With the outbreak of the First World War it became more pressing for Russia to develop domestically produced armoured vehicles and by 19 September 1914 the first unit of the Russian Imperial Army equipped with armoured vehicles was sent to the front - the "First Auto-Mobile Machine Gun Company" which used the fully domestically produced machine gun equipped armoured car the "Russo-Balt type C". In order to provide fire support to the armoured cars the company also had three foreign made trucks with artillery guns mounted onto their bodies, one of these, the :de:Mannesmann-MULAG was also armoured. Military use quickly demonstrated the high demand for, and effectiveness of, armoured vehicles in battle, although it became clear at the same time that the "Mannessmann" was not yet sufficiently developed. It was simply a truck with an artillery gun mounted on the back protected by basic armour. As a result, the Main Military Technical Directorate of the Russian Imperial Army took the decision to form new auto-mobile machine gun platoons which would include two machine gun armed vehicles and an armoured vehicle equipped with a cannon which would be more technically advanced than the "Mannessman Mulag".
