T-90 Main Battle Tank (Russia)
The T-90 is not a new tank but an evolution of the T-72 design and offers little in the way of an advantage over the tanks entering service in the last years of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed, two tanks were still in production: the T-80U developed by the Spetsmash Design Bureau in Leningrad and the T-72B which had been developed by the Vagonka Design Bureau at the Uralvagon plant in Nizhni Tagil. The T-80U was the more sophisticated of the two with a superior fire-control system and a gas turbine engine. This was reflected in the price tag of the two tanks, the T-80U being offered for export for $2 million and the T-72 for about $1.2 million. The imposition of 'defence sufficiency' during the Gorbachev era and then the collapse of the Soviet Union had a catastrophic effect on the Russian tank industry. The Russian Federation could no longer keep on procuring two types of main battle tank, but selecting one over another would be catastrophic for the loosing city and so continued buying both tanks in small numbers. The two plants kept on producing tanks in the hope of further orders from the Russian Army or a large export order. Nizhni Tagil started upgrading the T-72B with the third generation of Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armour (which has already been added to the T-80U) developed by NII Stali (Scientific Research Institute for Steel). This produced the T-72BM, which saw limited service in the Chechen conflict. While the T-72 has traditionally been fitted with less sophisticated fire controls than the T-80 (as it was intended for second-line Soviet units and political allies) the Vagonka Design Bureau decided to make the T-72 much more competitive against the T-80 by adding the T-80's fire control system. The result was the T-72BU, although it was decided to rename the tank the T-90 to distance it from the T-72A that had performed poorly in both the Gulf War and to a lesser extent the Chechen conflict. Due to the T-80 having a bad reputation for high fuel consumption, a short engine life and the losses they suffered in Chechnya (although this was due to poor tactics and crew training) the decision was taken to gradually move over to the T-90 with production of T-80Us continuing for a period of time to prevent economic hardship and to generate export orders. The tank itself mounts an improved T-72BM turret (which has a NII Stali version of Chobham armour) and Kontakt-5 appliqué. It has a derivative of the T-80U 1A45 fire control system, the 1A45T, which includes the new 1V528-1 digital ballistic computer. It mounts the new 2A46M-1 (or D-81TM) tank gun, as used by the T-80, and can fire the new generation of tank gun ammunition developed by the Mechanical Engineering Research Institute in Moscow, and the AT-11 Sniper missile. The T-90 uses a modified version of the commander's cupola, and also mounts the Shtora-1 defence suite, developed by VNII Transmash in St Pertersburg in co-operation with Elers-Elektron in Moscow. The T-90 operates the V-84MS multi-fuel diesel engine, which is an upgrade of the engine from the T-72BM but has the same power output (840hp). This means the T-90 is slightly more sluggish (its two tons heavier) but there are upgrades available, the V-92 (950hp) and V-96 (1,100 hp) diesel engines from the Chelyabinsk engine plant. An enhanced T-90S has recently been revealed and offered for export to potential Asian customers. It features an air conditioning system, a thermal gunnery sight and a 1,000 hp B-92C2 diesel engine which lifts performance to a maximum road speed of 65km/h. India has expressed an interest in buying the T-90 as Pakistan has recently bought 320 T-80UDs from the Ukraine.
Hull length: 6.86m. Hull width: 3.37m. Weight: 46,500kg (combat); Height: 2.23m. Crew: 3. Ground Clearance: 0.47m. Ground pressure: 0.87kg/sq.cm Max speed: 60km/h. Max range (internal fuel): 500km on road. Armament: 125mm smoothbore main gun, 1 x 7.62mm MG coaxial, 1 x 12.7mm anti-aircraft MG.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foss, Christopher. 'Enhanced T-90S targets Asian market' in Jane's Defence Weekly, 31 May 2000, p. 37.
Zaloga, Steven. 'T-90: the standard of Russian expediency' in Jane's Intelligence Review, February 1997, pp. 58 - 64.
How to cite this article: Antill, P. (6 February, 2001), T-90 Main Battle Tank (Russia), http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_t90.html