T-72 ΜΒΤ modernisation and variants

It's just a tank bro, not a spaceship.

T-54 or t-72A are just tanks, pieces of metal. T-14 or t-90M are complexe systems involving tens of different companies during design/R&D and as many during production each of them employing highly skilled engineers. Russia can't produce cheap stuff like soviet because new systems are not piece of metal like mig-17 or t-54 and they need external ressources to be competitive against west and China, their best thermals were from France (catherine cameras) for exemple.

Building thousands of them in 10 years is a joke. Be happy if they make 50 per year. And with the west and Taiwan banning electronics sells it will be even slower.

And their companies apply same prices as the west for export clients to make profit because Russia isn't paying enough.

I said they can build 50 per year but not meaningfully more... Which isn't enough to have thousands of t-14 in 10 years.

To have 3000 t-14 by 2030 you would need 300+ per year. And the tank is still in testing phase.

Concerning sukhois, it is another exemple they are limited by money. Su-30 is almost half as expensive as su-35 so they keep building it. Su-35 is too expensive to buy only it despite being better than su-30 and having 1 pilot which reduce training by 2. Same situation with t-14. This tank is too advanced and will cost much more than upgraded t-72 so they will keep buying upgrades for the older tanks.

The other plateforms of the armata can have more success because they use far less advanced euipement than the t-14 so they may buy much more of them. T-14 however will always be too expensive to buy in huge quantity.

Then provide us with some data. How many new tanks per year from 2000 ?

An opinion of T-54/55 etc being just welded box is dumb.
Military equipment was always one of the most sophisticated products available.
The fact of how inexpensive, easy to make, and irrelevant those are now representing only the perspective made 50, 60 or 70 !! years after those have been created.
Back then, the cost factor was exactly the same as it is now, for the equivalent product. It required significant labor applied, new technologies created etc. It was exactly the same load for the economy as it is now, sometimes in the breaking points were even bigger as required multiple investments in new fields of production. Switching from cast steel to composite armor required a huge increase in military-grade chemical production. Adding stabilizers increased by a factor absorbance of hydraulics, and it's detailing ratio. From the time perspective, those were technological jumps not less challenging than a new onboard computer is now. Especially if we consider how widespread is the electronics now, and how much of 20 years ago sophisticated military grade technology just turned to be civilian one.
From today's perspective, you can buy a TI imager that can be easily applied for military usage on bloody Aliexpress for $500.
Back in the 80s, making a LLLTV camera was a sophisticated military grade production only a few factories on the planet could carry.
Those opinions simply lack the perspective of industrial progress and it's arrangement.

Of course but T-54 had no real electronic part like cameras, computers and so on. Even for its time it was a simple tank with most part being just metalic part so once you design it it was easy to be build.

Real advanced tech for tanks came with t-64 which already was considered too expensive.

Same t-80 was really advanced but yoo expensive that's why they fielded much more of the simplier t-72.

Then they created the t-90 which used t-72 body but with t-80 equipement. Again it was cheap so they started to mass upgrade t-72.

T-90M comes from t-90SM which was created for export. After seeing good testing results by arabs and india they made the t-90M for russian military. And again that's not a cheap tank so they kept upgrading t-72 and even t-80 which was planned to be removed from service from long time ago but it turns out that even if it was considered expensive it is now cheaper than t-90m or t-14.

So contrary to what that genius say, they can't make 3000 new tanks. They couldn't do it with the t-90 let alone with the t-14 that is more expensive by being more sophisticated and having way more advanced equipement.


My opinion is to upgarade as much as possible the t-62 they yave in stock because:
- with a good computer and good optics it can provide very good furepower
- it 115mm gun is smaller than MBT but it can destroy any vehicle other than tanks and even tanks on the side or good hit on the front.
- It is lighter than mbt specially new t-90M and t-14 so easy to move around.
- it is available in great numbers and very fast.
- they don't need the last products for it. Drozd/arena, normal optic cameras that don't need to spot a guy 9km away but a tank at atleast 5km. So not expensive stuff.
- new engine will make it spend less fuel than any other mbt.
- armor already protect against any nato round but the biggest ones.
- could even sell the upgrade to other countries because the production line will be operating and that attracts clients. Plenty of poor states that have t-62 or t-54 will be interested by such offer.

So the radio was 20 years old. Not new tech for the time so not really expensive or hard to make. IR search light were quite basic.

They didn't have some high tech materials with composite armor that needed special tools or processes. Most of the work was welding metal parts togather.

Now you have electronics with millions lines of codes which involves plenty of company and plenty of engineers. The end prices need to pay for all of them so don't expect a t-14 to cost 1 million. It will be more closer to 4-5.

And like I said russian companies make profit mostly through export. Russia pays only the lowest price. If the t-14 isn't bought by the few remaining countries that buy russian big hardware, Russia won't buy it. They will have to pay for the max prices for it.

That's why both su-57 and t-14 were presented for export way before they even ended testing phase.

T-90M is bought because production line was started for Egyptian and Indian huge orders for something like 2000 tanks in total or more. They can include the production for russia even if they pay far less per tank.

First of all, I said that the T-90M does not have the Arena, and even without it, it provides far better ERA coverage than any version of the T-72B3... simply, the T-72B3 is a cheap modernization of the T-72 tank,

A large portion of a tanks performance in combat is all about luck, and with that luck is important in many ways... 100% perfect coverage with ERA is simply not possible, nor is it practical, and largely depends on the situations the tank gets itself into in combat. Defensive use will lead to certain angles being hit more often than the angles that might be hit when the vehicle is being used more aggressively.

Modern Human body armour is talked about as stopping full power rifle ammo, but in actual fact the components of the armour that will stop full power rifle ammo consist of upper chest plates which give no protection from the sides... having full 360 degree protection for rifle calibre rounds is simply not practical, so an enemy armed with lessor calibres like assault rifle calibre rounds might decide to aim for head shots or arms or legs or belly shots... you might suggest forcing the enemy to change from kill shots to wound shots is a success, but when the goal is an invincible soldier then you have failed and spending more money and still failing makes little sense.

For a tank there is fire power, there is mobility, and there is protection... considering there are few enemy tanks left on the battlefield I would think having lower levels of protection is not the worst thing in the world.

For every tank you have on the battlefield you will have hundreds of other types with rather less protection, from troop transports to support vehicles.

Also, he will never get a panoramic observation station for the commander who still has an IR sensor to observe the battlefield at night, not thermal imaging... 21st century and no thermal imaging to observe through it... fantastic

Agree that it is not ideal, but the gunner has thermals...

As I said better ERA coverage than the T-72B3 version, the commander has his own observation station, with a thermal camera, the excess ordnance is back in the turret, so if there is a breach in the turret, the ammunition that is placed on the sides of the tank does not explode ...

My understanding is that the upgraded T-72s don't carry extra ammo in the crew compartment so essentially they just have less ready to fire ammo...

A better turret tank, whether you want to admit it or not...

Of course it is better, but are the differences significant enough to make a difference?

We will see in near future what would like this T-72B4...we will see

I rather expect the experience of this conflict will focus on what is worth the extra money and what is not to get the best bang for the buck.

Modern equipment is nice but you must have a large quantity of any tank or bmp. T-14 is unlikely to be produced in the thousnands. They need to start mass producing a lighter tank.

The T-14 will not be produced in thousands, but the Armata will because it is BMP and BTR and BREM and Artillery and all sorts of other platforms that need to be built...

They already have 2S25 Sprut, but do you mean the B-?? that will be the Kurganets with the T-14 turret, or perhaps the K-?? Boomerang with the T-14 turret?

Perhaps even a 6 wheel Typhoon with a T-14 turret?

They understood that with the t-54/55 after the WW2. But they screw up with t-80/72 that gain too much weight, specially in last variants which made them produce far less of them compare to the tens of thousands of t-54 produced.

Producing 100K T-54/55 was a total waste of money and time, the T-72/T-80 were actually very good value for money and a fraction of the cost of western tanks that were made in much much smaller numbers than their previous gen models too.

T-14 is taller, bigger and way more advanced than t-90M. It's more expensive. Simple logic, even you should be ake to understand this.

The T-90M was a stopgap design to fix easy to fix issues with the Soviet era design, the T-14 is the from scratch new design that will replace it.

It is the heavy tracked tank that will operate in Armata divisions, for Kurganets and Boomerang divisions, they will have different tanks.

New system are more advanced and more expensive. That's true for any system that's why armies get smaller. But once you are too small, even if you have better technology, you will loose to the more numerous less advanced armies.

The Russians are outnumbered in the Ukraine and are not losing... a high tech advanced force is more dangerous than a force that just relies on numbers alone because if you want to you can counter numbers... if you are prepared to be brutal enough.

They used to build thousand of mig-25, mig-23 and su-24 then only hundreds of mig-29 and su-27 and now they barely reach 100 jets like su-35. And only 76 su-57 planes which was yo be far less before Putin asked for more.

They built the older systems for the Soviet Union, and you play it down but they also built thousands of MiGs and Sukhois too, while the Su-35 is pretty new, and 76 was the first order for Su-57s, not to mention it is the equivalent of the US building new F-22s but also F-15s of the latest models as well as two seat fighter interceptor models (Su-30), and also two sea strike versions (F-15E) at the same time... of course what they lack is the smaller affordable type... the F-16, which is the MiG-35 which is having a difficult birth and who knows what will happen there, but it is cheap enough to be a numbers plane in terms of purchase price and operational costs...

Can't really say that about any western equivalent... perhaps the Americans will look at some new build F-20s...

T-90M and t-14 are way more expensive than upgraded t-64 and t-72. You can't replace all the tanks with t-14 no matter what.

Well duh... of course brand new tanks will cost more than upgraded older models, but a bonus is that the new tanks are significantly better... the question they have to ask themselves is is the better performance worth the extra cost... some times it isn't.

And since Russia need a big army they will have to create a much cheaper tank or keep upgrading its old t-72 series. Just like they won't be able to buy hundreds of su-57 so they will have to buy the cheap su-75.

Russia will have 6 new tanks... Armata based, Kurganets based, Boomerang based, Typhoon based, the Sprut, and the two chassis arctic model based tanks... what has HATO got?

If they keep only the expensive and advance products they will end up with an army similar to europeans ones. Very good and very well armed but too small for any war.

You are comparing Russia with the west in terms of value for money buying weapons and expect parity?

And next time stay on the sibject. AD have nothing to do with tanks. If you can't argument on tanks, don't talk at all

If that is your advice then suggest you take some yourself... you mentioned aircraft, which is not tanks either.

T-54 or t-72A are just tanks, pieces of metal.

Guns and engines are not just metal and to get them to a point where they are reliable and useful takes a lot of work too.

T-14 or t-90M are complexe systems involving tens of different companies during design/R&D and as many during production each of them employing highly skilled engineers.

The T-14 uses Russian technology...

Russia can't produce cheap stuff like soviet because new systems are not piece of metal like mig-17 or t-54 and they need external ressources to be competitive against west and China, their best thermals were from France (catherine cameras) for exemple.

They manage to make things affordable... look at how many threats from Orc forces get shot down every day... do you think they are running out of SAMs?

Those thermals are now Russian designed and made in Russia.

Building thousands of them in 10 years is a joke. Be happy if they make 50 per year. And with the west and Taiwan banning electronics sells it will be even slower.

The west banned such sales years ago...

And their companies apply same prices as the west for export clients to make profit because Russia isn't paying enough.

By law Russian MIC cannot make more than a 4% profit selling to the Russian military, so of course they will make bigger profits on exports, yet still be cheaper than western alternatives.

The reason Turkey bought S-400 was because it has the performance of PAC-2 and PAC-3 Patriot and also THAAD all rolled in to one system that costs rather less than any of those systems.

I said they can build 50 per year but not meaningfully more... Which isn't enough to have thousands of t-14 in 10 years.

You can say anything you please, should we take it as anything other than your opinion?

Concerning sukhois, it is another exemple they are limited by money. Su-30 is almost half as expensive as su-35 so they keep building it. Su-35 is too expensive to buy only it despite being better than su-30 and having 1 pilot which reduce training by 2. Same situation with t-14. This tank is too advanced and will cost much more than upgraded t-72 so they will keep buying upgrades for the older tanks.

They can get about 5 Su-35s for the price of one export Rafale, the Su-30s are being upgraded with Su-35 parts to standardise them and unify their spare parts pool and procurement lists. The Su-35 was never intended to be the only fighter they operate, it was the high in a high low mix of fighters. The MiG-35 programme was put on hold and underfunded while they focused their money on getting the Su-57 into service. Now the Su-57 is entering serial production more money and attention to the MiG-35 should allow progress and improvement but equally they might decide to skip the upgraded 4th gen light fighter and just skip to the light 5th gen fighter instead.

We will see.

Whether the Russian AF buy the Su-75 or not I rather suspect it will sell well to the rest of the world...

You might not have noticed but Russia and the Soviets have always applied new technology to upgrade old tanks and aircraft to keep them relevant and improve performance and also make them more standard and easier to maintain.

The other plateforms of the armata can have more success because they use far less advanced euipement than the t-14 so they may buy much more of them. T-14 however will always be too expensive to buy in huge quantity.

Listen to yourself... the tank for the Armata is the T-14... most of the complex tank stuff is in the turret, and so to make a Kurganets or Boomerang or Typhoon tank you just put a T-14 turret on them and make a few other changes... the point is that the chassis are designed to be modular and accept different turrets for different roles.

The 57mm grenade launcher turret on the Armata T-15 is the same turret they will fit to the Kurganets and Boomerang and Typhoon version BMP.

Essentially they design one turret for a tank and then adapt it to the other chassis types...

Of course but T-54 had no real electronic part like cameras, computers and so on. Even for its time it was a simple tank with most part being just metalic part so once you design it it was easy to be build.

At a time when western countries were producing over engineered bullshit the T-54/55 was an excellent design many in the west turn their noses up at.

It was making it simple and cheap and effective that is the real challenge... a challenge most in the west failed... with their much more expensive vehicles that didn't actually work so well in real battle.

Real advanced tech for tanks came with t-64 which already was considered too expensive.

No it wasn't... it was the equivalent of a heavy tank, and in those terms it was made in much greater numbers than most actual heavy tanks.

Same t-80 was really advanced but yoo expensive that's why they fielded much more of the simplier t-72.

Nothing at all to do with the fact that the T-72 was supposed to be a good enough tank that was mass produced in large numbers tank with a good gun and good enough armour.

Then they created the t-90 which used t-72 body but with t-80 equipement. Again it was cheap so they started to mass upgrade t-72.

Not really, the T-72 was a budget numbers tank and got new features as they became affordable, like laser range finder replaced the coincidence range finder and of course add on armour and ERA and new ammo types etc etc.

T-90M comes from t-90SM which was created for export. After seeing good testing results by arabs and india they made the t-90M for russian military. And again that's not a cheap tank so they kept upgrading t-72 and even t-80 which was planned to be removed from service from long time ago but it turns out that even if it was considered expensive it is now cheaper than t-90m or t-14.

Do you not understand that Russia did not make thousands of tanks in the 1990s and 2000s because they inherited more tanks than they needed at the end of the cold war? They had probably 100K tanks from T-34s and newer... most of which are now gone through various different ways.... to the point where they wanted some T-34s for parades and had to buy them from an Asian country because they didn't have any left.

So contrary to what that genius say, they can't make 3000 new tanks.

They haven't, but why do you think that means they can't?

They couldn't do it with the t-90 let alone with the t-14 that is more expensive by being more sophisticated and having way more advanced equipement.

What do you know about what they can or cannot afford?

How many 5th gen heavy fighters are France currently building?

Can you not afford it, or incapable of putting it together?

My opinion is to upgarade as much as possible the t-62 they yave in stock because:

You opinion is interesting, but they have some T-62s and have some new allies that could use some armour... upgraded T-62s are cheap and quick and easy to upgrade and will be simple to operate and use.

They normally upgrade older vehicles to keep them relevant and to reduce maintenance costs moving forward.

There are many countries who are not interested in 125mm calibre equipped tanks because their potential enemies armour simply does not warrant that... and if they get T-72s then their enemies might buy something more expensive and more capable and start an arms race.

This was priorities and still are...Tanks was not prioprities and because of that they use cheep modernizations of the existing tanks, because they have it lot of in reserve at that time.

They are actually spending more on armour than the west and have a plan laid out where the existing soup of vehicle types will be replaced by 6 families of vehicles based on a few different types...

Armata has two types... the T-14 and T-15 are good examples... the former has rear engine and front crew compartment and middle turret, while the T-15 has front mounted engine and rear doors for rear troop compartment.
Kurganets likely does not have a rear engined model AFAIK, so it would only need one type, and Boomerang would be the same with front mounted engine for all types, while the Typhoon comes in two types... a four by four and a six by six wheeled model...

They are going to gradually phase in these families as each family member is completed.

New post galicije83 Today at 11:53 am
Well, they lost about 40 planes alone, where there are helicopters of all types... All of that needs to be repaired, and that requires additional money, right?
They also need to provide food and everything else to the mobilized soldiers, train them, armed them... all this costs and will cost because it is war...

Make that 400, because why not?

Let ONLY reasonable people see this and let them judge whether there is money for something or not, the news is from yesterday..

MOSCOW, November 30 - RIA Novosti. Financing of the state defense order for the next year will increase 1.5 times, Russian Defense Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting of the board of the military department.
"Next year, taking into account the additional allocated budgetary funds, the volume of financing of the state defense order will increase by almost 1.5 times," the minister said. He added that it is important to maintain the maximum possible volume of production, to organize advanced deliveries to the troops.

https://ria.ru/20221130/gosoboronzakaz-1835238772.html

I assume this increase refers to the purchase of shovels, axes, pickaxes, etc., as they are unable to purchase other weapon systems..  Suspect

They were supposed to have 2300 t-14 by 2020 according to officials. Talking is fun and easy. Reality is another story.

Russia isn't any better than US. A vig part of that money will be stolen by corrupt bureaucrats.

Lads, we see with our naked eyes what a military stocks and numbers means. I think there is not much more to discuss, seriously.

The biggest issues with monoblock casted turrets was, that when there was a need to leave cavities for nonmetallic inserts, it was quite big struggle from the technologiach perspective. That is why welding IT became a very interesting, time and cost effective option.