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Pansarbandvagn Pbv 501

The Pansarbandvagn 501 is a Swedish upgrade of the BMP–1 sold by Berlin to Stockholm. He hails from East Germany - from the arsenal of the GDR army. The sale took place after the collapse of the socialist bloc. The Pbv 501 vehicle is the Soviet BMP-1 which in its first variant entered Soviet service in 1967. When Sweden in 1993 bought the former East German MTLB for Pbv 401, there were not enough to fill the need within the Norrland and infantry brigades. So Sweden wanted to take advantage of the opportunity in the agreement about Pbv 401 to also try BMP-1. Five vehicles were purchased in 1994, four for different types of tests and the fifth for destructive testing [shooting attempts?].

The test results were positive, so in June 1994 it was decided to buy 350 vehicles. Sweden actually bought 433, where 83 were to be used for spare parts. As the vehicles had been outdoors for a long time, renovation and modification (REMO) was needed to be done to achieve Swedish standards on them. In a Czech factory, the wagons were completely disassembled, the hull was blasted and the engine, gearbox, etc. were completely renovated, after which the entire vehicle was painted. For this, they were provided with new lighting and reflectors. Thereafter, Pbv 501 is delivered continuously with twelve wagons a month from 1996 to 2001 to Sweden.

With the mechanization of the army and the transition to the new organizational structures IB 2000 and NB 2000, respectively, Pbv 501 was initially intended to be assigned to the Norrland brigades and Pbv 401 infantry brigades. When the passability in snow-covered terrain turned out to be too challenging for Pbv 501, a change was made so the infantry brigades in southern Sweden were assigned Pbv 501 and the Norrland brigades instead got Pbv 401.

Pbv 501 was available in two versions: Pbv 501 for troop transport by a firing squad and Stripbv 5011 as a combat command vehicle for company commanders. As part of the modernization (REMO) program, they deemed the ATGM-firing platform to be superflous and removed it. The autoloader added only discomfort for the gunner, and so was removed as well. - Additionally, some specimens of the Pbv 501 were converted to command vehicles (to be used by company commanders/staff) where it had exchanged some space of the troop compartment for extra radios and facilities for the staff.

The small arms mounts in the gunports were adapted to the equipment used by the Swedish Army. A new fire suppression system was incorporated into the vehicle, which unlike the original does not contain CFCs. In addition, parts of the interior that contained asbestos were replaced. Some parts of the upper hull have been "roughened" to improve operator safety when moving around the wet vehicle.

Due to the removal of the autoloader and the ATGM-firing platform, and there existed no plans to mount a replacement of their choice, as the Pbv 501 family only served as a stop-gap filler while domestic development of one was in progress.

Conscription training barely had time to get started with more than one company per brigade before a decision on unit closures came. Following a decision on the unit reduction, the vehicles were stored and in 2005 the decision was made to phase them out. Around 250 vehicles had less than 120 km on the road. The decommissioning was completed in 2010 after the Czech company responsible for the renovation bought back the vehicles.

It was since discovered that some of the vehicles were resold to Iraq. In the spring of 2015, the Czech Republic began delivering 280 Pbv 501s to the Iraqi army to compensate for losses suffered in the fight against Islamic State terrorists. The Iraqi Pbv 501s were subsequently involved in the battle for the city of Mosul, which lasted from October 2016 to July 2017.