Something incomprehensible has been going on with the promising Russian Armata tank lately, there are no promised supplies to the troops, and references to the lack of funds to finance this program look unconvincing. Enough time has passed since 2015, and the tank never appeared in the army.
There is no engine for the tank
Everyone understood that there were serious problems with the tank, but they tried not to advertise them. And now "Lenta.ru" with reference to the "Mil. Press Military" agency reported on February 6:
"The promising Russian tank T-14" Armata "has lost the ability to install a diesel engine on it, created within the framework of R&D" Chaika ", since the latter will be closed."
To the agency's appeal to the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (engine developer), an answer was received:
"As a result, it became obvious that the launch of the developed engine for serial production is inappropriate due to its flaws and technically unattainable parameters."
At the same time, the scientific and technical groundwork that appeared when creating a promising engine will be used in the future.
It so happens that lately we learn about the problems with "Armata" from publications of foreign editions. So, the American edition "The Diplomat" on January 17 reported (data on the site "Lenta.ru") that the supply of the tank "Armata" to the troops is delayed not only because of the need to prepare production facilities:
"Military analysts point to problems with the power plant, transmission and the T-14 sighting system along with others as the cause of further delays."
In its publication, "The Diplomat" refers to the comment of the head of "Rostec" Sergei Chemezov, who in January of this year said that supplies to the Russian army of armored vehicles based on the "Armata" platform had not yet begun, although in November 2019 he assured that the first an experimental batch of T-14 will enter the troops at the end of 2019 - beginning of 2020.
How the euphoria with the creation of the Armata tank was inflated
To understand what is happening, it is worth remembering the recent history of the appearance of this tank. The start of work on the concept of the Armata tank was announced in 2011, and already in 2014, then Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, far from the problems of creating military equipment, announced the creation of the Armata tank and its possible display on May 9, 2015 at the parade on Red Square. The tank was demonstrated at the parade, and since then it has only been regularly shown at parades and cannot be put into mass production in any way.
In July 2018, Yuri Borisov, who replaced Rogozin as Deputy Prime Minister, said that the Russian Armed Forces do not seek to massively purchase T-14 tanks due to their high cost, preferring to increase the combat potential of existing military equipment through its modernization.
In August 2019, the Military Industrial Courier wrote that by the end of last year, Uralvagonzavod would supply the Ministry of Defense with only 16 vehicles based on the Armata universal tracked platform, which is explained by the need to continue testing promising weapons and the caution of the Russian military department in assessing its capabilities …
The publication recalled that, according to the contract, Uralvagonzavod had to deliver 132 vehicles based on the Armata platform by the end of 2021 and expressed doubt that this could be done. And so it happened.
There are serious technical problems with the tank
All this suggests that the tank has both technical and organizational problems, the ostentatious haste with the announcement of the creation of this tank brought him more harm than good. The creation of such complex equipment as a tank requires the efforts of dozens of specialized enterprises and organizations engaged in the development, testing and production of units and systems of the tank. This requires the most complex cooperation of all project participants under the leadership of the tank design bureau and strict adherence to certain stages of development and testing. Failure of work on some important unit or system is enough, and there will be no tank.
All the components of the tank must go through these stages at the development enterprises and, based on the test results, be recommended for installation on the tank. The tank must also pass first factory (preliminary) tests, then state tests conducted by the military in various climatic zones, experimental military operation and, according to the test results, is recommended for adoption and serial production.
Was all this done? Certainly not, this cycle takes years with a clear sequence of work. What kind of tests could we talk about if R&D for the aforementioned Chaika tank engine was announced only in 2014, and the creation of a tank was announced already in 2015?
Representatives of the industry and the military, instead of intelligible explanations of what stage of development and testing the tank is at, all the time only kept repeating that it would soon enter the army. Of course, the tests of the tank are not completed, at what stage they are, this is a terrible secret, but only without the engine and (I suspect) other systems of the tank will not be and it is simply pointless to talk about serial production.
If the development of the X-shaped engine for the tank has already been officially announced, then what will be installed instead? Over the years, information has periodically appeared about problems with this engine and the difficulties with its production, but it was presented as minor solvable problems. But it turned out that these problems are of a fundamental nature. We can only hope for the installation of modifications of the "eternally alive" B2 engine. How acceptable will it be for this tank layout and what characteristics will it provide?
I suppose that other components and systems of the tank did not go through the necessary stages of development and testing and did not confirm the declared characteristics, they can also have the same serious problems. The tank is saturated with the most complex systems, it has a new gun, a sighting system and a new generation of active protection, radar systems, a tank information and control system, a tactical link control system. There has never been anything like this before and requires serious development and testing by the development enterprises. In such complex systems, there are always problems that take time to solve.
I can give a negative example of the work of subcontractors on these systems. For the "Boxer" tank in the 80s, a computer system for controlling the movement of the tank was developed by the Chelyabinsk Design Bureau "Rotor", which is now developing TIUS for the "Armata" tank, and the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant was developing an aiming system, according to available information, it is also developing it for "Armata". These two firms failed work on the Boxer tank, which was one of the reasons for the serious delays in its development. Now they cannot give anything intelligible on these systems for the "Armata" tank either. Have they never learned to work in thirty years?
What to do?
Last year, some crazy idea was thrown into the idea of the possibility of installing a turret from the T-90M tank on the Armata tank. Is this a compensation option being prepared in connection with the failures in "Armata"? And now it turns out that there is no engine for the tank either.
You have to pay for everything, the euphoria in 2014 with the creation of a new tank turned out to be in many ways a bluff, launched, in my opinion, by Dmitry Rogozin. Yuri Borisov smoothed out this effect, referring to the lack of funds, but technical problems with the tank remained. For all the shortcomings of this tank concept, this is really a new generation tank, it contains many breakthrough ideas for the components and systems of the tank, and it will be a shame if they are not implemented due to the possible closure of the tank project, as was the case with the project " Boxer".
Instead of ceremonial hype, it is necessary to calmly admit the failures and begin the systematic refinement of the concept of the tank and its components in accordance with the generally accepted methodology and stages of the development of armored vehicles. Over the years, colossal experience has been accumulated, this is also recognized abroad, such a reserve should not disappear without a trace, it should be used in the further development of the Soviet and Russian schools of tank building.
