In our ongoing look at Russian post war armor...we have the T-64/T-72
Faced with the new M-1/Challenger/Leopard 2 designs, the Soviets came up with these new designs. Fitted with the new 125mm cannon, fitted with an autoloader, the Soviets felt that these two designs would be superior to the new Western designs. To this date, only the T-72 has fought against the
M-1 and Challenger and the results were shocking.
The new 125mm cannon was unable to penetrate the Chobham/Special Armor Plate of the Western designs frontal arcs. And even more shocking, the T-72 proved to be highly vulnerable to the newly developed APDSDU round. This was due to two design flaws.
First, Soviet tanks are considerable smaller than Western designs, this smaller size allows them to add thicker armor over a smaller area, it also means that any penetrating hit has a much greater chance of causing severe damage.
Second, the T-72's small size and its use of an autoloader meant that the ammunition was placed below the main gun in the turret and took the form of a tray, holding the shells and powder charges of the 125mm gun (a conventional round could not be used due to the small size of the turret and the length of such a round). US and British tankers quickly discovered that aiming at the base of the turret, below the main gun, gave them the best chance of penetration AND allowed them to place a APDSDU right in the ole ammo rack. Desert Storm has hundreds of photos of T-72s, with their turrets blown off due to this tactic.
The BMP-1, when it was introduced was the world's first infantry fighting vehicle. As ground-breaking as this vehicle was, it has some major design flaws.
The squad leader on a Bimp has his own hatch, complete with a fixed IR searchlight, and herein lies the first problem. When traversing the turret over the left front, in order to avoid knocking out the IR searchlight, an interruptor was added that causes the main armament to elevate up and over. If the gunner is tracking a tank with the standard Sagger ATGM, the missile just went ballistic and would miss its target, the 73mm main gun is currently pointing at the sky and that NATO tanker now has the chance to place a 120mm HEAT round were it would do the most good..
Even the BMP-2 has the same drawback.
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