What's not to love? It's a UAZ with (some) armour!
Anyway, I couldn't remember if I posted this and I've gotten too lazy to look.
The BRDM-2M was pioneered by the, uh, "BRDM-2M" but not the Russian one but rather the Polish one.
The Poles noted that even though they loved this thing it had serious flaws. They especially didn't like the way you had to enter and exit the vehicle's deck hatches. The vehicle isn't short so it's a big drop to the ground and they wanted a way to get in and out quickly, it is a scout car after all. You need to get out and scout.
So the Poles had a long hard look at it and decided they didn't need the belly-wheels. Out they went and now not only could the put actual doors just after of the forward wheels but there was room inside for two scouts as well.
The Russians looked at this and thought the Poles had totally missed the point. Until the Polish vehicles worked so well in actual combat. At that point the Russians also looked at ditching the belly-wheels and adding stuff including the doors and passenger positions. However when they switched to newer radios in the 1990s they noticed that there was now room in the turret due to the smaller systems. Rather than lavish stuff on crew comfort, Russian wars are supposed to be unpleasant, they managed to cram in a mount for the AGS-17 slaved to the main armament and now had something a bit like a M1117.
Okay, new stats:
Same speed stats except the vehicle doesn't have the same obstacle crossing ability the old one had which was remarkable. Now it's just "good".
+1 AGS-17, external mount but belt fed from internal stores. I can't tell you how much ammo it carries for this but I do know the other ammunition stowage is unchanged.
+2 passengers.
(While this might not be all that common, I would make it common though, all the Polish ones had the extra passengers during the period)
