A U.S. Army M113 Armored Personnel Carrier of 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment provides an overwatch while conducting recon operations during exercise Allied Spirit at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, Jan. 26, 2015. Exercise Allied Spirit includes more than 2,000 participants from Canada, Hungary, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the U.S. Allied Spirit is exercising tactical interoperability and testing secure communications within Alliance members. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Tyler Kingsbury/Released) Public Domain.

Known stateside simply as the “one-one-three” or “track”, the M113 is a fully tracked armored personnel carrier (APC) that was adopted by the U.S. military in 1960.

Make fun of the Russians fielding Soviet-era equipment all you want, kids.

Just remember, the M113 was first conceived the same year NASA was established and the U.S. launched its first satellite — Explorer I.

The U.S. sent 200 M113s to Ukraine back in 2020.

Then Germany sent 11.

Spain sent 20.

Portugal sent 14.

And Lithuania sent 20.

Geez, it’s almost as if nobody wants these 64-year-old APCs in their arsenals anymore.

So, let’s talk about the M113 and how it’s supposed to be used in combat; and why the U.S. is in such a hurry to offload these geriatric tracks.

The M113 is simply an expensive Lyft or Uber

The M113 was designed to ferry troops to the front line, drop them off, and get the hell out of Dodge.

The M113 is NOT meant to stick around and fight.

Its armor is made out of 5083 Aluminum Alloy at 28–44 millimeters thick.

According to the U.S. Army’s TRADOC research, the M113 armor can only withstand “small arms fire up to 7.62 mm ball rounds and artillery shell splinters.”

The 7.62 mm is the standard round of Russia’s Kalashnikov family of rifles and submachine guns.

AKMS with a stamped Type 4B receiver (top) and an AK-47 with a milled Type 2A receiver. Public Domain.

This means anything the Russians have larger than a standard assault rifle will slice right through the M113 like a hot knife through warm Медовик (Russian honey cake) — except possibly the 113’s front armor.

But the temptation for various armies to use the M113 as an assault vehicle, or in support of tanks, is sometimes too strong to resist.

Historically, when this vehicle is implemented using the wrong tactics, catastrophe strikes.

When the M113 sticks around during combat, previous users like the ARVN in South Vietnam have learned that their machine gunners are too exposed to suppress the enemy, which leaves the platform itself vulnerable to incoming fire.

ARVN troops aboard an M113 move up towards the Dong Ha River. Public Domain.

The Americans learned this firsthand when they later deployed to Vietnam, and U.S. Army infantry commanders would ignore the official doctrine and use the M113 to cover their infantry as they advanced on the enemy.

Makes sense — I would probably do the same thing to keep my grunts safe.

Because of this, the U.S. Army started producing their own armor upgrade kits to supplement the weak, aircraft-grade aluminum that came standard on the track.

These often-unsanctioned modifications made the M113 too heavy to float, completely removing its amphibious applications.

In 1982, during the First Lebanon War, the Israeli version of the M113 performed so poorly that commanders had to order troops to not use the vehicle in combat.

Subsequent studies by the DoD found that they could modify the M113 enough to make it lethal in combat, but at that point, millions of dollars and 4,000 additional lbs. later, why bother — especially with more capable vehicles, like the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, coming online.

In the early days of the Second Iraq War, the U.S. sent hundreds of these death traps to Iraq as a stopgap measure to address the HMMWV crisis — the Humvee was no match for roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices.

The Humvee wasn’t built to withstand explosions from below. 2015 Marine Corps photo. Public Domain.

So, what does the U.S. do with thousands of M113s that need to be either modernized or demilitarized at great cost?

The cost alone of storage and demilitarization of 1000 M113s is $31 million.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that the U.S. has been holding a fire sale to sell them to any country who wants to buy these aluminum coffins.

In 2010, the U.S. sold 1026 M113s, which had been sitting in storage for 20 years, to the new Iraqi army.

And most recently, the U.S. was more than happy to send 200 of these bad boys to Ukraine to help in their struggle against Russian aggression.

Except, depending on how the Ukrainians use them, this “gift” could help the Russians more than the Ukrainians.

This week, video coming out of Ukraine during their counteroffensive on Kherson shows that the Ukrainians are making use of numerous M113s, some of them still sporting their desert livery from the U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let’s hope that U.S. Army trainers gave the Ukrainians a block of instruction on the proper use of the M113 before turning them over.

When used properly, the M113 is a cheap and easy way to get troops to the front quickly, or, if needed, evacuate troops quickly.

If the Ukrainians can avoid the trap that so many other armies have fallen into, including the U.S., the M113 can supplement other mechanized operations in a way that may result in gains for Ukrainian forces.

But if they submit to the temptation to use them in combat, especially in highly dangerous urban areas, the Ukrainians will understand why the U.S. was in such a hurry to offload these tracks.

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