Land battleship
Recently, the T-95 again made people talk about themselves. A photo of "Object 195", which has already managed to disgrace, was posted on the network, which was noticed by the well-known blog of the center for the analysis of strategies and technologies bmpd. We will not give all the proceedings involving the owner of the photo, blogger Gur Khan. For ordinary fans of armored vehicles, the photo is interesting primarily because it is almost the first high-quality photo of the T-95 that got into the public domain, on which you can see all (well, almost all) of the features of the once promising vehicle.
According to the data presented, the photo shows the first prototype of the main tank "Object 195", made as part of the development work "Improvement-88". Readers may have already seen pictures of the second prototype of the T-95. On one of them, the tower of the combat vehicle is hidden by a tarpaulin, the second, due to the angle, also does not allow considering all the features of the MBT. In total, by the way, according to information from bmpd, three complete prototypes of the "Object 195" were produced. The tank captured in the picture was equipped with a sighting-surveillance radar station and an active protection system "Standart". The tracks on the car have been removed.
The history of the creation of this amazing tank is full of dark spots, but general information for today is not difficult to find in the public domain (how plausible they are is another question). The goal of the project was to find a replacement for the motley fleet of Soviet main battle tanks. The main thing was to create an MBT, devoid of the main disadvantage of such machines as the T-72 and T-64. We are talking about the relatively low protection of the crew due to the very dense layout, in which the tanks and ammunition were not isolated from the crew. In general, already in the 80s it was clear that the classical Soviet school of tank building had largely exhausted itself. At the same time, new technologies made it possible to create an MBT with a reliable remote-controlled uninhabited tower.
We are talking about the carriage layout known thanks to the T-14. The T-95 cannon was located in a relatively small uninhabited tower, and the ammunition load, as far as can be judged, was under the tower, although other information was also available. A crew of three, the designers put in an armored "capsule" in front of the tank. At the same time, in the future, one crew member could be abandoned, reducing the number of tankers to an absolute minimum - two people. It is difficult to unambiguously call it an advantage or a disadvantage of the tank. The Americans, for example, are convinced that for maintenance (in particular, repair) and the combat effectiveness of a combat unit, four tankers are just right.
The survivability of the T-95 tank on the battlefield was intended to improve not so much a new layout as the advanced all-aspect and all-round KAZ Shtandart, which we mentioned above. Recall that it was the domestic engineers in the Soviet years who were the first in the world to create a really working complex of active protection for tanks. The old "Drozd", among other things, ensured the defeat of cumulative projectiles flying at a speed of up to 700 meters per second. "Standart", of course, was carried out taking into account the experience of creating and operating this KAZ. And there was no doubt about its potential effectiveness.
The main innovation of the tank was the gigantic 152-mm smoothbore cannon 2A83, which surpassed all NATO and Soviet tank guns in its power. It made the T-95 potentially the best breakthrough tank, and in addition, guaranteed effective defeat of both main and promising tanks of a potential enemy from long distances. This advantage, of course, looks very tempting. But in the end, the project was closed: the Ministry of Defense announced its "obsolescence".
Is the choice justified?
Let's try to understand why the military chose the T-14. To do this, you need to compare the characteristics of the two MBTs.
Concept … The general idea of the two tanks is similar: these are rather large vehicles by Soviet standards, having, as already mentioned, uninhabited towers and giving the crews potentially high protection. In general, the T-14 is seen as a direct successor to the "Object 195". It's hard to say how much more economical it is. We will never be able to compare two production cars, and it makes no sense to draw conclusions about efficiency based on the analysis of the concept.
Mobility … According to reports, the T-95 could get a diesel engine A-85-3 (12N360) - four-stroke, X-shaped, 12-cylinder, gas-turbine supercharged, liquid-cooled with intermediate air cooling. The engine capacity is 35 liters, the power is about 1500 hp. This engine has become a completely new design with great potential for modernization. 12N360 is also installed on the T-14: but earlier a number of sources mentioned that in order to increase the resource, the power would be significantly reduced. According to the latest data, the power of the T-14 engine changes depending on the boost: 1350/1500/1800 hp. We can say that, in any case, formally (and at maximum modes), the power density of the T-95 and T-14 is quite high. According to this indicator, the tanks are comparable or even better than Western vehicles. Let us remind that the "Abrams", despite their huge mass, have always been distinguished by good mobility. Provided that the soil could withstand this weight.
Firepower … Here the differences between the T-95 and T-14 are immediately apparent. Experts consider the 125-mm 2A82 gun installed on the new Russian tank to be potentially good, but it does not give a decisive superiority over similar tank guns of the West. In contrast to this, the 152-mm T-95 cannon could not only become a thunderstorm for the Challengers and Leopards, but also give rise to a new round of the arms race, because other countries would also want such a “compelling argument”. And their old platforms probably would not have been able to ensure the reliable functioning of such a powerful firing system. But this is, of course, in theory. In practice, an increase in caliber to 152 mm could lead to a decrease in the resource of the gun barrel, a decrease in the number of shells, or (if the ammunition was comparable to the T-80 or T-72 ammunition) to an increase in the mass of the combat vehicle. In other words, the issue is controversial and complex.
Electronics … This is an important aspect for any modern tank. The T-14 received a medium-range circular Doppler radar with AFAR, ultraviolet HD surveillance cameras with 360 ° circular coverage and many other useful equipment (the use of an on-board UAV for target designation, however, was not confirmed). "Object 195" is an older machine, respectively, its optics / electronics are objectively older. However, absolutely nothing prevented, within the framework of modernization, to equip the tank with fundamentally new equipment, not inferior to that installed on the T-14.
Output
Lack of information about the T-95 does not allow us to confidently judge its potential. Based on the available data, it can be assumed that, purely conceptually, the T-14 does not have pronounced advantages over the older machine. Exactly like "Object 195" cannot boast of a decisive superiority over its progenitor. The choice in favor of the T-14 was most likely due to the need to create not only or even not so much a new tank as a unified tracked platform for a whole series of new vehicles. However, one cannot exclude the banal desire of interested parties to receive the coveted additional funding for a new development.
