T-90AM: Latest Avatar Of The T-90 MBT

A delegation of India's Ministry of Defence will be departing later today to take part in the Ural Arms Expo in Nizhny Tagil later this week, and while there it will officially hand over to Rosoboronexport State Corp a restricted RFI which calls for the first 310 imported T-90S MBTs to be subjected to a 'deep upgrade', which will be designed and implemented by Uralvagonzavod JSC. These MBTs will be almost 10 years old by the time their mid-life upgrades are due to carried out from early 2013 onwards.

‘Der aye, durust aye’ (better late than never) will probably be the best way to welcome the emergence of the 50-tonne T-90AM—the latest member of the T-90 family of main battle tanks (MBT). In a nutshell, the T-90AM appears to have overcome all the previous design/performance deficiencies associated with the earlier T-90 variants (the T-90S and T-90M), and also with the T-72, from whose design the T-90’s design has evolved. Interestingly, India has had a huge though as yet unacknowledged role to play with the T-90AM’s R & D process. In order to delve deeper into this issue, we will have to take a walk down memory lane back to the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Indian Army was evaluating its options for a future main battle tank (FMBT) of imported origin to complement the indigenously designed Arjun MBT—which then was still on the drawing boards.

By the late 1970s, Indian Army HQ had decided to acquire new-generation replacements for its UK-origin fleet of Royal Ordnance Factories-built Centurion and Vickers-built Vijayanta Mk1 MBTs and consequently, paper evaluations concerning the firepower and mobility characteristics of the two principal contenders being offered for full in-country production—AMX-40 developed by GIAT Industries of France, and the Chieftain 800 (which later evolved into the Challenger 1 from Royal Ordnance Factories (then owned by British Aerospace PLC)—were conducted by the Indian Army. Between these two contenders, the Army had by early 1980 zeroed in on the 43-tonne AMX-40 MBT, which was still on the drawing boards and was meant to be powered by a 1,100hp Poyaud V12X 12-cylinder diesel engine coupled with a LSG-3000 automatic power shift transmission built by RENK Aktiengesellschaft of Germany (offering a power-to-weight ratio of 25.6hp/tonne, and armed with a 120mm smoothbore cannon. However, things didn’t go according to the Army’s well-conceived plans, since, after coming back to power, the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi took the political decision to acquire new-build MBTs from the USSR, following which the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations (which after 1991 morphed into Oboronexport, then Rosoboronservice and ultimately Rosoboronexport State Corp) made a formal offer to India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) for supplying the  37-tonne T-72M Ob'yekt 172M-E4 MBT off-the-shelf, and according an approval for licenced-production of the 41.5-tonne T-72M-1982 Ob'yekt 172M-E6 to the MoD-owned Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) in Avadi. By early 1981, two T-72Ms--powered by a 780hp diesel engine, armed with 125mm 2A46M smoothbore gun and offering a power-to-weight ratio of 20hp/tonne, were subjected to an exhaustive series of in-country firepower and mobility trials by the Army, while copies of the T-72M’s operating and maintenance manuals supplied by the Soviets (who in those days were totally aghast when shown marketing brochures of competing MBTs of Western origin and were asked why such types of materials were unavailable from the USSR) were subjected to intense academic and operational scrutiny for a 90-day period.

Immediately later, a delegation of ‘experts’ comprising members of the MBT’s design bureau-- Kartsev-Venediktov; the MBT’s manufacturer--Uralvagonzavod Factory located in Nizhny Tagil; and officials from the Soviet Defence Ministry’s Land Forces Armaments Directorate, all converged at the Indian Army HQ, where extensive deliberations on and analysis of the T-72M’s in-country firepower and mobility trials were conducted by both sides for at least a week. Following all this, it ultimately emerged that while the T-72M possessed excellent and hassle-free mobility characteristics, its firepower capabilities were clearly a full generation behind that of the AMX-40. The Army, which had all along wanted to acquire a MBT incorporating hit-survivability design features (something that the home-grown Arjun Mk1 MBT’s design strongly signifies), now found to its utter horror that basically, with the exception of the T-55, the overall Soviet approach to MBT design in the post-World War II era was found to be flawed on two major counts: namely, the gamble on not being hit rather than on surviving hits, and the refusal to perceive survivability of the tank crew as a quite distinct issue from survivability of the vehicle, with the former having priority over the latter. The combination of these two shortcomings produced design solutions such as the T-72M’s carousel autoloader and ammunition reserve being accommodated on the turret floor. This indeed allowed for a very compact configuration and ensured that the ammunition is less likely to take a direct hit—but it also entailed a very high risk of ignition or sympathetic detonation should the fighting compartment be penetrated, in which case there went the MBT and the crew with it. When confronted with such ‘hard facts’ along with the Army’s criticisms about the lack of even a ‘decent’ hunter-killer fire-control system (when compared to the likes on board the AMX-40), members of the Soviet delegation were clearly red-faced and a depressed lot, and it took several bottles of vodka during and after dinner-time to come out with the truth: according to the MBT’s designers, the performance characteristics of all weapons produced in the USSR were dictated purely by the warfighting doctrine of the country’s armed forces. Hence, weapons like the T-72M were meant for usage only by follow-on echelon formations of the Red Army, while the all-critical breakout forces then stationed throughout the East European member-states of the Warsaw Pact were equipped with state-of-the-art MBTs like members of the 38-tonne T-64 and 42.5-tonne/46-tonne T-80 MBT families—designed by the Ukraine-based Morozov Design Bureau and series-produced at Malyshev in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and in Russia by both the Leningrad Kirov Plant and Omsk Transmash. In other words, while members of the T-64 and T-80 MBT families were the vanguard elements of the Red Army’s armoured juggernaut, those of the T-72 MBT were meant to be used merely for encirclement and envelopment of the enemy’s armoured formations. 

Yet, despite all this, India’s Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs of the day decreed that the T-72M and T-721982 (powered by a Model V-84MS four-stroke 12-cylinder multi-fuel engine developing 840hp and offering a power-to-weight ratio of 18.8 hp/tone) would be the Army’s future MBTs, and a procurement contract for 2,418 T-72s was subsequently inked. Interestingly, while the first off-the-shelf shipments of T-72Ms began arriving by ship in Mumbai in mid-1982,  in Lebanon the 105mm APFSDS rounds fired by Israeli Merkava Mk1 MBTs with 105mm rifled-bore guns routinely pierced the Syrian T-72M’s front glacis, went straight through the MBT and exited through the engine compartment, leaving a turretless hulk behind. Five years later, The Indian Army’s worst fears were realised when got a first-hand demonstration of the T-72M’s acute vulnerability in October 1987, after LTTE guerrillas exploded improvised explosive devices underneath two T-72Ms deployed with the Army’s 65 Armoured Regiment for Operation Pawan during the battle for Jaffna, which resulted in armour penetration and the ensuing catastrophic detonation of the MBT’s ammunition reserve (this being stored alongside the carousel autoloader on the turret’s floor), resulting in the turrets being blown off. Subsequent events in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm would convincingly highlight the T-72’s totally flawed design features. Despite such developments, the Army—starting in 1988 began inducting the HVF-built T-72M-1982s into service.

A year earlier (1987), however, the Indian Army—being acutely aware of the T-72M’s vulnerabilities, had decided to undertake Project Bison—an ambitious upgrade project in cooperation with Yugoslavia’s state-owned Yugoimport SDPR, under which all its T-72Ms would be fitted with a new rolled homogenous armour (RHA) package developed by the Ravne-based Slovenske Železarne and comprising high-hardness steel, tungsten, and plastic fillers with ceramic components, plus the SUV-M-84 digital fire-control system that incorporated a Hughes-built gunner’s sight that was stabilised in two axes and included a thermal imager and laser rangefinder. The gunner’s ballistics computer—developed by Banja Luka-based Rudi Cajevec—was designed to automatically download crosswind data, vehicle cant, azimuth tracking rate and range, while the gunner manually inputted the data for air pressure, air temperature, barrel wear, barrel droop and ammunition type. Also planned for retrofit was the 12-cylinder water-cooled V-46TK 1,000hp diesel engine, that would have given the T-72M a power-to-weight ratio of 24.10hp/tonne. A procurement contract was signed with Yugoimport SDPR in early 1989 and an advance down-payment was made as well, but by 1991, Project Bison had to be scrapped in its entirety as by then civil war had broken out in Yugoslavia, and the country was subjected to an UN-mandated universal arms export/import embargo.  

Both the MoD and the Indian Army learnt valuable lessons from Project Bison, and almost a decade later, when it came to the planned procurement of 1,657 T-90s (to replace the 1,781 T-55 and T-72M MBTs in a phased manner), it was decided to adopt a product block developmental approach similar to what by then was being planned for the Indian Air Force’s Su-30MKI procurement exercise. Consequently, in February 2001, India bought its first batch of 310 47.5-tonne 47.5-tonne T-90S MBTs worth US$795 million, of which 124 were delivered off-the-shelf, 86 in semi-knocked down kits (for licenced-assembly by the MoD-owned HVF in Avadi), and 100 in completely-knocked down kits (all these MBTs were retrofitted with Saab’s IDAS radar/laser warning system and LEDS-150 active protection system, or APS, worth Rs25 billion between 2009 and 2011). This was followed by a follow-on contract, worth $800 million (or Rs175 million per unit), being inked on October 26, 2006, for another 330 T-90M MBTs that were to be built with locally-sourced raw materials and also come fitted with LEDS-150 APS. The third contract, worth $1.23 billion (which was inclusive of the R & D funds required for designing a customised version of the T-90—the 50-tonne T-90AM), was inked in December 2007 for 347 upgraded T-90Ms, which are now being licence-built by HVF. These T-90Ms each come with a THALES-built Catherine-FC thermal imager (operating in the 8-12 micron bandwidth and housed within the Peleng-built 1G-46 gunner’s sight), the commander’s panoramic sight (which houses the Matis-STD thermal imager that operates in the 3-5 micron bandwidth and which has also been selected for the Arjun Mk1 MBT’s panoramic sight), an automatic gearbox, an electro-hydraulic turret-drive-cum stabilisation system, and most importantly, has a 2A46M-5 Rapira smoothbore main gun barrel that also comes fitted with a muzzle reference system.

While all the enhancements featured on the T-90M will also be found on the T-90AM, the latter will, among other things, incorporate a totally new redesigned turret that will now house a remote-controlled weapon station, an independent commander’s panoramic sight and gunner’s sight, a rear-mounted ammunition reserve stowage bustle and its autoloader (thereby doing away with the much-criticised earlier location alongside the carousel autoloader on the turret’s floor and enabling the stowage of single-unit FSAPDS rounds containing long-rod kinetic energy penetrators which the T-90S and T-90M cannot fire at the moment), and redesigned modular armour tiles. The hull-section, housing the driver’s and gunner’s compartments, will be equipped with a battlespace management terminal, fibre-optic gyro-based land navigation system, software-defined radio suite, health-and-usage management systems for on-board diagnosis of the MBT’s vectronics and automotive elements—all these being selected and furnished by the customer (in India’s case) to Uralvagonzavod for on-board fitment-cum-integration. Also to be furnished by India for integration is the active protection suite (APS), for which the LEDS-150 is competing with the Iron First APS (already installed on board the Arjun Mk2 MBT) from Israel Military Industries. Powerplant for the T-90AM will comprise a Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant-built 1,130hp V-92S2 diesel engine, while a 1kW AB-1-P28 auxiliary power unit will provide back-up electric power when the engine is idling. By today calculations, 670 T-99AMs could well be delivered to the Indian Army between 2013 and 2019.  

This finally brings us to the issue of whether or not to upgrade the remaining 1,664 T-72s in successive tranches. Already, 692 T-72Ms have been upgraded thus far into the T-72 ‘Combat-Improved Ajeya’ standards, while a follow-on tranche of 700 T-72M1s (whose per unit procurement cost is Rs90 million) is due to be upgraded at a cost of Rs50 million per unit, for which there is an on-going competition between Russia’s Rosoboronexport State Corp, ELBIT Systems of Israel, and the Raytheon/Larsen & Toubro combine, with work scheduled for completion by 2018). One interesting view prevailing within the Army HQ’s Directorate of Mechanised Forces calls for scrapping the planned T-72 upgrades altogether and instead procuring up to 900 T-90AMs and up to 400 Arjun Mk2s (each costing Rs380 million or $8.2 million) before 2020. This view also calls for re-engineering the hulls of the existing 1,100 T-72Ms and 1,318 T-72M-1982s to accommodate a family of turrets housing not only missile-launchers of the Akash E-SHORADS and their Rajendra L-band PESA target engagement radars and battery command-and-control centres (62 T-72M hulls have already been re-engineered for this purpose), but also air-defence artillery guns and their fire-control systems like the Skyranger from Rheinmetall Defence, a turret containing anti-armour guided-missiles like up to eight Kornet-EM in ready-to-fire configuration along with a 30mm rapid-fire cannon and 30mm automatic grenade launchers—all remotely-operated, MLC-70 bridge layers (like the BLT-72), equipment required by armoured recovery vehicles for the T-90 family of MBTs, and counter-mine flails.—Prasun K. Sengupta