T-90 Main Battle Tank

Damn, I wish there was a closer clearer image of that stuff sticking up from the turret... is it a new tower with sensors for an upgraded ARENA? Or is it something else...

Very pleased to see the turret bustle autoloader... removing loose ammo from the crew compartment will save lives and also allow longer more effective penetrator to be used and assuming 22 in the turret bustle loader and 30 in the turret bustle this tank will have the most ready to use ammo of any Russian or Soviet tank since the T-26.
(Yes, I know the T-34 has more than 50 rounds but they are stored all over the place and are not "ready to fire").

It makes good sense for them to improve the T-90 design to a standard where it can be produced and the components unified.

This is good for the crews and the maintainence costs.

It has long been a Soviet tradition in the tank crews to keep the best tanks in storage and use older vehicles for training so that the more expensive tanks are in good condition if they are needed.
Having a unified upgrade for existing T-90s, existing T-72s and new build T-90s means that the new build T-90s can be kept for when needed and the upgraded T-72s can be used for training and exercises.

Remember that under the old system there were three standards of readiness... first, second and third (very imaginative really). First were the operational units in important places in the Soviet Union and in foreign deployments like Germany. They were pretty much ready to go and were basically the standing Soviet army. They trained on previous generation vehicles for the basics but if push came to shove they would get the latest kit from storage... have a quick refresher and then go into battle so to speak. The second line units had perhaps half their manpower and all their kit so it would be a week or so before they were mobilised and ready.
The third level units had skeleton manning levels and incomplete equipment stores and they would likely get much of their equipment from the in use stuff the first line units were using. It would take a month to man and equip such a unit.

With the new structure there is no 2nd and 3rd level forces, it is all first line forces which means in the short term in a surprise attack the Russian military will actually be better able to act with a larger force than the Soviet forces. The problem is that the second and third reserve forces will take much longer to put together.
Of course with a modern first line and tactical nukes I would think most conflicts will be over in a week anyway.
A smaller, faster acting force, with high tech equipment and C4IR gear should be much better suited to the job.

Well lets not jump to any conclusions, for all we know this is just a continuation of testing for both vehicles.

Obviously for their future plans to make sense they need a new revised and improved production standard T-90 to form the bulk of their fleet.

They will want as much as possible of the components to be Russian made so current plans for French communications systems to be licence produced will mean a least a 2-3 year delay to get these and the C4IR gear sorted and for production facilities to be set up and start production so that time can also be used for updated ARENA and updated SHTORA and other updated systems to be worked on and sorted out.

There was supposed to be a new improved gun being designed for the new upgrade and with that will be new ammo perhaps.

With a new main gun you introduce problems where new ammo might be higher pressure that will damage older guns, but by making the new ammo with penetrators so long they wont fit into the older auto loaders you eliminate the chance of barrel damage. As the old tanks get the new auto loaders they should also get the new guns as well.

I think the Indian use of French Catherine TI system and its performance has prompted Russia to use the same on the new T-90M with new Turret.

And I think that might be part of the holdup.

I think once production of the thermal sights in Russia really increases then we will see the Russians adopt the new standard T-90.
Until production is high enough to make sights for Russian tanks and those for India then the production of the new tanks will be put on hold in my opinion.

Ocne the sights are being mass produced and production of new T-90s started older model T-90s will be upgraded to the new standard so all T-90s in Russian service will be the same.

I think part of the problem too will be that the upgrade for the older T-72s will include thermal sights too which means production in very large numbers... which will be good for cost scalings by reducing individual unit costs.

Doesn't really make sense to build new T-90s now if you will have to upgrade them in 2-3 years time.

BTW thanks for the link... am reading it now... will get back to you with my thoughts.

Looks to me like secure communications, recon assets, and night and all weather equipment is a priority with a goal of removing from service vehicles with little growth potential and the introduction of a family of vehicles that include tracked and wheeled vehicles from tank down to robot weapon platforms will likely start in 2015.

I would think battle management and C4IR issues need to be addressed, including getting the necessary hardware in service and actually training and using it will likely be goals as well.

We saw in the Georgian conflict that just having a C4IR network isn't enough... you actually have to be able to use it in combat.

The Georgian forces had UAVs and all the necessary communications and control equipment but they failed to use it.

Yes a moving T-90 can hit moving targets... even the BMP-3 can hit moving targets while it is moving firing laser beam riding missiles.

If the target drives behind a house then a beam riding missile has the same problem a wire guided missile has... and the same with smoke.
The difference is that a laser beam riding missile platform can move during the engagement because there is no wire that can snag or break.

That is why the early Russian helo launched ATGMs were all radio command guided (AT-2, AT-6 SHTURM, and ATAKA)... the exception was the Sagger on some Mi-8s and Mi-2s but those helos had to hover during the entire engagement just like a western helo with HOT or TOW. The current missiles like Vikhr and Krisantema are laser beam riders which allow free flight during the engagement... the former including the Su-25TM.

Think of the beam as a piece of string tied to the target the missile will skid sideways to stay in the beam but as it gets closer to the target the deflection gets less and less till impact... and without dragging wires most are supersonic.

Interesting pictures. It seems development of T-90 / T-95 is still going
on. So maybe they are not definitively canceled, but just delayed to do
some improvements. Any informations if development of BMPT is still
going on?

The plans in the 1990s were for the T-90 to continue in service for quite some time, and for the T-95 to gradually enter service with the T-90 AFAIK.
Currently the plans seem to me to be... and I have looked all over the place at all sorts of information from lots of different sources... to upgrade some T-72s to the upgrade standard created for them... which pretty much brings them up to near T-90 standard and adds lots of T-90 stuff like gun and engines etc to greatly improve commonality. In addition to maybe 4,000-5,000 T-72s upgraded, they were also going to have between 1,000 and 1,500 T-90s, but before they started making lots of T-90s (note none were ordered in 2011 for the Russian Military) they wanted an upgrade that removed as many fixable faults as they could in practical terms... so new ERA, turret bustle autoloader as well as under floor armoured autoloader so ammo is no longer stored in the crew compartment and one assumes they will alter where the fuel is stored for the same reasons... also a new gun and new communications and battle management system and new engine and presumably new transmission too. Once it is updated they will start producing the new model T-90 and also upgrading existing T-90s to that standard as they go through overhaul/repair.
The result will be a fielded force of about 2,000 tanks which share guns and ammo and engines and optics and fire control systems et all and a reserve of maybe 4,000 more tanks.
In actual practise I rather suspect that the T-90Ms will be kept in storage for real combat, while crews will train on simulators and the upgraded T-72s. The T-90s will likely come out for parades and the odd international exercise, but the normal wear and tear will be on the T-72s.
In the late 2015-2020 they will have the new Armata heavy vehicle family of which the tank model will be the replacement for the T-90. It will likely have many features of the T-95... probably including external gun in an unmanned turret, and probably a larger calibre gun too. It is certainly possible that the 125mm gun might be kept in service in the first models, but eventually a 150+mm calibre weapon is probably likely unless the west drops their heavy tank designs and starts looking at more mobile sub 45 ton vehicles...
It is hard to say how they will introduce Armata... because as it is a family of vehicle chassis it makes sense to introduce them all at once... which means lots of vehicle chassis.
There will be the tank of course, but there will also be the APC... probably only with a light weapon like a 14.5mm gun or 30mm cannon in an external mount, which will likely make a fire support vehicle with BMP-3 level fire power a requirement. A sort of BMPT but with BMP-3 like armament and tank like armoured turret.
And of course there is the Armata based recovery vehicles, artillery (coalition?), air defence, command, recon, etc etc.
This is a lot of chassis that will need to be introduced for the Heavy Brigades.
I suspect that different command regions will get priority and they will change a brigade at a time from the current material to their new allocated material.

I suspect the light formations will get their vehicles first because of cost.

I am just looking forward to see if there are any DIRCM type systems fitted to the new T-90M.

Russians are planning to adopt a new bore size probably 152mm smooth-bore

Eventually yes. But not with the T-90AM AFAIK.

I personally think it might have a calibre of 155mm as the Russians already use 152mm rifled artillery... going for a 155mm smooth bore gun might allow the sharing of some ammo types, but a 152mm artillery piece and a similar calibre smooth bore tank gun will have little in common.

As evidence look at the previous Russian and Soviet tank guns... they went from the 115mm smoothbore of the T-62 to the 125mm smoothbore of the T-64... they didn't make a 122mm calibre smoothbore because that was an existing artillery calibre AND a Grad rocket artillery calibre.

There would be no advantage to reusing the 122mm calibre as the tank gun smoothbore would operate at completely different chamber pressures and likely use a different loading method.
The ammo would be completely different too.

A couple of things I notice from the above photos include that while fuzzy the photo of the T-95 seems to have a very high gun position within the turret... perhaps to clear boxes on the hull top that seem to be optics perhaps for the crew.
Also the T-90AM seems to have greatly increased turret side armour protection too.

Of the pictures of the T-90AM, it looks as it has ammo storage in the
turret. Like the blow out ammo storage of western tanks. If that is the
case, it has a completely new autoloader and turret-chassi layout. Hence
the previous T-90`s couldnt possible be upgraded, not less than a
completly rebuilding, and that isnt likely.

AFAIK the turret for the T-90AM has been physically lengthened slightly to add more internal space for new equipment like battle managment computers and comms, but it is a standard turret design below the turret ring.

Experience showed that the ammo in the underfloor autoloader was quite safe in the T-72/T-90 line of vehicles as all ammo is horizontal and armoured to protect it in case the crew compartment was penetrated.
The problem was that only 22 rounds are stored there so the remaining 18 rounds were in the crew compartment and they were the problem when the tank was penetrated in combat.

In actual combat the crews stopped taking full ammo loads and only had ammo in the autoloader and that greatly reduced crew casualties because the tanks weren't exploding.

Based on this experience the T-90AM has an extra autoloader attached to the rear of the turret that is separated from the crew compartment and holds an extra 20-30 rounds with the added bonus that these rounds are simply rammed straight into the breach so long penetrators can be used and in theory it should be faster to reload.

I don't see why such a new turret could not be retrofitted to any T-72 tank as below the turret ring it is the same as previous T-72 models and the ring diameter should be the same.

And i share the opinion that it wont have the 152mm gun. The turret ring cant handle such size or weight. Rather it would be incorporated in the next generation of tanks.

That was what I was thinking. Normally having several tank calibres in service at once would be frowned upon from a logistical standpoint, but as they are getting rid of two calibres (100mm rifled tank ammo for the T-54/55, and the towed gun equivelents, and the 115mm smoothbore from the T-62 and towed equivelents) they are still doing OK. If they feel the need for the new round then that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

It should be pointed out that the Russians don't have the same fixation the west has with APFSDS rounds. Most of the ammo carried by Russian tanks is HE or HEAT in a normal load. An increase in calibre greatly improves the performance of HEAT rounds and also allows rather more space for sophisticated electronics needed for gun launched guided weapons.

And no, tanks and artillery dont usually share ammo, not since WW2.

The primary artillery round is still the HE shell... for which spin stabilisation is more useful than fin stabilisation. Also artillery rarely fire APFSDS or HEAT rounds which don't like spin stabilisation. (long thin APFSDS rounds are too long and thin to stabilise, and spinning reduces the penetration of a HEAT jet.)

Of course smoothbores also have the advantage of higher muzzle velocity which is more important for a tank gun than artillery too.

However these days attempts to increase artillery range to 60km or 80km or even 100km+ high velocity is a good thing... perhaps soon there will be a return to a unified gun/shell.

Talk of EM powered guns firing shells at enormous speeds... over 5km/s with flight ranges of 400-500km.

If you could reduce that to a size that could be fitted to a tank it would be a fearsome tank killer.

And it isnt necesarily best to put a larger gun on the next tank. It would be better to improve ammo.

The war between ammo and armour has been long and the trophy has changed hands regularly... I dare say it will continue to do so for quite some time to come.