As you know, it is human nature to doubt. People who have no doubts, are absolutely sure of everything are naturally stupid. However, in all fairness, it should be noted that a mass, nationwide, if you like, conviction of something in our days is easy to form. For example, if you daily report on television that the moon has the shape of a suitcase, and what we observe in the night sky is actually nothing more than an optical illusion, then after a while millions of people will believe it. And they will believe in spite of everything.
After all, the average Russian man in the street believes that our tanks are the best in the world. Believes without hesitation. At the same time, however, he does not doubt, for example, that domestic cars are one of the worst. Few think about how a country that has been unable to achieve acceptable technical reliability from its cars for several decades produces the best tanks in the world. Although intuitively, people still understand that something is wrong. It is not for nothing that patriotic stickers "T-34" or "IS-2", which are fashionable now, can be found on Toyota, Ford, and what is especially piquant - on Mercedes. "Volga" and "Zhiguli" with such labels almost never come across.
We have our own rating
Few people think about the question: who, in fact, decided that our tanks are the best in the world? Who else besides us thinks so? In any case, judging by international ratings, we are alone in our patriotic delusion. Neither Soviet nor Russian tanks ever rose above the middle of the top ten. But the ratings are compiled by professional experts, taking into account many evaluative factors, sometimes the most unexpected, and not reducing everything to size and weight. Although it is these two parameters that have become entrenched in the mass consciousness. In any case, on numerous Internet forums on this topic, the thesis is that our tanks are better, because they are smaller and lighter, and the same cannon is one of the most common. How superficial and erroneous this point of view is, can be seen from the simplest examples. Let's take at least the Russian (more correctly, of course, Soviet) main tank T-80 - the most discussed combat vehicle in the special media lately - and let's see at what price its relatively small dimensions and weight were bought.
In domestic sources, the T-80 tank is usually compared with its overseas counterpart - "Abrams". This in itself is not surprising - the machines are almost the same age: the T-80 was put into service only four years earlier than the Abrams. But the most important thing is that these are the only serial tanks in the world equipped with a gas turbine power plant. So comparing them in this article would look quite logical, but I don't want to do it in full. And not at all because the author has nothing to say about this. There is something to say, especially against the background of many, to put it mildly, not entirely objective comparisons, which are characterized by "catching fleas" in the Abrams, while the T-80 is quite the opposite. In short, one is green and covered in pimples, and the other is white and fluffy. In order not to be considered unfounded, I would like to illustrate this approach with the following example. In one of the domestic periodicals devoted to the history of tank building, you can read the following: “The smaller size of the T-80U, and it is shorter than the M1A1 by almost a meter, lower by 0, 20 meters and already by 0, 30 meters, make it less noticeable on the field battle. The shorter length of the T-80U is explained by the fact that its power plant, also located longitudinally, does not have a heat exchanger.
The "bad" "Abrams" is considered by the US army as the main battle tank for the period until 2040, and the "good" T-80 in the near future, apparently, will be removed from the armament of the Russian army as "unpromising"
The GTD-1250 engine of the T-80U tank is smaller and lighter by almost 100 kilograms. The best air cleaning system made it possible to achieve a high degree of air purification (98.5%) on the GTD-1250. It supplies air to the engine and nozzle apparatus of the high-pressure turbine, and also directs it to blow off the MTO units (engine-transmission compartment), in the cavity of the front drive box and the first support of the low-pressure compressor. This achieves the sealing of MTO from dust. The presence of an air intake (air intake) with an inlet window located at a height of two meters allows the engine to be supplied with much cleaner air, relieving the load on the air cleaner, and the installation of an additional rigid nozzle included in the tank kit increases this height to 3.5 meters. All this became possible due to the design features of the T-80U, M1A1 tank due to the presence of a developed aft part of the tower, under which the roof of the MTO with an air supply system is located, the installation of a VCU is impossible, which is due to a slightly lower possibility of air purification in comparison with the T- 80U American tank is more difficult to operate in desert conditions."
What can I say here? At first glance, everything is correct, but if you dig deeper, then not everything is so obvious. Immediately surprising is the passage about visibility. This is a very common thesis, but in fact, the effect of a smaller tank on its unbreakability is a very, very relative thing. There is no direct relationship here, just as there is no statistics on the effect of this factor. In any case, he worked little already during the Second World War (the author, for example, did not have to hear that the T-60 tank, due to its small size, was hit less often than the "Tiger"), and nowadays, in the conditions of the use of high-precision weapons and does not matter at all.
Size price
Now with regard to the dimensions of the engine and MTO. Both the engine and the MTO of the T-80 are indeed smaller than that of the Abrams, but at the expense of what? In an effort to obtain acceptable dimensions of the T-80 power plant (it was required to fit into the overall dimensions of the T-64 / T-72), tank designers were forced to use a single-stage, maintenance-free (cassette-free) air cleaner with a large dust transmission (according to various sources, up to 2-3%), since the two-stage air cleaners used in all tanks of the world, without exception, are significantly larger in size compared to cassette-less ones and require periodic maintenance. Among other constructive measures to reduce the volume of the power plant of the T-80 tank, the developers had to abandon the use of heat exchangers, which would improve the fuel efficiency of a gas turbine engine (GTE). To obtain the minimum motor length, a two-stage turbocharger design was used, consisting of two centrifugal compressors driven by single-stage axial turbines.
The volume of the MTO tank T-80 is 3, 15 m3, "Abrams" - 6, 8 m3. In the American car, this is due to the use of a gas turbine engine with axial compressors and a heat exchanger, as well as a two-stage air cleaner, the volume of which is about 2 m3. The air cleaner is equipped with a barrier filter that can almost completely eliminate the passage of dust into the engine. During the operation of "Abrams", however, requires frequent maintenance of the filter, which really limits the mobility of the tank in conditions of high dustiness of the air.
It is not entirely clear why, when cleaning 98.5 percent of the air entering the engine, the T-80U motor is better in terms of air cleaning than the AGT-1500 "Abrams", which provides one hundred percent air purification. As for the OVC, it works effectively only when the turret of the tank is at 12 o'clock, that is, along the longitudinal axis forward. In other positions, the air intake simply does not block the air intake windows in the MTO roof.
The specific fuel consumption of the AGT-1500 engine is significantly less than that of the GTD-1250 - 202 g / h.p. h versus 240 g / h.p. h, which ultimately provides the 60-ton Abrams with a range of 395–440 kilometers against 350 in the 46-ton T-80U. To achieve a similar indicator, three 200-liter fuel barrels must be installed on the roof of the MTO T-80U. In connection with the exaggerated topic of the allegedly high fire hazard of "Abrams", we note that these barrels contain not relatively safe diesel fuel, but aviation kerosene. This is probably why there are so few military photographs of "eighties" with barrels - it seems that the troops simply avoided installing them. For the Abrams, by the way, additional external fuel tanks are not provided at all.
This is the price of half the size of the power compartment. Alas, there are quite a few such examples. Of course, it is easier and more patriotic to declare that our tank is better. For the simple reason that it is ours. An objective assessment takes a lot of time and effort, and the result may not be very good. It is easier to list the shortcomings of the "enemy" tank and fail to notice the same number of shortcomings of your own. How not to notice, in general, a bleak result: the "bad" "Abrams" is considered by the US army as the main battle tank for the period until 2040, and the "good" T-80 in the near future, apparently, will be removed from service Russian army as hopeless. That is, it is officially recognized that the reserve for its modernization has been exhausted.
We went our own way
Here, however, the question is natural: what, in fact, is the T-90 better? Isn't its reserve of modernization exhausted? What else can be done within the framework of its design, layout, dimensions, finally. Well, they replaced the cast turret with a welded one, installed a French thermal imager, a more powerful engine, and made some more improvements. But all this is not a modernization for the future, but bringing the T-72 tank (yes, this is not a reservation, because the T-90 is nothing more than a deep modernization of the T-72B, started back in the late 80s) to more or less acceptable level corresponding to the standard of the late twentieth century. Well, what's next? Next we need a new tank. If the leading Western tank-building powers can afford to limit themselves to the modernization of existing models, then Russia does not have such an opportunity. In this regard, it is worth asking the question: why did this happen? Why did Russian (Soviet) tank building essentially come to a standstill?
To answer this question, you will have to rewind the tape of time far back - to the period of the Second World War. Yes, it all started then. If you do not go into details, then we can state that by the end of the war, the main participating countries entered the two-tank structure of their tank forces. It looked especially clear in the USSR - the medium T-34-85 and the heavy IS-2. The United States has a medium Sherman and a heavy M26 Pershing in the twin pair with the M24 Chaffee light tank. The most amazing thing is that the two-tank structure had the most blurred appearance among its ancestors - the Germans. For a number of reasons, in our case unprincipled, by the end of the war the Wehrmacht had three tanks in a two-tank scheme: two medium tanks - the Pz. IV and the Panther and the heavy Royal Tiger. But this is according to the German classification. If you look at it differently and do not take into account the "Royal Tiger", like the Americans have M24, then the German two-tank scheme is just Pz. IV and "Panther". At the end of the war, a two-tank structure began to take shape in Great Britain. Not by classification, but in fact, a duet was also formed there - "Comet" and "Centurion". However, the two-tank scheme did not last long after the end of the war. Everywhere except the USSR.
As for Germany, everything is clear here - the two-tank structure disappeared along with the tanks. But in the United States and Great Britain at the end of the 40s, heavy tanks of the 40-ton class M26 and Centurion were reclassified as medium, and the medium-sized vehicles of the 30-ton class (Sherman and Comet) were abandoned. In the future, tank building in these countries, without curtailing, followed the path of developing a 40-ton class vehicle, creating a main battle tank on its basis. There was only one very brief retreat from the general line - at the end of the 50s, heavy tanks M103 (USA) and "Conquerror" (Great Britain) were created. But these vehicles were quickly abandoned, finally giving way to the main tank. In other Western countries, they either followed the same path, sometimes jumping over the stages, or experimented, trying to create a 30-ton MBT class, such as Germany and France. But they all ended the same. If we consider the countries - the producers of tanks, then they all ultimately embarked on the path of the United States and Great Britain. The only exceptions are “licensed” states such as China and India.
And, of course, as always, only we went our own way. The Soviet Union did not reclassify ISs as medium tanks, but kept them as heavy. Mediums continued to be created in the 30-ton class. Moreover, the two-tank structure was retained for the longest time - until the mid-70s (how many types of tanks there were in this structure is a separate story). Finally, the heavy tank was abandoned, and the MBT line was led away from the medium tanks.
The situation was aggravated by the irrepressible desire of individual representatives of the industry to create the very, very tank. That is, the best armored and armed, the fastest and most passable, while the smallest. But miracles do not happen. As we have already seen on the example of the T-80, you have to pay for everything. The desire to reduce the booked volume has led to the fact that nothing can be placed in this volume. So Russian tanks resemble a Christmas tree. Everything that the western vehicles have behind the armor, ours - on the armor. A typical example in this regard is the Ukrainian MBT "Oplot-M", demonstrated in 2009. A distinctive feature of the exterior of this tank is the commander's panoramic sight, a kind of "water tower" on the roof of the tower. Moreover, the size of this sight is approximately the same as that of the same "Abrams". But in the "Abrams" 2/3 of the sight is under the armor, and in the "Oplot" - 2/3 over the armor with all the ensuing consequences. The Oplot has no place under the armor, its turret is from the T-80UD, which means that it is the same in volume as that of domestic tanks. An attempt to equip the T-90 with a similar sight, for example, will lead to the fact that it will receive its own "water tower". You can talk as long as you like about the theoretical advantages of our tanks in connection with the presence of the Shtora optical-electronic suppression system, but in practice it is very easy to deprive them of this advantage with one machine-gun burst.
Where is the exit? Yes, in general, it lies on the surface. We just need to praise ourselves less and honestly admit that we went the wrong way (not the first time, by the way), and create a new tank, the same as everyone else's. Apparently, both the military and the developers have an understanding of this issue. Otherwise, the "Black Eagle" tank would not have appeared at the exhibition in Omsk in 1999 and 2001. It is clear that this was nothing more than a running layout. But the direction of thought is generally correct. What will happen next, we'll see.
