T-72 ΜΒΤ modernisation and variants

It doesn’t have to be direct hit for tank to get damaged too. I thought it was common knowledge by now. As long as it’s not soft muddy ground…

Most of the tanks abandoned in Ukraine (by both sides) have been shelled and damaged to the point that it couldn’t move or became blind.

Plenty of tanks look like they had drivers port windows shattered and all the sights cracked. Nearby blasts can detract tank, injure the crew, rip liquid lines, mess with sensitive internals and electronics - make tank unable to function even without destroying crucial equipment. The more sophisticated the tank is, the more chances of failure it has. Shell T-14 with anything bigger than 80mm+ mortars and eventually it will become a bunker.

Also, no one invented tank that can’t be detracted.

"Funny, because I would say the opposite"

And you'd be objectively dead wrong in saying so. Many, many thousands of artillery rounds have been fired in this war. A miniscule percentage have been guided. The chances of an unguided artillery HE round penetrating a tank are miniscule.

"It doesn’t have to be direct hit for tank to get damaged too. I thought it was common knowledge by now. As long as it’s not soft muddy ground…"

And it's much easier to escape indirect fire if you can reverse faster, instead of turning around making yourself vulnerable to the weakest AT weapons the enemy has.

The orcs are currently complaining that they are running out of anti tank weapons including grenade launcher grenades.


Obviously every situation is different and the commander would make the decision whether to reverse or turn around, but the reverse speed would always have to be factored into the equation... if you break through a bunch of trees and advance over open fields 500m towards enemy positions and the front vehicle with a mine plow starts setting off mines and artillery starts to come in then of course you have to reconsider your advance and just call it a defence probe that has identified a minefield and perhaps exposed some of their artillery positions to counter attack... the new orders from the commander is withdraw... do you reverse backwards on an open field... risking backing over a mine you missed when you first came out there at 10km/h or do you turn around and leave the area rather more quickly with your turret facing backwards and firing at any missile launcher that is fired in your direction... along with smoke.

If you turned around and are driving forward then you can be moving at rather high speed and you can zig zag in case the enemy decides to launch anything in your direction and popping smoke to cover your withdrawal sound rather more sensible than reversing an enormous distance exposed to enemy fire.

Conversely if you knew enemy positions were on the other side of a small building you might drive through the building to fire at the enemy from a location they were not expecting.... if you then see a dozen RPGs heading your way then a reverse and a turn to back out of the building and to turn and put the building between yourself and the enemy makes more sense than turning around inside a building and driving out.

It doesn’t have to be direct hit for tank to get damaged too. I thought it was common knowledge by now. As long as it’s not soft muddy ground…

Very true... HATO withdrew a lot of smaller calibre artillery like the 105mm guns because they were considered by some to be less effective against new Soviet and Russian armour but 122mm and 152mm and 155mm ammo is very effective if you can land it close... even just to force the tanks to close up and lose good visibility...

Optics and ERA blocks and running gear can all be damaged by a near miss... it is no accident that Abrams tanks have been taken out by IEDs with 50kgs of HE... well that is about the same mass of a 152mm HE shell, with 203mm shells double that weight.

A tank can be used in attack and defence... in attack you drive forward towards enemy positions but you never see all the enemy... some might remain quiet and let you pass and then shoot you up the arse with an RPG... how can that be incompetence... how were they supposed to see that?

Plus the front is about 60 degrees... outside that the sides of the tank can be seen and fired upon.

Tanks arent supposed to "drive to enemy positions". This isnt 1942. Theyre supposed to give fire support to assaulting troops 2-4km behind them, and detect enemy infantry and vehicles 2-4km away with their thermal imagers. Its extreme incompetence to drive a tank near to the frontline where it can be ambushed. Its very easy to see where the frontline is for an officer there, espe3cially in the donbass. Ambush positiions shoiuld be scouted by drones and thermal imagers.

The only tank I have heard of that even attempted all round armour was the German Maus which had about 250mm protection from front, sides and rear... and it was a dog... too slow, too heavy, too expensive, too vulnerable to aircraft delivered bombs.

Are you pretending you dont understand this point? I obviously didnt mean giving all sides of a tank max possible armor. I pointed out that by your logic tanks should have very weak armor from the front, lets say 20mm from  all sides, since it can be penetrated anyway.

Isos wrote:You also need something that sees at least 3-4km. Few hundred meter isn't helping. The ambush will happen anyway if you can see only at such ranges. Tanks are easy to spot for soldiers just with the noise it produces at such range and they will pop up at the last second and shoot rpgs.

A tank commander having a FLIR monocular that can see 1km out is better than just having regular cupola optics with passive night vision. In the donbass, we keep seeing russian tanks retardedly driving less than 10m away from ukrainian trench networks in the forest belts, , and their crew doesnt expect any ambush there.

On a battlefield such systems would detect all sorts of things firing and things burning... what are you expecting to achieve?

Ground radars have to deal with far more clutter than UV MAWS, yet they still work.

Blinding your own tanks is a double edged sword... an RPGs are not effected by smoke because they are not guided, and you need to detect an ATGM launch before you can deploy a smoke screen to hide behind... and if your fire enough RPGs you can hit a tank you can't see...

Blinding frontal view with smoke grenades is absolutely useful if its to make an escape. Soldeirs aiming RPGs dont have Xray vision, they wont see pas the smoke grenade smokescreen. ATGMs launches will be detected with MAWS. Tanks shouldnt be in RPG range anyway.

Or perhaps for the command tank it might have a tethered drone...

Or a far more practical wireless datalink between FLIR equipped drone and TC?

Tanks arent supposed to "drive to enemy positions". This isnt 1942.

So they are helicoptered in?

Tanks arent supposed to "drive to enemy positions". This isnt 1942. Theyre supposed to give fire support to assaulting troops 2-4km behind them, and detect enemy infantry and vehicles 2-4km away with their thermal imagers.

Of course they don't just roll into enemy positions and fire at enemy troops from point blank range like some crap hollywood movie...

You don't need thermals if the enemy positions are firing and your troops are pointing out targets for you to fire upon... but of course thermals help.

Tanks assaulted positions before the invention of thermals.

Its extreme incompetence to drive a tank near to the frontline where it can be ambushed.

Well any half competent enemy will know your tanks are going to be firing from 2-4km in front of their positions so sending small teams of soldiers with RPGs and ATGMs to positions where they can attack your attacking force and then run away might be a good ambush technique...

Its very easy to see where the frontline is for an officer there, espe3cially in the donbass.

Is it really? Because part of urban combat tactics of WWII was to sneak through sewerage systems or through empty buildings to pop up in unexpected places at attack enemy forces from unexpected directions... sometimes called an ambush... where is the front line then?

Ambush positiions shoiuld be scouted by drones and thermal imagers.

Yes, thermal Imagers and Drones have rendered ambushes completely impossible... not a single western soldier has been killed in the last 30 years by ambush because they had drones and thermals which obviously are 100% effective all the time and every time and the enemy are incompetent and stupid.

If that were a fact we would not know what IED stood for let alone VIED.

Are you pretending you dont understand this point? I obviously didnt mean giving all sides of a tank max possible armor. I pointed out that by your logic tanks should have very weak armor from the front, lets say 20mm from all sides, since it can be penetrated anyway.

There is no such thing as 100% armour protection for anything, so you scale your armour based on expected threats and risks and also a dozen other factors including cost and logistics... big heavy tanks require expensive engines and drive trains and burn more fuel to travel x number of kms and weight also limits where they can go and how fast they can move... when only the top 40mm of ground is frozen then a big heavy tank will break through the crust to the mud beneath and get stuck... in comparison a much lighter tank might be able to drive around easily on that frozen crust and actually move quite quickly...

A stationary heavy tank verses a much lighter highly mobile tank.

For the VDV it is a no brainer because to be air deployed the weight is very limited, but that is compensated for by operating in the enemies rear areas where RPGs are more likely than ATGMs and MBTs. It trades speed and fire power and mobility for outright heavy armour.

A tank commander having a FLIR monocular that can see 1km out is better than just having regular cupola optics with passive night vision. In the donbass, we keep seeing russian tanks retardedly driving less than 10m away from ukrainian trench networks in the forest belts, , and their crew doesnt expect any ambush there.

Yeah, from a position in a tank actually seeing a trench in front of you is not that easy... especially if they have not used the spoils of the dirt dug out of the trench to line the trench front... even with thermals a slit trench is hard to spot... even more so when the people in the trench are relying on their hearing to track you so they don't stick their heads up and reveal their location.

Tanks are not ideal for fighting troops in trenches... even if they know they are there what are they supposed to do about it?

Hitting a trench from a tank is not easy... HE rounds hitting a metre short or a metre long might collapse that part of the trench but it would take thousands of rounds to collapse the whole trench.

Ground radars have to deal with far more clutter than UV MAWS, yet they still work.

Most ground radar either operate in very high frequencies like MMW where they almost create an image of the field of view, or more often they operate in moving target indicator mode and detect and locate moving targets like men or vehicles or artillery shells or drones...

Blinding frontal view with smoke grenades is absolutely useful if its to make an escape.

For Escape, yes, but when you have the armour and you are approaching the enemy positions you don't want to blind yourself... you want to be able to see the enemy firing positions so you can direct heavy fire at them and destroy them.

Smoke does not persist forever so when it clears they get another shot at you anyway.

Soldeirs aiming RPGs dont have Xray vision, they wont see pas the smoke grenade smokescreen. ATGMs launches will be detected with MAWS. Tanks shouldnt be in RPG range anyway.

Approaching an enemy position their RPG launch positions should have marked out on the ground the approach roads and where significant buildings and things are, so when smoke is released they could fire some rockets in likely locations... not like they are paying for their ammo... and luck is a thing... having RPGs roaring out of the smoke at you can be pretty exciting too.

Or a far more practical wireless datalink between FLIR equipped drone and TC?

I would say the exact opposite. You are a tank commander on a battlefield and a friendly drone enters the battlespace you occupy... do you think you can borrow that drone for half an hour while you figure out where your enemy positions are and the enemy force distributions, or do you think the party that launched that drone to fly past your area to get to an area beyond to look for enemy artillery units to attack will object?

A tethered drone attached to your tank can't fly away... the camera on any drone has to be directed... if the drone is tethered to your tank then you get to point the camera at things you are interested in and no one else can over rule you because they have a higher rank than you.

By all means have datalinks to share data and information with other vehicles and drones and helicopters and CAS aircraft, but having your own drone is rather more valuable and the fact that it is tethered to your vehicle means it does not need heavy batteries or engines or fuel loads and can carry things like small battlefield radars and modern powerful optics which can all be powered via the tether... you could use a hydrogen filled balloon to keep it in the air for very long periods at a time, or just electric motors with propellers... when the enemy sees the drone they wont know if a two man recon team in a 4x4 are behind that building or brick wall or bush or tree, or whether it is a T-14... what they will know is that they have been spotted...

Theyre supposed to give fire support to assaulting troops 2-4km behind them, and detect enemy infantry and vehicles 2-4km away with their thermal imagers.

If you are 4km behind your assaulting troops and detect an enemy that is 4km in front of your tank you´re shooting into your own troops.
That´s why in combined arms warfare the tank always moves in front, followed by foot soldiers a few hundred metres behind him. After them
come the AIFV´s or APC´s supporting the soldiers with their weapons.

Tanks arent supposed to "drive to enemy positions". This isnt 1942. Theyre supposed to give fire support to assaulting troops 2-4km behind them, and detect enemy infantry and vehicles 2-4km away with their thermal imagers. Its extreme incompetence to drive a tank near to the frontline where it can be ambushed. Its very easy to see where the frontline is for an officer there, espe3cially in the donbass. Ambush positiions shoiuld be scouted by drones and thermal imagers.

ОМfG...are you serious about staying with tank 2-4 km away of your own troops and support them from that distance?

Tank goes with infantry and they mutual support each others. This is only way to do if you pushing some enemy positions. Of course today you have drones, but tactics is the same...go and push with man on foot and tanks and IFVs of course...

If you are 2-4km away your infantry is doomed in that attack...tank isnt supporting vehicle and isnt fking artillery...you have guns 10-15km away to support tanks and infantry and IFVs with bombardment...

In NK azeri t-72 was recorded pushing into armenian position. In ukraine russian tanks pushed even behind enemy position leading to ukro bmp firing with its 30mm gun in their back from 50m away.

At some point to take positions you need to roll over the enemy unless you face a not motivated army like iraqi in 2003 and 1991 which allowed m1a2 to win so many fight against empty tanks whose crews where already PoWed. Best tool for that then is a tank but you need to clean the area first.


But he is not wrong fire support from friendly tanks is important. Plenty of phootages shows such fires.

Tank goes with infantry and they mutual support each others. This is only way to do if you pushing some enemy positions. Of course today you have drones, but tactics is the same...go and push with man on foot and tanks and IFVs of course...

With 10 good atgm or 20 suicide drones you can stop such attack in 30 minutes. That's why it's hard to take terrain nowadays.

If like armenian you don't have such things or don't use them effectively then such attacks are easy to do like cutting butter with a hot knife... azeri pushed very well with their infantry supported by tanks/bmp. It was a school case scenario and armenian didn't learn their lessons before the test.

Ukrainians use very effectively their drones and atgms. That's why russians stick with defensive positions degrading ukrainian with artillery.

Soviet assault tactics call for armor to get as close to enemy positions as fast as possible actually. The underlying logic being its much more survivable to endure small-arms and shoulder-fired anti-tank fires than to absorb long range punishment from heavy caliber tube and rocket artillery, missiles and air strikes which the enemy can't use properly if your tanks are on top of his defensive positions. Any time you can shave off also significantly improves the survivability of the fragile and slow-moving dismounts who are the only ones who can really clear closed positions like trenches.

Obviously such an approach would necessitate taking some losses here and there which the Russian army in the field can't really take. So they resort to standoff tactics where firepower slowly grinds the enemy fire support and defending troops before committing armor just for mop-up. This is only ever possible because the Russians have so much heavy equipment to spare and the vast resources to facilitate the massive expenditure of ammunition. If the odds were any closer the Russians would be forced to resort to Soviet attack tactics as well.

With modern athm that are very precise and deadly as well as suicide drone that can hit from the top either your engine or your ammo to obtain at least a mobility kill, that soviet dictrine is dead.

They need APS as soon as possible on all their tanks and bmp to decrease the danger of both those weapons by a great factor. Only then such tactics will be possible.

And it's a shame knowing they had few hundreds of t-55 with Drozd back in the afghan war but can field even 100
t-72 or t-80 with arena to protect the ones that are daily on the front. Even those t-55 with Drozd would be of a big help since they managed to intercept plenty rpg back in the days.

Have already explained why they don't use APS, but recent reports of upgraded LIDAR used on drones could be a very useful solution to the problem of detecting things without emitting signals that can be detected from great distances, yet can still do the job.

Tanks aren't ninja you know. They are easy to spot with modern tools. Emmitting weak radar signals won't change the situatiin but at least some 90% of atgm will get useless against them which is a good thing.

If HATO wasn't helping Kiev I would totally agree... but emitting MMW radar from every tank everywhere you go would actually make your tanks less safe because the enemy would be able to map where your tanks are in real time... do you think the incidents of ambushes would increase or decrease in such a situation?

Being able to track Russian tank formations would enable them to quickly lay mines in their path for some easy potential kills...

It is not ready.

You know you can turn off such systems. Once you find enemy tanks you fire first and turn it on for the battle. On the move you turn it off.

Radar range depend on the output power. If you set it up to 50m range, passively detector can find it at 100-150m. So it's not bad and even enemy forces won't be in range to detect it.

Afghanit has both passive UV/IR detectors and active AESA doppler radars for EMCON. The former provides the direction to which the turret should rotate to to present the latter. It also gives the cueing for the radar to start scanning, minimizing emissions to short, but sweet bursts that would be very difficult for enemy sensors to pick up.

Soviet assault tactics call for armor to get as close to enemy positions as fast as possible actually. The underlying logic being its much more survivable to endure small-arms and shoulder-fired anti-tank fires than to absorb long range punishment from heavy caliber tube and rocket artillery, missiles and air strikes which the enemy can't use properly if your tanks are on top of his defensive positions. Any time you can shave off also significantly improves the survivability of the fragile and slow-moving dismounts who are the only ones who can really clear closed positions like trenches.

Obviously such an approach would necessitate taking some losses here and there which the Russian army in the field can't really take. So they resort to standoff tactics where firepower slowly grinds the enemy fire support and defending troops before committing armor just for mop-up. This is only ever possible because the Russians have so much heavy equipment to spare and the vast resources to facilitate the massive expenditure of ammunition. If the odds were any closer the Russians would be forced to resort to Soviet attack tactics as well.

Maybe youre right, like what these Z tanks are doing in podgorodnoe and maryinka. However theyre not as close as possible, theyre as far as possible. Also both tanks reverse rather than showing their rears. russian tankers seem to disagree with you that reversing from a firing position isnt important. Im sure those tankers wouldve appreciated better reverse speed, judging by how the tank in the second vid is almost hit by an rpg, with only the dust cloud caused by its firing saving it(another argument for liberal use of smoke grenades).
https://t.me/warhistoryalconafter/77977

https://t.me/ghostnewsx/3863

If HATO wasn't helping Kiev I would totally agree... but emitting MMW radar from every tank everywhere you go would actually make your tanks less safe because the enemy would be able to map where your tanks are in real time... do you think the incidents of ambushes would increase or decrease in such a situation?

NATO isnt giving RWRs to ukrainian ground forces.

If you are 4km behind your assaulting troops and detect an enemy that is 4km in front of your tank you´re shooting into your own troops.
That´s why in combined arms warfare the tank always moves in front, followed by foot soldiers a few hundred metres behind him. After them
come the AIFV´s or APC´s supporting the soldiers with their weapons.

4km is an example distance. Russian tanks can detect vehicles with their thermals further than 4km, and can shoot HE up to 12km away, plus they have ATGMs. If enemy tanks are approaching, you call in artillery to shoot guided rounds, plus ATGMs. Tanks are there to blast any enemy close to the friendly infantry. Tanks need to stay far away so theyre less easily detected too. Their mobility should prevent them from being destroyed by ukrainian unguided artillery.

Tank goes with infantry and they mutual support each others.

All good, but Z tanks never have infantry support, not even in urban battles.

Hitting a trench from a tank is not easy... HE rounds hitting a metre short or a metre long might collapse that part of the trench but it would take thousands of rounds to collapse the whole trench.

Its very easy actually, if russian tanks had large amounts of ainet laser times airburst HE, which is mature tech, but potbelly dinosaurs never gave these to russian tanks, even though tank with aA SOSNA FCS can use them.

For Escape, yes, but when you have the armour and you are approaching the enemy positions you don't want to blind yourself...

what do you think im talking about? I obviously wasnt talking about using smoke grenades when advancing. I was talking about using smoke grenades when reversing out of a vulnerable position. Even if a tank is damaged, it should fire smoke grenades, so escaping crewmen arent seen and fired upon by small arms. Russian tanks, when immobilized never shoot smoke grenades, which is detrimental.

Yeah, from a position in a tank actually seeing a trench in front of you is not that easy... especially if they have not used the spoils of the dirt dug out of the trench to line the trench front... even with thermals a slit trench is hard to spot... even more so when the people in the trench are relying on their hearing to track you so they don't stick their heads up and reveal their location.

True but its made a lot easier with FLIR, especially at night. Also stuff like high ground and ukrainian troops not always being in trenches but hiding in bushes and being DRGs.

caveat emptor wrote:https://naukatehnika-com.translate.goog/obnovlennyie-tanki-t-72b3m.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

For reverse speed lovers, apparently all T-72B3 tanks delivered since 2017 with V92S2F engines with 1130 hp have a new automatic gearbox that allows them max reverse speed of 15km/h.

Can you quote the link contents? Its giving me a 403 error?

You know you can turn off such systems.

When the system it turned off it doesn't work... if you knew when the enemy were going to fire at you and when they were then war would be much easier and much safer.

Once you find enemy tanks you fire first and turn it on for the battle.

If you see first and fire first you probably don't need any armour at all...

Radar range depend on the output power. If you set it up to 50m range, passively detector can find it at 100-150m. So it's not bad and even enemy forces won't be in range to detect it.

Not really true... these systems have to track tiny targets, and for an APFSDS round you would need to detect it as far away from your vehicle as possible to allow the calculations to be made and the interceptor to be launched in time to be effective... for detection the range is vastly greater than for use as a radar... if you have a laser reflector on the moon (which they do) and you point a powerful laser you can calculate the precise distance from the earth to the moon, but because of the distance you might only be getting less than a dozen photons making it back to your sensor on earth... but that is enough to calculate the distance.

With MMW radar you only need a few elements or packets of energy to detect somethings presence and direction.

Afghanit has both passive UV/IR detectors and active AESA doppler radars for EMCON. The former provides the direction to which the turret should rotate to to present the latter. It also gives the cueing for the radar to start scanning, minimizing emissions to short, but sweet bursts that would be very difficult for enemy sensors to pick up.

They have also made serious advances in LIDAR technology which I would like to see them incorporate too...

NATO isnt giving RWRs to ukrainian ground forces.

HATO aircraft like AWACS and JSTARS are designed to detect emissions of all kinds and locate their sources and send that information to troops.

Its very easy actually, if russian tanks had large amounts of ainet laser times airburst HE, which is mature tech, but potbelly dinosaurs never gave these to russian tanks, even though tank with aA SOSNA FCS can use them.

The first ANIET rounds use time fuses that have to be set before the round is fired... you lase the target and adjust the detonation point and then set the fuse by an induction coil as the round is loaded into the chamber and then fire. The timer is not super precise so it is not metre perfect regarding the location it actually explodes... the timer precision costs money and the higher precision the higher the cost a bit like stealth... the better the precision the higher the cost by an order of magnitude... ie to explode within 20m of where you want it to explode might be 100 dollars, to explode within 15 metres might be 1,000 dollars per shot, within 10 metres might be 100,000 dollars per shot and within 5 metres might be 2 million dollars per shot.

To get it to explode within 1m of where you want it might be not possible with available technology, which is why with their 30mm cannon shell air burst rounds they decided initially to go for lasers to shine on rear facing laser detection elements so you can command detonate the round when it reaches the target... the parts in the round that are destroyed with each shot are cheap... the expensive stuff is in the vehicle. They replaced that with a command detonation radio signal so it would work reliably through smoke and dust and weather but the idea is the same and still much cheaper than incredibly precise timers.

I suspect once they get it into service for 30mm and 57mm rounds that 125mm rounds will be developed too if they haven't already been designed.

T-72B1s getting upgraded

I have always wondered what purpose those side mounted machineguns served. My theory has been that they are to scare infantry.

In this config, I would say it is nothing more than a salutation gun ...
Doesn't look aimed at any way other than rotating the tank itself ...
Waste of good barrel only
For BMP-3s, AGS that are sticking in the front have some 45 deg arc of fire each, so combined those cover a whole front sphere of the BMP. That makes some sense, as a suppression weapon against closing infantry.

A lot of tanks back in WWII (GPW) had such MGs + some in the back of the turret or somewhere else.
Propably for the driver to operate if the turret is busy with other targets.
Could be useful in street fighting.

It doesn't seems to be aimed bro.
IS-2 had a back directing DT machine gun, but it was aimed ...