A PC-065B in Japanese service.
Wikimedia Commons
In the 38 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, Japan has pledged around $10 billion in aid to the war-ravaged country. But this aid is strictly “nonlethal,” according to Japanese international relations expert Higashino Atsuko.
That might surprise the Ukrainian brigades riding in Japanese engineering vehicles. A Japanese-made Morooka PC-065B—a five-ton, tracked vehicle with a cargo bed and a three-ton crane—made its first appearance along the front line in Ukraine in a recent video.
Back in May 2023, the Japanese government pledged to Kyiv a batch of 101 vehicles, including Toyota trucks and some of the PC-065Bs. The vehicles began arriving in Ukraine via Poland a few weeks later.
The PC-065Bs are unarmored and unarmed, but they perform an important front-line role that puts them and their crews in harm’s way—and indirectly inflicts equal harm on Russian forces.
With their excellent mobility across mud, capacious cargo beds and cranes, the PC-065Bs can help engineers build the bunkers and other fortifications that help outnumbered Ukrainian infantry survive artillery and drone bombardment and repel powerful Russian assaults.
A PC-065B on the front line.
Via OSINTTechnical
Going mudding
The PC-065Bs joined hundreds of similar logistics vehicles in Ukrainian service—some optimized for construction, others better suited for cargo-hauling missions or ambulance duty. These ex-Australian M-113AS4 Armored Logistics Vehicles, Swedish-made BV-206s and BVS-10s and ex-Norwegian NM199s share certain key characteristics.
They’re tracked and lightweight for their size, which translates into excellent drivability in the glue-like mud that dominates rural Ukraine in the spring. The same mobility is useful year-round in the swamps of southern Ukraine.
It’s not for no reason that the BVS-10s have been spotted in the ambulance role with the new 40th Coastal Defense Brigade, a Ukrainian marine corps unit that defends the right bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast.
The downside of these vehicles’ lightness is that they’re extremely vulnerable to Russian drones, artillery—really, any kind of firepower. In three years of hard fighting, the Ukrainians have lost around 15 of their tracked support vehicles. The losses don’t yet include any of the Japanese-made PC-065Bs.
