In 2013 T-62 will be retired from the Army after being in service for more than 50 years. Age and ammunition are the main causes for the decision. There are 900 left, and there might be some countries interested in buying them. They should go quite cheap. T-62MV can be a competitive tank in many regions.
It was a very potent tank for its time and was regularly under rated in the west.
It was the first tank to introduce a smoothbore main gun, which the British in particular criticised them fiercely for, but it seems the British were wrong and the standard main tank gun these days is a smoothbore for a variety of reasons.
(For those interested a HEAT anti armour round has its performance greatly reduced if it is spinning rapidly by rifling, while the other main round, the APFSDS round is too long and narrow to be able to be properly stabilised by spinning so it uses fin stabilisation anyway... which means it needs a sabot or shoe to ride down the barrel without engaging the rifling. A smoothbore needs the sabot too, but offers less resistence and therefore offers higher muzzle velocities per barrel length.
Smoothbores are cheaper and easier to make, easier to keep clean, and are lighter and shorter for a given muzzle velocity.
Accuracy generally has more to do with sabot separation than whether the barrel is rifled.
About time, i guess they only take up storage space, and perhaps they can sell a few to Africa, but i doubt it.
The best thing about its retirement is that it removes all 115mm smoothbore guns and ammo from the Army stores and stocks and production.
It was a relatively cheap and simple tank for recruits to play with without the risk of damaging a new expensive tank.
If these are the last tanks in Russian service I suspect it might include the production facilities for new barrels and also for ammo, which would be bargain basement price and well worth it for a country already using the T-62.
Its the end of an era, but the tank was never a succes and with thousands of T-72, T-80 it can be hard to sell of.
Now when Armada comes, the stores must be empty to fill with T-72.
I disagree, it was a small, light, mobile tank with a good gun that was as good as the British 105mm. Give it modern electronics and it would be a very useful tank in many regions.
The final word of T-62, perhaps not a failure, but certainly a disapointment.
Actually I would say it was more like the Hurricane or the I-16 fighter... very good for its time, but made obsolete by the more capable machines that replaced it.
All of these factors combined to ensure that the T-62 enjoyed relatively low commercial success, and only briefly served in first line Soviet units before being relegated to training, to reserve status, or being exported to Third World clients. (Perrett 1987:41)
The problem with the opinions of western experts... especially during the 1980s is that they are often wrong.
Even today most western experts rate the T-64 as a failure that eats loaders arms... which is made all the more amusing because there is no human loader in a T-64.
Until the split of the Soviet Union the T-64 and T-80 were not commercial successes either, but then that could not possibly be for any other reason like the fact that the Soviets were happy to export cheaper, simpler numbers tanks like T-55 and T-72 and keep the more capable more expensive tanks to themselves like the T-62, T-64, and T-80.
Each time the gun is fired, the tube must go into detente for cartridge ejection, and the power traverse of the turret is inoperable during ejection and reloading operations, which means it cannot aim while reloading, making fire rate slow. An unforgiving and crucial flaw.
Load of misdirection in my opinion... the T-62 had a gunner and a commander and a loader... in which case the commander will be looking for other targets and threats so the immobilisation of the turret is irrelevant to him. The gunner will be observing the fall of shot so he can quickly calculate a better aim point for a follow up shot... the barrel stabiliser will return the barrel to the previous point of aim once reloaded so the penalty is limited. The fixed gun makes it easier and safer for the loader to load ammo... so it is a very good thing for the loader... I don't understand the huge flaw in the design this supposedly represents.
Rate of fire is not a critical feature of modern tanks... with a modern ballistics computer and laser range finder a first round hit should make rate of fire irrelevant anyway.
One use for old MBTs in my opinion would be to equip them with the new main gun of the standard IFV, which should be designed to engage enemy IFVs, so in the 1980s the T-62s could be armed with the BMP-3 armament, while now they could be equipped with the new 45mm guns and used in the main theatre to engage enemy light vehicles.
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