The International Army Games ("Army-2018") are being held for the fourth time. Competitions every year expand the number of participants, and competitions and disciplines are also added. Although, it must be said, this year, for an unknown and not officially announced reason, the international stage of the Keys from the Sky competition of anti-aircraft missile forces of the air defense forces did not take place, although there was an army stage.
Of course, different contests are of different interest. Many are most likely interested in a narrow circle of those involved, while others are interested in who won in the end, and nothing else. Of course, the main types, such as "Aviadarts", "Suvorov onslaught" (biathlon on BMP), "Airborne platoon", "Excellence in military reconnaissance", "Marine landing" and others - also arouse considerable interest, but "biathlon" is interesting where more, because it all began with him in 2013.
By the way, with regard to other nominations - in most of the species ours win, somewhere the Chinese win, Kazakhstanis have many victories, there are contests won by the Iranians, and so on. There are nominations in which the venue decides a lot - for example, the victory of the Chinese at the Suvorov Onslaught is not at all surprising; it is more interesting to look at the "battle" of the modernized BMP-3 and ZBD-04A, also related machines, but of a different generation), but it is much easier to "roll" a home range than someone else's. Also, their victory in China in the Marine Corps competition, where everyone drove Chinese infantry fighting vehicles, is not surprising (the Chinese device is very specific, and if on land, say, you can compete with it, then it swims exactly faster than all possible competitors). Or the sniper competition held in Belarus - the victory of the Belarusians is not at all surprising.
The high result of our aerospace forces at Aviadarts, with their considerable real combat experience and technical level of machines, should not be surprised either, especially since this time the competition took place here. Somewhere, luck and skill decide, more precisely, the level that we managed to show at the moment. In general, this is, of course, an army sport, but it is a sport, and it is at the international stages that there are more "sports" than the actual "army" (for example, tank biathlon this year at the intra-army stage was a platoon competition, much closer to the usual competitions than to shooting races, which is the international stage).
But most of all interest is, of course, "Tank Biathlon". It's like medals, say, of the Winter Olympics - everyone is important, but who wins in hockey is of much more interest to everyone than anything else. The main contenders for victory, as in previous years, are our tankers, as well as the national teams of the People's Republic of China, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which were leading both in individual races and in the semifinals, and eventually qualified for the final. Moreover, our chances are rated the highest, Chinese and others - lower (at the time of writing the material, the final result was not yet known).
At the same time, for some reason, from time to time one has to hear and read rather strange opinions about some dishonesty of the competitions of the international stage in "Tank Biathlon". They say that dishonest swindlers from the RF Ministry of Defense drive better tanks than those that are provided to other teams - everyone drives ordinary T-72B3s, but the Russians have a completely different tank! Although the commentators of the competition claim that the T-72B3 tanks are exactly the same for all teams.
In fact, this is not so, and this is, in general, the secret of Punchinelle. All teams, except for the national teams of Russia and Belarus, drive conventional T-72B3 models of 2011, equipped with a V-84MS engine with a capacity of 840 hp. The Russian team used to compete in the so-called "biathlon" T-72B3, often called T-72B4, although no one officially called them that - these were tanks equipped with a 1130-horsepower V-92S2F diesel engine and a host of other useful "bells and whistles" including the commander's panoramic sight with a thermal imaging channel. There were about 30 such tanks produced, about a battalion, and they were used mostly for competitions, and therefore they earned such a nickname. However, the fire disciplines themselves at the "biathlon" are quite simple and sometimes not that the panorama is not needed there (it is overweight), but even the main multi-channel sight of the gunner PNM "Sosna-U" is not used by some of the crews, shooting in the old fashioned way through sight-backup 1A40-4 (well, this is a backup on the T-72B3 1A40, but on the usual "Bashke" it was the main one). Then the T-72B3 tanks of the 2016 model appeared in service with the RF Armed Forces, they are also "T-72B3 with enhanced protection", they are, unofficially, T-72B3M, and now officially they are called "T-72B3 with improved combat characteristics" 72B3 UBH. They are also equipped with 1130 hp engines. (which is important in relation to competitive practice, where "running" is much more important at this stage than shooting), but there is no panorama there.
There are more and more of these tanks in the army, and the improvement of the B3 series will be continued further. And the point here is not in the mythical "rejection" of the T-14 "Armata", which is so fashionable to discuss on the Internet and in the media, after the next obscure speeches, but in the fact that much more tanks are needed than previously thought, and not against all opponents a supertank is needed. "Armata" will not go anywhere and no one refuses it, but it is quite obvious that equipping the entire army with them will not work out quickly and is not necessary, especially in the conditions of the constant formation of new formations, this is impossible with much more solid financial support. And inadequate mass reactions to various strange speeches of superiors are a kind of tradition in our country. Some people continue to disperse this "wave" with a broom, not disdaining and fakes. An example of this is the publication of RBC the other day about a supposedly new robotic complex based on the T-72, supposedly created instead of the fact that on the basis of "Armata", which was "abandoned" - in reality, the guys just saw one presentation on the Web and give out something there described for real OCD. And a batch of a hundred vehicles for military trials is made precisely for "refusal"? What machines are being prepared for serial production at UVZ? But we digress, our T-14 is not yet performing at the "biathlon". Although, probably, many would very much like to see him there.
Indeed, both this year and the previous year, the Russian team drove in tanks that looked like an ordinary T-72B3 (a tank with UBKh differs in reactive armor "Relikt" on the sides and a number of other noticeable details), with the same removed from the side screen DZ modules, like everyone else, but it is not difficult, looking at the exhaust pipe, to understand that the engine there is V-92S2F. In general, it is not so important whether they took this tanks of the 2016 model and removed the protective kit that was not needed at the competition, or removed the panoramic sight from the "biathlon" version - the result is almost the same. Also, if you look at the tanks of other teams, you can see that the Belarusian brothers have the same engine. And then there is nothing surprising, it is the T-72B3 UBH tanks that are now being purchased by Belarus, and they could have come with their own vehicles, as their Chinese comrades do with the ZTZ-96B (or, more precisely, with tanks that look the same with combat tanks of this modification), and they could also agree with the Russians on the provision of the same machines as the purchased ones.
And everyone else is provided with T-72B3 with an 840-horsepower diesel engine. For free, mind you, and given the number of participants and the fact that each team is supposed to have 4 only "sled" tanks, they are recruited for a whole tank regiment! Forgive me, but, of course, we already have a lot of T-72B3s (their number significantly exceeded 1,000 and it was quite a long time ago), but this is a lot for us, but for some European power such as Germany, France or Italy it is there will be half of the tank fleet, if you count the combat-ready vehicles, it remains to be seen whether there will be that much. And here - please, kind Russians give you tanks, just go and shoot. Guests drive and shoot, and the tanks consume their resource, and very quickly, because the loads are very high, because in normal operation the tanks do not rush at maximum speed or beyond the passport values, they do not jump in such a way that either the barrel sticks (it was observed more than once, it was also lucky that no one had ever tore the gun from the soil remaining in it), or even the tower flies up (this year it happened with the Kazakhs, as well as with the Chinese, but those have their own tanks, and we have them no pity). There were also serious breakdowns, and repairs to the cars after the competition will be required. Moreover, it was even necessary to tighten the regulations, introducing penalties for serious tank breakdowns due to the fault of the crews, and the list there is rather big. So why would we still provide all the tanks of the latest modification, and also for free?
At one time, guests were offered an alternative, when the Russians drove a "panoramic" version of the T-72B3 - either a regular T-72B3 free of charge, or get the same "biathlon" tank for the difference in cost. For some reason, no one agreed. Obviously, the same rule applies now. In addition, Russia, in general, is profitable to provide its equipment from the point of view of commerce - someone in the end can order a similar modernization of the T-72 or buy new T-90S or MS tanks.
And Russia also does not prohibit anyone from bringing their tanks. What prevents the Iranians from bringing anything from their extensive freak show - even the Chieftain, even the M60, even the T-72S, even the Zolfagar-3 and Carrar of their own design? Nothing but unwillingness to spend a lot of money on transportation and fear of losing miserably on either outdated or obviously raw products. What prevents others from doing the same? Also nothing, because the Chinese carry - for them the opportunity to compete with the armored vehicles of the "fighting people" (as we are often called there even in the official Chinese press) is expensive, and they really want to win someday, and this can happen - this is still a sport … And the Israelis, participating in a number of competitions, could bring "Merkava" (another question is that nothing shines there for a number of reasons, and they understand this, but they do not need negative PR). The South African national team could bring their Olifant-1Bs - but this is expensive for today's South Africa. India brought its T-90S, but it did not work out very well, they then spoiled their tanks. But you can try again - why didn't you? Azerbaijan can bring the same tanks, while Kuwait and Abrams M1A2 have them - but they don't want to, but they drive free tanks. When Crimea was still not ours and the Americans and NATO were still pretending that they were "friends" to us and were going to come to our tank biathlon, we expected that one of them would come with their tanks and waited for them (and considered various options for the answer, the fruit of which was the "biathlon" T-72B3, and the T-80U was also planned as an option). Although the Americans and Germans, for example, were preparing to perform on the T-72, and then a very good reason to refuse. But if they brought Abrams and Leopards-2 (for all the weakness of this vehicle as a battle tank, it is a strong competitive opponent), it would be interesting, and no one, I'm sure, about the “dissimilarity” of tanks from today's critics would have stuttered.
So reproaches about dishonesty look rather strange and biased. For some reason, you will not hear them from the tankers themselves, including from foreign ones, especially since many of the participating countries have T-72s, but there are no modernized T-72B3-level vehicles, and they are interested in driving them. Another thing is that any sport is full of its own little tricks. For example, the teams cut holes in the front mudguards and side skirts differently so that the tank does not "inflate" these screens with water when jumping from acceleration into the water, and then the tank does not hit the posts with these "fluffy skirts" and does not earn fines. Various devices and tricks are used to improve airflow and ventilation of the engines. Russian tanks have large-diameter leading sprockets. The Chinese do have a tank, which is even officially much lighter than ours, but how much it actually weighs is a question. Considering the Chinese tricks of the past, such as exploiting a "hole" in the rules allowing the use of sub-caliber rounds instead of practical cumulative shots (which greatly simplifies aiming), we can expect any quirks from our Chinese friends.
But this is quite normal for technical sports. When people watch car races, motorcycle races, or, say, bicycle races, no one is outraged that bicycles or race cars are different for everyone? And why don't all biathlon skiers run with the same rifles? Why are tanks supposed to be like that? Because individuals with a liberal brain imbalance want to "kick the hated regime" for something?
In addition, engines and other gimmicks are not everything in tank biathlon. The crew ultimately decides. Skill of a driver-mechanic, accuracy of a gunner-operator or commander. Or rather, strong nerves, because mistakes in such competitions are much more nervous than technical in nature. It is enough to miss a couple of times and knock down a few bars - and the resulting two penalty circles and a few control penalty stops will "eat" what can be squeezed out on the straight lines with the help of the engine. And there are many examples of this. So, formally faster tanks of Belarusians did not allow them to win in the third semi-final against Kazakhstani tankers. Actually, we love technical sports for such surprises and for the struggle, but TB is still a sport, albeit on tanks.
