I’ve read many posts about T-72, PT-91 and Russian tanks in general. I’d like to comment some issues mentioned in this topic. As I’m Polish I’ll focus mainly on PT-91/A MBT. I’m not going to quote any posts but only refer to some wrong in my opinion statements.
1. The T-72 family.
There’s a big misunderstanding in giving names to different T-72 models. First of all we have to say that Russians in times of USSR were using 3 different codenames to every model. There was a different name used in the Red Army, different one for other Warsaw Pact memebers and once again different for external export models.
E.g. T-72A/M-1/G is basically the same model, but in the USSR it was called T-72A, in Warsaw Pact countries T-72M1 and for export it was called T-72G. Although the most popular name for that model is T-72M1 and I will use only this name in my post.
T-72M1 (as T-72A) was produced in the Soviet Union from 1979 till 1985. At the beginning of the 80’s of the 20th century the licence for manufacturing T-72M1 was sold to some contries outside the USSR: Poland, former Czechoslovakia, former Yugoslavia and India. Polish Army got its first T-72s produced in Poland in 1981. The next generation of T-72 is T-72B which appeared circa 1987. It was called T-72S for export although I’ve never heard that even single one was exported. In 1988 its improved version went into service in the Soviet armed forces – T-72BM. It was the last stage of evolution of T-72 family. I’m not sure but also T-72BM wasn’t exported, at least officially, maybe some of them were sold to China but I’m not sure.
2. T-90/S issue.
T-90 often is incorrectly treated as T-72BM modernization. It’s not true. Generally at the beginning there was an idea only to improve T-72BM by installing some modern FCS. But eventually the decision was made to develop a new MBT.
Key differences between T-72BM and T-90:
> T-90 uses only deeply modified chasis of T-72BM (new basic composite armour, new running gear features torsion bar suspension with hydraulic shock absorbers at the 1st, 2nd and 6th pair of road wheels)
> New FCS equiped with passive thermal Agawa-2 gunner sight (at the beginning T-90 got Buran active/passive night vision gunner’s sight but eventually it was replaced by Agawa-2), new panoramic, stabilized commander’s site (he can point targets for the gunner - ‘hunter-killer’ rule)
> Completely new welded turret instead of a cast one, frontal turret armour consists of few layers of armour steel interlayed with ceramic, composite and probably tungsten rods
> New engine W92S2 with 1000hp
Most mistakes comes from the fact that first prototypes of T-90 were in fact deeply rebuilt T-72BMs and also from that developer and producer of both T-72BM and T-90 is the same plant of Ural Wagon Zawod (UWZ, it means the Ural Carriages Factory) form the city of Niżnij Tagił.
T-90S is the export version of T-90. Its final configuration (FCS, ERA, other passive and active protection systems, powerpack) can be configured due to the wish of the potential buyer.
. But after doing some reading up on AFV operations in jungle environments, I might be giving a hint or two for a Centurion based model. The South Africans have developed it into the Olifant - for reference click here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/rsa/olifant.htm.