This tank used the newer laser-beam-rider 9M119 ATGM system, new radios, a "Buran-PA" night sight, and later mounted the newer "Kontakt-5" ERA in place of the older "Kontakt-1" used on the T-80BV. The T-80U was actually approved for service in 1985, but it took until 1990 for the introduction of the new GTD-1250T engine before it could achieve the 500 kilometer range (with 400 liters of extra fuel). (The generals noted it would need 2 to 2.5 times the number of fuel tankers but the MoD would not purchase them.) Back to the drawing board. The rest of the Soviet tank fleet could do 500 kilometers without and 700 kilometers with 400 liters of extra fuel, so it was a cropper from a planning standpoint. This tank added a through-the-barrel ATGM capability (as Article 219R) and in 1983 was also fitted with reactive armor protection and became the T-80BV, which appeared in forward units such as the GSFG in 1985.īut even this "improved" T-80 had lousy mileage – with 600 liters of extra fuel and all internal fuel it could barely reach 380 kilometers on highways. A T-80A model went nowhere, and it was only with the T-80B the tank went into production in the early 1980s.
This tank was approved for service in 1976, but with such poor mileage the Red Army did not want it. Under chief designer Nikolay Popov, they produced Article 219 which was the prototype of the T-80. Undaunted, the Leningrad Kirov Factory under Zhosef Kotin volunteered to put a turbine in the T-64 chassis. Kharkov (the T-64 producer) and Nizhniy Tagil (the T-72 builder) tried fitting turbines to their tanks, and while they worked, neither factory would accede to making them as they got horrible mileage. But when word leaked out in the early 1970s that the US was considering a turbine engine for their next main battle tank, he had to have one too. But the T-64 had a lousy engine and many features which had not been full thought through, so a "back-up" version, the T-72, soon eclipsed it with the Red Army. He was starry-eyed over the T-64 tank and wanted it to be the main battle tank of all Soviet forces. In regard to Soviet Minister of Defense Dmitriy Ustinov, he loved new toys and under Brezhnev what Dmitriy wants, Dmitriy gets.
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