The Russian T-72 Tank has to be one of, if not the main battle tank that has seen the most combat since WWII since entering service in the 1970’s. It has seen action across the world. It has been used by numerous countries and their conflicts through out the world, including: the Iran & Iraq war 1980 to 1988 by both sides, by Syria in the 1982 Lebanon war, Russia in the Soviet war in Afghanistan 1979 to 1989, the Nagorno-Karabakh War 1988 to 1994, by Russia in the first Chechen war 1994 to 1996 and the second war 1999 to 2002, several wars in the former Yugoslavia, on all sides from 1991 to 2001 and by Iraq in the Gulf war 1990 to 1991 and in the invasion of Iraq 2003.

The Russian T-72 Tank

The T-72 was originally intended to be issued to the bulk of the Russian Armies tank units and its WARSAW allies, as a cheaper alternative to the T-64. Leonid Karchev was the original designer of the tank and final design was completed by Valeri Venidikov. Production began in 1972 and its estimated that over 50 000 T-72’s and the variants have been built in Russia and under licence in other countries.

The T-72 has some advantages in its design, but these generally have a knock on negative effect on its fighting capability’s. The T-72, as with most Russian tanks, has the benefit of a low silhouette, as the designers did away with the fourth crew member – the loader, and replaced him with a mechanical autoloader. This means the T-72 has a smaller surface area making it a harder target to hit, but this means that most of the ammunition has to be stored in the crew compartment, so if the hull is struck, then the ammunition can ‘cook off’ and kill the crew. During the Gulf War, allied tank crews called the Iraqi T-72’s “Jack in the boxes” because when the ammunition did cook off it blew the turret clear off the hull and up into the air.

The low silhouette also creates problems for the 125mm 2A46 series main cannon. It is supposed to be as powerful as the 120mm cannons used on Western MBT’s, but its elevation and depression is limited by the low silhouette and reduces the cannons range to 9100m. Further complications are caused with the self-loader. They are prone to malfunctions and require high maintenance, were as Western tanks maintain the forth crew member as he able to load faster and is more reliable than the auto loader. The T-72’s auto loader on average takes between 6.5 to 15 seconds to reload the main cannon.

With these disadvantages, the T-72 is a good example of Russian tank doctrine adopted from the Eastern front of WWII. Simply that numbers of inferior tanks will overwhelm a smaller number of superior tanks. This was the case with the Russian T-34 & Allied Sherman tanks who had a practically endless number of them, compared with the superior German WWII tanks who were in limited numbers.

The tanks armour has changed with every series or up-grades. Its original turret design was cast steel, but now is equipped with composite laminated armour, which is 280mm thick on the front of the turret. Since 1988, Explosive Reactive Armour has been fitted to most T-72’s to protect them from HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) rounds, which they were not well protected from and could easily cook off the hull ammunition.

The vehicle has the standard protection systems such as internal NBC protective lining and is able to generate a smoke screen from the vehicle exhaust, as well as grenade launchers. It has a 7.62mm co-axial mounted MG and a 12.7mm air defence MG mounted on the commander’s cupola. Its fire control & direction systems are also some what limited. Due to expense reasons, most T-72’s are not fitted with Forward Looking Infrared Red thermal imaging sights, used to detect heat sources such as a tanks engine, but they are equipped with a basic Infra Red illuminator.

However the tanks silhouette and size do have the benefit of speed. The T-72 houses a multi-fuelled four-stroke liquid-cooled V-84-1 diesel engine, generating 840 hp and weighting only 41 ton’s, it is a highly manoeuvrable M.B.T. It was observed doing 110km/h along a road in former East-Germany, but on average it’s top speed is 75km/h and due to using torsion bar suspension, compared to Western tanks which use hydrodynamic suspension, the T-72 is not a comfortable ride for its crew. The T-72 is equipped with a snorkel system so that it is able to cross-rivers, but the hull is not watertight! so the crew are equipped with breathing apparatus, giving the T-72 a fording depth of 5m.

Russia is now equipping their army with the T-90, which is based on the T-72BM (designation for T-72 with Kontakt-5 reactive armour) and have over 2100 in active service and 7000 in reserve. The T-72 is still in use with over 30 countries and is still in production with some countries for export, which has caused problems with spare parts, as a lot of parts of T-72’s produced in different countries are not interchangeable. There is also numerous up-grade/modernization packages for the T-72 offered by many countries.

Despite the T-72’s ability to take out a M1-Abrams at up to 1000m, it has never had any real success against Western tanks on the occasions it has gone up against them, such as the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq and in the 1982 Lebanon War. This is because they are out of date T-72’s and export versions are always inferior to domestic Russian T-72’s. I have seen many people on-line brag about the M1 Abrams and that it is the best MBT in the world because they destroyed so many Iraqi T-72’s in both Iraq wars, without any losses at the hands of the T-72’s. The reality is Iraq had arms embargo’s against it since the Iran & Iraq war in the 1980’s, so was only able to buy up spare parts for the T-72M (an inferior export version) and use these to build their version of the T-72 called the ‘Lion of Babylon’ based on the T-72M at a steel plant in Taji with some parts provided by a Polish contractor, so was nearly 15 years out of date.

The Russian T-72 Tank Operators

The T-72 is in or has been in service with, Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Libya, Macedonia, Morocco, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Yemen.