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Not long after the guy claimed that Chinese and NATO stuff was better than the Russian stuff being offered and suggested that they could get three Leopards for the price of one T-90 there were reports that the guy had been misquoted and misunderstood and wrong.
(If you want to read such an article look here: http://russiandefpolicy.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/postnikov-on-the-army-and-opk-part-ii/ )
Very simply new technology is not cheap, so this drive for all new technology is going to be very expensive... the point is that the all new tech T-90AM costs 4 million dollars compared to the 2.25 million of so the T-90A cost. The Leopard 2A6 would cost about 7.5 million and that is without the modifications and spares and other extras that would be needed to put such a vehicle into operation... which would bring the price to 10 million at least.
Very frankly the Russians are planning on a force of about 2,000 deployed and operational tanks with a force of something like 4-6 thousand tanks in reserve. At 4 mil per T-90AM making a max of 8,000 vehicles in total will cost 32 billion dollars.
It has been made clear that armour is not a huge priority and they are already spending money in practical terms on new armoured jeeps. The Italian and French designs they are looking at are for roles previously met by unarmoured jeep like vehicles, and the Tigr and Tigr-M and Volk vehicles are also being developed and put into production too.
Add to that money spent on the BTR-82 plus two or three new families of vehicles and you can see that mass production of T-90AMs is not very likely any time soon.
I think the cheapest option to get going is to have the T-90AM in production to make 1,000 over the next decade up to 2020. Existing T-72s can be upgraded to this standard too... and this is important because they will likely be much cheaper. The goal is to have a heavy armour brigade based on a unified tank chassis and they already have the MSTA that can be based on the T-90 or upgraded T-72, so add the BTR-T with a T-90 base and the heavy armour brigade has a serious start. The point is that many components of the heavy brigade just need the chassis like the air defence vehicle, the artillery vehicle. The heavy APC will need some modification but it can be based on upgraded T-72s.
This means that in 2015 the heavy brigades will mostly have T-90/T-72 based chassis, but after 2015 they will start getting Armata based chassis... one brigade at a time. The same will happen in the medium and light brigades where existing vehicles will be gap fillers till the proper vehicles are ready.
(If you want to read such an article look here: http://russiandefpolicy.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/postnikov-on-the-army-and-opk-part-ii/ )
Very simply new technology is not cheap, so this drive for all new technology is going to be very expensive... the point is that the all new tech T-90AM costs 4 million dollars compared to the 2.25 million of so the T-90A cost. The Leopard 2A6 would cost about 7.5 million and that is without the modifications and spares and other extras that would be needed to put such a vehicle into operation... which would bring the price to 10 million at least.
Very frankly the Russians are planning on a force of about 2,000 deployed and operational tanks with a force of something like 4-6 thousand tanks in reserve. At 4 mil per T-90AM making a max of 8,000 vehicles in total will cost 32 billion dollars.
It has been made clear that armour is not a huge priority and they are already spending money in practical terms on new armoured jeeps. The Italian and French designs they are looking at are for roles previously met by unarmoured jeep like vehicles, and the Tigr and Tigr-M and Volk vehicles are also being developed and put into production too.
Add to that money spent on the BTR-82 plus two or three new families of vehicles and you can see that mass production of T-90AMs is not very likely any time soon.
I think the cheapest option to get going is to have the T-90AM in production to make 1,000 over the next decade up to 2020. Existing T-72s can be upgraded to this standard too... and this is important because they will likely be much cheaper. The goal is to have a heavy armour brigade based on a unified tank chassis and they already have the MSTA that can be based on the T-90 or upgraded T-72, so add the BTR-T with a T-90 base and the heavy armour brigade has a serious start. The point is that many components of the heavy brigade just need the chassis like the air defence vehicle, the artillery vehicle. The heavy APC will need some modification but it can be based on upgraded T-72s.
This means that in 2015 the heavy brigades will mostly have T-90/T-72 based chassis, but after 2015 they will start getting Armata based chassis... one brigade at a time. The same will happen in the medium and light brigades where existing vehicles will be gap fillers till the proper vehicles are ready.
