Op-Ed: Russian sales pitch for T90S tank- Spiel, with some substance

The Russian move to rebuild its weapons systems business is proceeding with an interesting piece regarding the T90S, the latest variant of the 1994 T90 production model. The T90S includes some new features, and is being touted as a high performance tank.

RIA Novosti has a piece on the T90S which shows the current model is very much in keeping with some great traditions of the Russian tank industry. The T90 series are lineal descendants of the T62, with progressive upgrades through the T64, T72, and T80. This is a high speed tank, considerably lighter than the American Abrams. The Russians have coined the term “Flying tank” for the T90S, and video shows it performing leaps much like the famous T34. As propaganda, it’s deceptive. The real story about the leaps isn’t the fact it can leap, but the fact that the suspension is obviously excellent. This is a 46,000 lb vehicle, bouncing along merrily like a basketball. That requires good manufacturing capabilities, and good design. The T90S has some old T-tank class issues, like a cumbersome looking snorkel, a weird looking white exhaust, (as distinct from the equally strange, ubiquitous and highly conspicuous black exhaust from its predecessors) and a definitely old style top mounted heavy machine gun. This is a manned MG, not an auto. There’s no apparent sign of anti-missile self defence systems like the Rafael, but these may not be for public viewing. Much more relevantly, the T90S does have some features which are less obvious, not in its design, but in its sales pitch. The sales approach is to target known issues with the Abrams, like desert performance. Another area of sales innuendo is the autoloader, firing 7 rounds a minute, as distinct from manual loading. These are standard features, and if not technological breakthroughs are selling points. The Russians state that the tank's armament can penetrate any kind of armor, a clear dig at the Chobham class of armor common on Western tanks. (Postscript note: Having checked the specs, the original T90 did have a remote control machine gun, but that thing is an old DGSH type. So what happened to the remote? Or is that an Indian model?) The T90S features are designed for an international market. They’re high end capabilities in a comparatively cheap tank, compared to the Abrams, the British Challenger 2, the German Leopard 2 variants, and the French LeClerc. This is likely to be effective sales spiel. One of the other areas which receives a sort of deliberate understatement is the gun/missile capacity. The 125mm can fire both standard tank rounds and missiles. The blurb is a bit coy on the subject, but this may well include a standoff and multi-class targeting capacity, and it does represent an interesting doctrinal issue. The US and NATO nations, jointly and individually, tried to develop a good gun/missile system back in the 1970s. It turned into a messy set of design compromises and fixes, culminating in the only operational version, the Sheridan light tank and the Shillelagh missile system as a hybrid gun/missile design. The USSR, and later the Russian Federation, however, have persevered with the concept. If the T90S is carrying an effective missile system, able to deal with multiple classes of targets, that makes it a real potential pest in any conflict. The exact capabilities of the T90S look more like development than a major design leap, at this point. The fact that Russian designers have managed to upgrade the T90 type into a platform which may have multiple capabilities, however, is significant. The West has long criticized the apparent Russian obsession with the T72-based design, but the fact remains this is a lightweight, high powered platform which can easily deal with taking on more combat capability. It’s actually overpowered, relative to weight. The defects of the older models are apparently being eradicated. It wouldn’t take much, in design terms, to create a descendant of the T90S which could incorporate a whole suite of top range capabilities. Expect to see the T90S, or a descendant, coming to a war near you.