I was surprised to read the article "Objective factors against" Nota "on VO. Failure of "Object 477A". Struck by speculation, innuendo and unrestrained imagination of the author.
Where does this information come from?
It turns out that recently a propaganda article about the so-called Ukrainian "Nota" tank (which never existed) and the prospects of this mythical machine was published in the Ukrainian online edition of Defense Express. About this edition and who is behind it - a little below.
And now about the project of the "Boxer" tank, which (according to this article), as it were, became the prototype of the "Nota" tank.
The author writes that by the beginning of the 90s, several variants of the Hammer tank (object 477) had been created in Kharkov, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine agreed to continue these works (object 477A), named "Note", the design was in full swing, and the result was a more advanced object 477A1. It was as if Russian enterprises were involved in the work (!), The customer was allegedly the Russian Ministry of Defense (fantastic!) And financed them, but in the early 2000s, Russia abandoned joint work and began its own development. As a result of the work carried out in Ukraine, six or seven samples of the Nota tank remained, and such a "tank power" as Saudi Arabia even became interested in this project. As a result, it is concluded that the development of the object 477 tank has been going on for about 30-35 years and did not lead to the desired results.
To be honest, I haven't read such nonsense on a topic that I know very well for a long time. Let me emphasize right away that I have the deepest contempt for the premature state of Ukraine and its possibilities to create something worthwhile there, but, as they say, the truth is more expensive.
First of all, it is necessary to separate the two points touched upon in the article: the development in the 80s of the last Soviet tank of the new generation "Boxer" and the advertised work already in Ukraine on the nonexistent tank "Nota".
Development of the tank "Boxer"
I have already written in detail about the development of the "Boxer" tank, even my book on this topic has been published on the Internet, but I will have to briefly recall what actually happened.
As one of the leaders of the "Boxer" tank project, I participated in it from the first to the last day of these works and, naturally, I had all the information on the tank project. I had to leave the KB in 1995, when there was no longer any chance of its revival.
The history of the tank began in the early 80s with the "Buntar" research and development project in search of the next generation tank concept. According to the results of research and development in 1986, the ROC "Boxer" was set, before that a competition of three tank design bureaus was held, their projects were presented by the Kharkov, Leningrad and Tagil design bureaus. After reviewing the projects, the military made the following conclusion: the projects of the Leningrad and Tagil design bureaus do not come close to meeting the requirements and are rejected, they were assigned work on the ROC "Improvement" - the further development of serial T-80 and T-72 tanks.
The Kharkov project "Boxer" was accepted for development, and the development of its design began together with subcontractors. In the process of work, more than a dozen tank layout options were developed and mocked up. As a result, an arrangement was adopted with a 152-mm semi-extended cannon on the roof of the tower, the so-called gun carriage installation, the classical placement of the crew, while the commander and gunner, for reasons of security, were located in the turret cockpit and sat at the level of the tank hull, which required a high periscopicity of the sighting systems …
The ammunition load was placed in an armored capsule between the fighting compartment and the MTO with the ability to load the gun from this compartment. The power plant was built on the basis of a modification of the 6TD-2 engine with a capacity of 1200 liters. with. The highlight of the tank was the tank information and control system, which made it possible to bring it to a fundamentally different level of control and create a network-centric tank.
In accordance with the decree, dozens of design bureaus, factories and institutes throughout the country participated in the development of the tank, it was the fruit of the labor of thousands of engineers in various branches of technology. The Leningrad and Tagil design bureaus did not take part in the work on this topic, they were instructed to improve the serial tanks, although their chief designers participated in all meetings in Kharkov, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Defense and owned all situations with the development of the tank.
By the end of the 80s, two prototypes of the tank and several mock-ups were made for testing the units and systems of the tank, and testing of the samples began. During the tests, as usual, a lot of technical problems came to light, they were gradually solved. When the tank was reloaded with all the components and systems incorporated in it, it turned out that it fell out far beyond 50 tons, since the powerful protection and placement of 152-mm separate loading ammunition in an armored capsule were too expensive. In addition, the automatic loader was sharply complicated with such a tank layout, and the military demanded an increase in the power of the ammunition, which was limited by the length of the compartment for their placement.
By 1990, the layout of the tank had undergone dramatic changes, the armored capsule was eliminated. The length of the hull was reduced and switched to unitary ammunition with their placement in two drums in the tank hull and a consumable drum in the turret. In order to reduce weight, titanium elements and parts were introduced into the armor protection and chassis. This version of the tank received the index 477A, and later it was renamed into "Hammer", since one subcontractor had lost a secret document, and the development secrecy was very high.
Even before the completion of the tests of the tank samples in 1989, it was ordered to start preparing for the production of an installation batch of tanks. Everyone insisted on the early completion of the tests of the tank and launching it into mass production, the inherent characteristics satisfied the military.
According to the developed documentation of the 477A tank, they did not have time to make samples, the Union collapsed, the drum-type automatic loader, pictures of which everyone is now trying to draw, did not reach the tank, it was only successfully tested at the stands. Nobody officially closed the work, she herself quietly died for a prosaic reason.
Ukraine could not carry out work on this tank independently, since almost all the filling was developed and manufactured in Russia: the cannon - in Perm, machine guns - in Izhevsk, the armor structure - in Moscow, sighting systems with laser and heat-TV channels - in Krasnogorsk and Novosibirsk, the stabilizer weapons - in Kovrov, communications - in Ryazan, missile weapons - in Moscow and Tula, satellite navigation equipment - in Leningrad, a computer complex - in Moscow, a power plant control system - in Chelyabinsk, a state recognition system - in Kazan, etc.
The pitiful attempts to revive all this in Ukraine, naturally, did not lead to anything, moreover, this impoverished state was not able to finance such a costly development, and by 1993 they tried not to remember it.
Thus ended the epic with the "Boxer / Hammer" tank (objects 477 and 477A). And not because it was no good, the country that ordered it simply disappeared, and the fragments of the country did not need it.
The myth about the promising tank "Nota"
Now, regarding the development of the promising Nota tank in Ukraine and an even more wild version of the joint Russian-Ukrainian development of this tank.
Before writing about this, one must clearly understand what the relations between Russia and Ukraine have been like since the beginning of the 90s. After the collapse of the Union, Ukraine immediately declared its subordination to all army groups on its territory, demanded that all officers take an oath (I was constantly terrorized with summons to the military enlistment office on this matter) and subordinate the entire Black Sea Fleet to itself, closed access to the development of military equipment on its territory and proved to everyone that it is a great military power and itself is able to produce weapons.
There could be no talk of any negotiations on the joint development of the Boxer tank, no one started them, almost all the information on this tank passed through me, and I knew the state of affairs in this work.
At the command of Kiev, all contacts with Moscow were curtailed and a ban was issued on the transfer of documentation and any information on this tank.
At this time, Ukraine made titanic efforts to sell the most advanced Soviet T-80UD tank, which was put into service in 1984, and in 1995-1998, the plant and the design bureau were implementing the so-called Pakistani contract for the supply of 320 T-80UD tanks, and no one there was nothing to do with a promising tank.
After the successful implementation of the contract in Ukraine, there was an excitement to create your own tank and, apparently, then the idea appeared to revive the Soviet development of the Boxer tank, giving it a new name “Nota” and another index “object 477A1”.
This premature state really wanted to show its importance and greatness. Soviet development, which was carried out by a lot of organizations throughout the country, began to be passed off as a new "Ukrainian" one, demonstrating that Ukraine is capable not only of producing serial, but also developing promising tanks.
I draw your attention to the fact that neither the management nor the staff of the KMDB stoop to advertising this work, since any competent specialist understands that this is the purest bluff.
A powerful advertisement for the non-existent Nota tank is being promoted by a certain Sergei Zgurets, this illiterate schmuck who understands little about technology and even more so in tanks. This noteworthy ukropagandist, who presents himself as a "military expert", raised on Western grants and created an information and consulting company Defense Express with American money, is working out an order to advertise a non-existent "powerful" Ukrainian military-industrial complex. One of its tasks is to promote "Ukrainian tank building". For lack of anything better, he promotes the myth of the Nota tank.
In one of the publications on this resource, even I was enrolled in the "Ukrainian tank builders", referring to my book on the development of the "Boxer" tank. This "information dodging" at one time launched information that a prototype of the Nota tank (and in fact one of the samples of the Boxer tank) will be held at the parade in Kiev in 2017, but among the Ukrainian bogeymen there was no one willing to go for such a cheap provocation.
If in the Russian expert community the "power" of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex will be judged by the "scribbles" of this expert, then one can come to far-reaching conclusions. Still, we need to take a closer look at who writes it and for what purpose.
Returning to the above-mentioned article, it should be noted that it is not appropriate for Russian experts, using the wildest incompetence of the ukropagandists, to cast as a shadow on the wattle fence on Soviet developments, which made Soviet tank building one of the best in the world, out of opportunistic considerations. Such actions have never done honor to anyone.
Regarding the myth about the Nota tank, we can say that such work may have been open, but without the cooperation of allies, it is impossible to create a tank. One of the participants in these works on the Internet described how they drew pictures of the tank without a serious study of the design of nodes and systems and without involving subcontractors in the work, since they simply did not exist. Naturally, no prototypes, let alone prototypes, were produced, and besides, it is ridiculous to talk about some kind of tests or comparative characteristics.
The Nota tank never existed.
This is the speculation of the ukropagandist Zgurts, who tried to present the groundwork for the "Boxer" tank by the Ukrainian development of a promising tank.
Continuation of the epic of a promising tank
Modern Ukraine has never had Ukrainian tank building. There was just an attempt to create it on the basis of the Soviet reserve, which ended in complete failure.
Historically, on its territory was the Kharkov Design Bureau, which has been developing Soviet tanks since the 1920s with the participation of enterprises from all over the country. And such masterpieces as the T-34 and T-64 came out of its walls, no matter how they tried to forget and distort it now.
Of course, in Leningrad and Tagil they want to forget like a nightmare that the so-called "fundamentally new" T-72 and T-80 tanks appeared as an attempt to improve the T-64, and that the concept of this tank is still embedded in them. It has already been described in detail how these tanks were born and how they pushed their way, including forging government documents (read Kostenko's memoirs).
In the 80s, these two design bureaus again lost to Kharkov in the competition for the development of a promising tank, it was not possible to bring it, not because it was bad, on the contrary - everyone demanded the speedy completion of its development. The question of the unsuccessful concept of the tank or the termination of work was never raised by anyone. The development of the tank came at the time of "perestroika", with its complete degradation and irresponsibility, which led to the collapse of the country. "The times of Stalin's commissars are over," this also affected the military-industrial complex. This tank was simply not needed by anyone.
In the 90s, the concept of the "Boxer" tank was tried to be repeated in Tagil (object 195), and it was not difficult to do this, since all the subcontractors remained in Russia, and the created reserve could be used and developed further. In this project, many ideas from the Boxer tank were used - a 152-mm semi-extended gun, sighting systems, TIUS and a number of other tank systems developed by Russian enterprises. The difference was in the uninhabited turret and the placement of the crew in an armored capsule in the tank hull.
For various reasons, this project did not go, in 2009 it was abandoned, and the Armata project was launched, which has not yet reached the army.
They have been trying to create a promising tank of a new generation for forty years and so far it is not.
Different design bureaus worked on it in Soviet and Russian times, using the rich Soviet backlog in tank building, the country has already lost two design bureaus. Kharkivskoe - turned out to be in Ukraine and is slowly dying due to the lack of the ability to fully work, Leningradskoe - was simply destroyed, strangling a competitor to please the remaining Tagil Design Bureau.
Russian tank building has lost its competition and is marking time. It was not just that after the war, Stalin left three rival design bureaus defending their concepts of tank development, which allowed the military to choose the best of them. Now this is not the case. Good or bad - time will tell and put everything in its place.
