The Soviets came up with some novel solutions for moving heavy anti-tank weapons
In the days of the Cold War, the Soviet VDV (airborne) forces were always particularly well equipped with heavy weapons, to a significantly greater degree than any equivalent NATO forces. The relatively well-known ASU-57 and later SU-85 (ASU-85) airborne self-propelled guns provided mobile anti-tank support, and from the 1970s the BMD airborne combat vehicle series gave Soviet airborne forces their own equivalent to the BMP mechanised infantry combat vehicle (MICV).
But in the early post-war years, the modification of a conventional anti-tank gun gave the fledgeling Soviet Army VDV forces a particularly novel solution to a practical problem, namely how to move heavy anti-tank weapons other than by manual effort after they had been parachute-landed alongside airborne infantry when support vehicles such as the GAZ-69 may not be available.
