Electronic warfare was a theme of 2018, these AFVs show an array of raised communications aerials and dishes.
Reaching Patriot Park on public transport, the first impression is the hugeness of the site, first the vast car park, then the enormous museum complex.
In the main Park compound, the usual outdoor collection of Soviet tanks and missile launchers is replaced by hundreds of military vehicles in the annual Armiya Expo arms fair, along with manufacturer’s stands and civilian military adapted vehicles.
The large exhibition halls and pavilions of the compound become home to suppliers exhibiting all the equipment that an army may need from bandages to battledress, and from finance to firearms. Other exhibition halls in the larger Patriot Park site are also open with their year-round displays, but locating the whereabouts of specific items of interest is less easy as displays are changed and rotated from time to time. Site plans and exhibit location boards are somewhat vague.
There is much to see for the Armiya visitor, although the main attraction is the huge variety of vehicles in the main compound - a bewildering array, not only gun tanks but armoured cars, APCs, trucks, trailers, buses, boats and ambulances, grouped together in various support services or functionality. There are command and communication trucks, engineer and bridging vehicles, repair and recovery vehicles, decontamination vehicles and laboratory trailers, smoke generating trucks, kitchen and messing trucks, airborne AFVs rigged for airdrops, missile launchers exhibited with their associated command vehicles and tracking radars.
Reflecting the changing nature of the battlefield, electronic warfare featured strongly in 2018 with aerial drones, robot vehicles and their radars, guidance systems and control vehicles. Manufacturers, keen for new orders, show their most up to date versions, some as special export models, allowing a choice of optional extras and environmental adaptations. Some of these were in action at the Alabino demonstration ground, the subject of the first part of this article.