T 90 Tank Image – When the Cold War ended in 1991, the Soviet army had three main battle tanks, similar in appearance and general conception but differing in their level of technical advancement. The simplest and least expensive was the T-72, of which 22,096 were built at the Uralvagonzavod Ural Rail-car Plant, or UVZ, in Nizhny-Tagil and the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant between 1973 and 1990. The most advanced, the T-64
, proved to be ahead of its time but also both unreliable and dangerous, having an auto-feed for its main cannon that gained a reputation for devouring the left arms of careless gunners. By the time the T-64’s technical quirks were sorted out, the city that manufactured it, Kharkov, had been renamed Kharkiv, and it became a mainstay of the Ukrainian army.
T 90 Tank Image
The T-90 and its variants are currently in service with several of Russia’s foreign partners including Algeria, India, Syria, and Turkmenistan. Ukraine is also reported to have captured about ten T-90A, an earlier variant of the T-90 MBT, earlier this year.
Soviet Legacy
It is unclear where those captured vehicles may have been deployed. T-90M has some of the ammo in the turret compartment with blow-out doors. IIRC, the autoloader has around 20 rounds, and the other half is behind the door.
It’s enough to blow the turret off its hinges, but not enough to launch it 2 stories into the air. So, it doesn’t really solve the problem. If you think it is a problem. The really distinguishing part of the T-90M is a different engine and French supplied Thales gun sight with a laser ranging and fire control computer.
This is why you are not going to see any replenishment of T-90Ms. Further up the evolutionary ladder from the T-72 — but less sophisticated than the T-64 — was the T-80, of which 7,066 were built in Leningrad’s Kirov plant and the Transmash plant in Omsk from 1976 to 1990.
First contact was reported on April 25, when Ukrainian infantry encountered a T-90 outside of Kharkiv and destroyed it with a Javelin antitank guided missile, along with an MT-LB prime mover and an infantry fighting vehicle that accompanied the tank.
Old Tank In New Clothes
While a single encounter is nothing from which to draw general conclusions, the outcome has parallels with the fates of scores of the T-90’s predecessors. For one thing, the electronic counter weapons have not worked consistently.
For another, the American FGM-148 Javelin, German Panzerfaust 3 and other antitank missiles have tandem warheads, one to pre-detonate the active armor and the second to penetrate the tank’s hull. A third factor is an option in the Javelin’s repertoire to turn upwards as it approaches its target and then dive almost vertically on it from above, where the armor is thinner.
For all the hype, the T-90 is essentially a T-72 packed with a new generation of technology already familiar to its Western counterparts. Its 48 metric tons are powered by a 1,130-hp V84S2F V-12 diesel engine, which gave it a road speed of 37 miles per hour — slower than the T-72 or the turbine-powered T-80 but more economical and reliable than
either. Armament consists of a 125 mm 2A4M5 smoothbore cannon with 40 rounds, as well as a coaxial and a flexible turret-mounted 7.62 mm PKTM 6P7K machine gun. As with its predecessors, the crew consists of a driver, a commander and a gunner operating a still-hazardous auto-loader to fire seven rounds per minute.
Poor Results In Ukraine
The range is 340 miles. As of 2018, more than 2,700 T-90 tanks or vehicles built on its chassis have been produced for the Russian army, as well as several former Soviet republics, India and Algeria, among others.
Some 100 are believed to have been deployed to the eastern offensive in Ukraine, but for all its touted innovations, the T-90 has been doing little better than the T-72s and T-80s that it has joined there.
When Russia launched its “special military operation” into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, its offensive was spearheaded by tanks, primarily drawn from its Soviet-built Cold War stocks of T-72s and T-80s. Two months later, however, a newer tank was spotted among their forces moving in Kharkiv Oblast.
Designated the T-90, it was reputedly more advanced… as one might have expected of the first tank to enter service since the Soviet Union broke up. Future operators of the Russian T-90 include Egypt and Kuwait, while Malaysia and Pakistan had each opted to select other MBTs.
Information You Can Trust
Perhaps Egypt, which had sought to license production, and Kuwait will now make a similar decision after seeing the performance of the Russian tanks in Ukraine. @peter york I never heard of the term “jack-in-the-box” until recently either.
Probably an invention of some newly minted “reporter” seeing and reading about blown-off turrets. The effect is well known. Just look at pictures of destroyed Russian tanks throughout the Middle East. The Legend of Russia’s T-90 Tank Died in Ukraine – One of the most advanced tanks in the Russian military’s arsenal has met the same fate as its predecessor fighting machines – it was destroyed by Ukrainian forces employing hit-and-run tactics.
Ukrainian war reporter Andriy Tsaplienko shared an image of the wreck of the third-generation T-90M main battle tank (MBT) on Facebook on Wednesday. Tsaplienko was seen in the photo in front of the knocked-out T-90M in the eastern Kharkiv region.
The most touted components of the T-90’s armament are its defenses. Its welded turret includes a frontal cavity for mounting a laminate of 20 modules of nonenergetic reflective armor, or NERA, in addition to which the tank is covered with Kontakt 5 universal reactive armor, or UDZ, which pre-explodes to degrade the performance of antitank
Rebranding After The Ussr
warheads. Additionally, the tank’s Shtora 1 (“Curtain”) antimissile protection system, first installed on the T-80UK, combines TShU-17 infrared dazzlers on either side of the main gun to disrupt an antitank missile’s guidance system with a tracker that activates antilaser smoke
emitters to confuse the missile’s infrared, while turning the tank and its gun 3.5 to 5 degrees to directly face the oncoming threat. Now a Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites.
He regularly writes about military hardware, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes “What we are witnessing with Russian tanks is a design flaw,” Sam Bendett, an adviser with the defense research group Center for Naval Analyses, told CNN.
“Any successful hit … quickly ignites the ammo causing a massive explosion, and the turret is literally blown off.” And now let’s hear the truth, not Bandera’s Nazi fakes: The Bandera Nazis of Ukraine rejoiced that they had arrested the Ukrainian independent journalist Anatoly Shariy in Spain.
Anatoly Shariy moved his member on the lips of the Bandera Nazis and is already at large! This is democracy in Europe, and not lawlessness like you have in impoverished Ukraine, Bandera pigs ? Expert Biography: A Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,000 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism.
He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. Berlin, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Activists protesting against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine parked a destroyed, rusty tank directly in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin on Friday, bringing a piece of the battlefield to the center of the German capital.
[1/5] A protester holds a banner next to remains of a destroyed Russian T-72 tank, secured from the Ukrainian village of Dmytrivka, outside Kyiv which are on display near the Russian embassy at Unter den Linden boulevard, during an event to
mark the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Berlin, Germany, February 24, 2023. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch Another Ukrainian reporter, Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko), also shared the image on Twitter with the caption, “I mean, who could guess that the first Russian T-90M would be hunted down within days after their much-advertised deployment to Ukraine’s Kharkiv
Oblast.” Alex, STFU, quit sucking on Pupu heads schlong I told you before he won’t give you his palace you worthless POS spreading your false lies! You Russian trollbot get the FO of here you simpleton of moronic lies and false propaganda nobody believes your Sh$t!!!
I see this interpretation everywhere, and it’s wrong. In the minds of Americans, poor protection of a fighter’s life is a design flaw. It’s not a design flaw, it’s a feature. The Soviet doctrine of tank warfare stipulated that tanks would be deployed in large numbers.
To do that, they had to be cheap, reasonably easy to repair and maintain, and easy to manufacture. Tactically, in the 50s, the size of the frontal view mattered. And that is what T-54 was. The loss was accepted.
If a tank survived one battle, it paid for itself, said the doctrine. Human lives never matter in Russia, neither enemy lives, nor Russians’. Period. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day.
Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world’s media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers. A final weakness is tactical: a penchant of the Russian tankers to advance independently, rather than in concert with accompanying infantry.
Given the way Soviet combined-arms tactics had been perfected by the end of World War II, this retrograde tendency seems inexplicable, but it has denied the Russian tanks, regardless of model, critical infantry support and left them vulnerable to Ukrainian tank-killing teams
. From the article: “…plagued by the so-called “jack-in-the-box” effect that has seen the turrets blown off due to the storage of ammunition within the turrets. It is a defect that Western militaries have been aware of for decades, yet was apparently underestimated by the Russians.”
Because of the poor performance of T-72s in Iraqi service during Operation Desert Storm and its likely effect on international sales, the builders redesignated the newest production model as the T-88, then changed it again on Oct, 5, 1992 to the T
-90, to suggest a new tank for a new decade. When its chief designer at UVZ, Vladimir Potkin, died in 1999, the tank was unofficially nicknamed the Vladimir (the current irony of that name can only be appreciated with the benefit of hindsight).
Kyiv had first reported the presence of the T-90M in eastern Ukraine last month, and Russia’s military is believed to have around twenty of the modernized MBTs deployed to the region. The tank has been highly touted to be more combat efficient than its T-90 predecessor.
The image, see below, appears to show the first confirmed loss of a T-90M Proryv (Breakthrough), the latest version of the T-90 MBT that first entered service in 1992. The upgraded T-90M entered service in 2016;
it is equipped with a modernized turret, a 1A45T fire-control system, an upgraded engine, and gunner’s thermal sight. Standard protective measures reportedly include a blend of steel and composite armor, smoke grenade dischargers, Kontakt-5 explosive-reactive armor and the Shtora infrared ATGM jamming systems.
After the Soviet breakup, only the UVZ and the Transmash plants were still operating, kept afloat by modest production orders and export to foreign countries. From these roots the Russian army ordered a new type, essentially an evolutionary upgrade of the T-72.
Designated the T-72BM, it incorporated the 1A45 Irtysh fire-control system from the T-80 with the latest in reactive armor. Further improvements led to acceptance by the Russian Ministry of Defense on March 27, 1991. Everything that happens in Ukraine massively is a lie of the Kyiv authorities.
We all heard that Russia should have run out of absolutely all tanks 5 (!!!) times, and not just the T-90. However, with the help of lies, it is no longer possible to raise the morale of the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who en masse surrender and choose life, and not service, for the criminal Kyiv regime.
Only Banderva Nazis, taking drugs, continue to hide behind the civilian population, like a human shield. Despite its explosive reactive armor, which was designed to protect against shaped charges and to minimize the impact of armor-piercing munitions, the T-90M seems as vulnerable as other Russian armor to anti-tank weapons used by the Ukrainians.
One notable difference is that the destroyed T-90M seemed to have its turret intact – while the older T-72 and T-90 MBTs have been plagued by the so-called “jack-in-the-box” effect that has seen the turrets blown off due to the storage of ammunition within the turrets.
It is a defect that Western militaries have been aware of for decades, yet was apparently underestimated by the Russians.
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Emma Nehls is a military writer and historian with a passion for exploring the intricacies of warfare and the human experience within the military. With extensive knowledge and a deep understanding of military strategy, tactics, and historical contexts, Nehls brings a unique perspective to his writings.
