Russian Combat Vehicles Not Tested on Pigs – Firm

MOSCOW, November 28 (RIA Novosti) – A leading Russian maker of armored fighting vehicles (AFV) denied on Wednesday that its products are pig-tested.

A video demonstrated at a recent conference on AFVs in the Moscow Region showed a pig loaded into a combat vehicle that was then blown up, media reported earlier, citing an unidentified conference goer who admitted the footage contained no visuals of exploded swine.

But Military Industrial Company LLC only tests its vehicles on sensor-loaded dummies, a company spokesman told RIA Novosti.

Dummies were used during recent tests of the Tigr high-mobility vehicle, and the upcoming tests of the Medved mine resistant ambush protected vehicle and the Vold high-mobility vehicle, set for 2013, will also utilize anthropomorphic test devices, not animals, said the spokesman.

But he added that testing military equipment on livestock is a global trend. Pentagon admitted in 2009 to blasting pigs during tests of body armor.

In June, a Russian military equipment maker was reported to have been testing its pneumatic crowd control gun on pigs. Though supposedly non-lethal, the device, which fires giant shuttlecocks, was shown in a YouTube video killing a pig with a volley of projectiles.