yemeni Ministry of Defense even before the outbreak of the civil war. In total, more than 90 BTR-80A were delivered to Yemen.
The weapon turret from the BTR-80A armored personnel carrier was installed on an armored version of Toyota Land Cruiser 79 produced by the Jordanian national defense industrial holding KADDB.