T90M

[Count Sessine]

Ok experts, how good is the T-90M? I read it was considered better than the Abrams by some. The Russian Army should about 100 of those, with most having been exported.

[pumagreen]

Russian thermals and sights are always behind the West. Overall it does seem like a solid tank though. Has pretty much all the modern features a modern tank needs. It can fire a missile from the main gun that has a 5km range supposably. How well they work I'm not sure. Someone else will need to fill me in. I wouldn't say the T-90M is superior to the newest Abrams, but it might be on par with it. Hopefully we never find out. 

[Captain_Colossus]

well no matter what the vehicle is designated with new technologies, at its core it is still an upgraded T-72, that is to say, it is still going to have an autoloader, still going to have the same ammunition storage issues, still going to have roughly the same dimensions so it will still

have some of the same issues as the t-72; i'm not sure the small t-72/t-90 vehicle profile, which was assumed to be an advantage 40 years ago so much matters anymore in the age of accurate, computerized fire control systems, thermals, guided projectiles, and so on.

 

i would have returned to the drawing board and designed a new basis for a combat vehicle from scratch and got away as much as possible from the t-72 performance issues, like it seemed as though the russians were doing the armata platform and teasers of newer platforms which  were supposedly to come, except that it seems to be a game that the russians are playing where they appear to develop new capabilities with the stated or implied goals to soon put in production new equipment- which they don't seem to have the economy to actually support

production of these systems on a large scale (this isn't just their armored fighting vehicles either, it's the next generation 'super planes' that always remain on the horizon somewhere).

 

the russians are consciously doing this to fight an arms race on the cheap- not actually fielding equipment that it cannot afford to field, offering somewhat advanced models for export to fund their efforts, but not actually fielded for domestic use. this way they don't actually spend the cash equipping all their units with these new vehicles, but get the west to respond to rumors and conceits about new weapons, spending more of our own cash on new systems in order to keep up with a fairly weak russian defense industry sort of bluffing its hand. then every so often it cycles again with arms shows and swap meets and demonstrations offering systems to sale for foreign clients, but you never actually see these weapons appear in russian use, and on and on it goes; the russians either don't have the cash to support these weapons, or aren't as confident in them, or both (again why the new russian armata based vehicles make no appearances - it even took a while for the t-90 to appear in russian conflicts where the vehicle had been around for years- again either the russians didn't have many of them or feared poor performance on the battlefield to risk bad publicity in their best weapons, or risk them being captured and so on).

[Ssnake]

4 hours ago, Captain_Colossus said:

i would have returned to the drawing board and designed a new basis for a combat vehicle from scratch and got away as much as possible from the t-72 performance issues, like it seemed as though the russians were doing the armata platform

Well, the Russian Army did what you proposed, with the Armata series. It's just that it didn't work out (at least not initially). as a stop-gap measure they then adopted the T-72B3 in recognition that the problems with the Armata platform are so big, they don't hope to see it resoved anytime soon. Also, the T-72B3 upgrade seems to be no worse and less costly than T-90. It's just that "better than original T-72B" turned out to still not be good enough. Whether this is a result of endemic corruption in the Russian military procurement system or, my impression, that the design flaws of the carousel autoloader are essentially unfixable, remains an open question.

At the end of the day, Russia is an economic dwarf with a military far bigger than it can sustain, so we're seeing those spectacular programs such as the Armata, but only in homoeopathic doses. At least, that's my impression.