The question of creating a tank with a crew of two has always worried tank builders. Attempts to create such a tank were made. Considered this possibility in the 1970s. one of the creators of the T-34 tank, Alexander Morozov, while developing the concept of the next generation of tanks after the T-64. The same attempt was made by his son Yevgeny Morozov in 1980 when choosing the concept of the "Boxer" tank.
When choosing a variant of the "Boxer" tank with a crew of two or three people, I (the author of the article) had to evaluate and justify the possibility of creating a tank with two crew members. No one had done such work before us, and when discussing this issue with Yevgeny Morozov, he focused on a significant decrease in the booked volume while reducing the tank's crew. At the same time, the assessment of the crew's ability to fulfill their functional duties somehow remained aside.
I was interested in this question, and I decided to work in two directions: to assess the workload of the crew of the serial T-64B tank and to analyze the functional duties of the crew members. I instructed one of my divisions to collect and analyze information on the profile departments of the design bureau about the control bodies and the functional load of the crew members. Subsequently, the choice of a tank layout option with two or three crew members was based on the findings of this work.
Having collected all the controls of the tank and decomposed the actions of the crew into elementary operations, we received information that surprised all of us and the leadership of the design bureau. Nobody expected that there would be so many controls in the tank. By that time, we began to receive classified information on ergonomics in military equipment, including on the loading of the Soyuz spacecraft crew. It turned out that the tank had several hundred controls, and there are more of them than on the spacecraft!
If officers with the rank of colonel have been trained for flying on it for many years, the tank's crew consists mainly of 18-20-year-old soldiers, and this in further work made me take the development of control panels very seriously.
Having received information about the workload of the crew, we made an assessment of their functional responsibilities in various situations: march, defense, offensive, operation (maintenance and maintenance). Naturally, the most intense workload was during the conduct of hostilities under stressful conditions.
The functional duties of the crew are aimed at solving four tasks: fire control, movement, tank protection and ensuring the interaction of the tank in the tank unit and with attached units. The same approach was used in the creation of a tank information and control system, combining a fire control system - an OMS, movement - a CMS, protection - a CPS and interaction - an SUV.
When the crew performs these tasks, part of the functional duties can be assigned to the technical means of the tank. Protection control tasks (fire-fighting, anti-nuclear, optoelectronic suppression, active, etc.) are mainly solved by technical means and practically do not require the participation of the crew.
Traffic control can be automated to the maximum, but it is not yet possible to completely exclude a person from this process. As of today, and in the near future, there are no technical means to automatically drive a tank. The driver is focused on controlling the movement of the tank, he cannot be distracted to perform other duties.
He can only perform an auxiliary operation unusual for him to detect targets on the battlefield, adjust fire and make a report to the tank commander. That is, one crew member is needed to control the movement.
Fire control requires solving problems of searching for targets, target designation, aiming weapons at a target, loading weapons, aiming, conducting and evaluating the results of fire. Previously, all these tasks were carried out by the commander, gunner and loader of the tank. At the initial stage of the development of the T-64 tank, the crew consisted of four people, then the loader was replaced with a loading mechanism, and the crew was reduced to three people.
It is very difficult to combine the functions of finding targets and firing on one person. When searching for targets, a person cannot concentrate on firing, and when firing, it is impossible to search for targets. The gunner's field of view through the sight is very limited, and when aiming, he increases the magnification, and the field of view sharply decreases to a small sector of view.
It is theoretically possible to create an MSA with automatic search, tracking and target destruction, but this will require complex technical means, unjustified costs and the impossibility of mass production of such tanks. Moreover, such funds never appeared. The concept of “fire and forget” was discussed for a long time in the 80s, but even now, more than thirty years later, things have not gone further than talk. In addition, all the same, it is the person who will have to determine the priorities of the chosen goals and make a decision to open fire.
Thus, it is not possible to combine the functions of searching for targets and firing on one person, and two people are needed to control the fire.
The interaction of a tank in a tank subunit requires solving problems of determining the position of its own and subordinate tanks on the battlefield, identifying targets and implementing target allocation between tanks, assessing the effectiveness of firing by a subunit, issuing the necessary commands to subordinate tanks and attached subunits, and receiving commands from higher commanders. Line tank commanders must also accept and obey commands. At the same time, the unit commander is left with the tasks of controlling the fire of his own tank.
There were practically no technical means for a high-quality solution of these tasks on the tanks, there was only a radio station and, on the command tank, navigation equipment. And this despite the fact that in the tank forces every third tank is a commander.
When considering this problem, it must be borne in mind that one of the serious and not yet resolved problems is visibility from the tank. Anyone who has ever sat in a tank knows very well that when the hatches are closed, visibility deteriorates sharply, it is often impossible to understand where the tank is, especially in unfamiliar terrain. The tank needs "eyes"!
I have repeatedly had to talk about this with the chief designer General Shomin, who fought in the Great Patriotic War on the T-34. He said that in order to improve the conditions for controlling the tank, a fifth member was added to the crew - a radio operator, whose main task was to monitor the battlefield and provide communications. Shomin recalled that tanks often went into battle with open hatches on the towers so that they could at least occasionally look out and determine where you were, and if the tank was defeated, quickly leave it.
When developing the "Boxer" tank, several options were considered to solve this problem. A multichannel panoramic sight was developed for the commander, exotic options for retractable rods with devices at the top and the use of drones and fire support helicopters as a source of information from the battlefield to the tank were worked out. All these studies have not received further development, and this problem has not yet been resolved.
As part of this project, a receiver was developed for the first time for a tank with the GLONASS global satellite navigation system. The developers of the receiver could not solve this problem for a long time, it turned out to be at least five liters in volume, and now it is a microchip in a mobile phone.
It should be noted that even with the advent of such technical means, it is impossible to shift the solution of the tasks of managing a unit to them. The commander will have to solve them anyway, and these funds can only make his work easier.
The functional tasks of the tank crew during its maintenance and current repairs are today performed by a crew of three without attracting additional staff. A crew of two can hardly do this, but it will take much more time and with a loss in the quality of the work performed.
As a result of the consideration and analysis of the functional tasks of the tank crew, it was proved that a person must provide control of movement, firing, search for targets and control of the unit. It is almost impossible to transfer these tasks to technical means.
Evaluating the possibilities of combining the functions of searching for targets and firing by one crew member in the development of the "Boxer" tank, we came to the conclusion that it is impossible to combine them. It also turned out to be impossible to delegate the control functions of own and subordinate tanks to the gunner or driver. These functions are inherently incompatible, and the performance of one leads to the termination of the performance of the other.
All attempts to find in this project an opportunity to assign some of the functions to technical means and to reduce the crew size to two people showed the impossibility of their implementation. After repeated consideration of this issue at the councils of chief designers and at the NTK GBTU, it was decided to develop a tank with a crew of three.
Work within the framework of this project once again confirmed that the minimum crew of a tank must be at least three people. Two people are not able to drive the tank efficiently and ensure the fulfillment of the tasks assigned to it.
There was a tank with a crew of two in the Soviet Army: this is the T-60 and its successor, the T-70. They were produced in 1941-1943. This light tank was produced when necessary, it was necessary to urgently make up for the losses incurred. The experience of using the T-60 in combat as part of tank units and as an infantry support tank showed low efficiency, including due to the extreme overload of the tank commander when performing numerous functional and mutually exclusive tasks. After the losses incurred during the Battle of Kursk, it was discontinued.
How seriously the issue of the crew size was considered and analyzed during the development of the Armata tank, I do not know. At least, a well-grounded decision was made to leave the crew of three people: today there are no technical means capable of ensuring the high-quality performance of all functional tasks of the tank's crew when it is reduced to two people.
