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Soviet
80s Future tank projects. Object “
Work on the future
Soviet tank was officially conducted in
The layout of the
future tank was represented by two projects - a two men crew Object “
Wooden model of the tank
Object “
Layout of “Object
The reloading and supply
vehicle was designed to rearm and refuel the tank, and assist the crew with service.
It was possible to rearm the tank from inside the vehicle, five replaceable autonomous autoloader containers were stored on the vehicle as
well as fyel and other consumables.
Object 490 "Poplar". Unknown Soviet future tank of 80s
Wooden model of the tank
Object “490A”, 1:10.
The tank had a low-profile
turret with removed weapons, the driver was located to the left (along the
tank), to his right there was an internal fuel reserve
of
By
Initial design featured rather
conventional decisions with crew placed one after another at the left side of
tank hull. Isolated fuel tank was placed to the right from the driver. The
autoloader was placed at the right side of the battle compartments’ and was
isolated from the crew.
Lower row: Protopopov I.L., Kovalyukh V.R., Abramov A.A., Kretov A.M., Gerasimov V.N., Portnoy V.Ya.
In the “Object
490A” tank, in spite of the relative simplicity of the layout, there was a
risky decision – it relied on not yet fully developed and time consuming
solutions of it’s autoloader associated with variable form charges (shape of
the charge changed during loading).
Within the
framework of the themes “Commonwealth”, “Rebel” and “Taran”,
samples of a 125-mm caseless loading tank gun with an
elegant solution of a breach node and a 152-mm LP-81 and LP-83 high firepower guns
were achieved.
The new gun design
most promising feature was the usage of variable form charges. They allowed to
place a rounds in the autoloader as compact as possible.
The choice was made
in favor of the object “490A”. The main
efforts were thrown on his development. E. A. Morozov continued his development, he
proposed a variant of the tank 490 with a crew of 3 people, this option was the most simple to implement and resembled later French tanks Leclerc, Japanese Type-10 and Korean K-2 Black Panther.
Contour of the round with
variable form charge. View from above.
Such form allowed maximal
usage of the space of the autoloader.
The
emphasis in the design process was on an unconventional gun installation and on
ammunition, based on the so-called "charges of a variable form." Strictly speaking, these charges ruined the tank,
despite the progressive solutions laid down in it by other systems, because
they [charges] did not appear on time. This led to a radical change in the design of the automatic loader with
all the ensuing consequences [development of Object “477”]. From
The object “490A” (research
theme Rebel) had
Test rig of the tank Object
"490A"
Test rig of the tank Object
"490A", only the hull survived till nowadays, turret was used for
shooting trials.
Fate of another prototype is
unknown.
Test rig of the tank Object
"490A" cut section. It had a lot of differences from the tank
proposed for manufacture.
Soviet researchers
predicted the level of armor protection of Western tanks, so the assessment of
the level of Western tanks “Leopard-
Improvement of US MBT
technical level
This required the
transition to a more powerful
Object
“490A” (research theme “Boxer”)
Weight 46 tons. Main armament
The equivalent horizontal
thickness of the hull and turret armor is
The automatic
loader of
Placement of ammunition and
crew positions in the tank Object "490A"
Active protection - the
installation options "Arena", "Dozd"
[Rain], "Standart" were considered. APS provided protection against ATGM, RPG,
artillery shells [HEAT], APSDS and submunitions (attack from above). Protective shots
were placed around the perimeter of the tank hull. Radar - on the sides of the
turret.
A variant of the
Object “490A” Boxer tank with
Due to the placement of the
ring conveyor under the cabin of the fighting compartment, the height of the
tank hull increased. Compared with the
original version, the length of the aft part of the casing of the armament module
was reduced; one machine gun was mounted on the upper part of the casing.
Mobility
The motor
compartment was unified in terms of basic dimensions for the installation of a
diesel engine product “
The main engine
version was 1250 hp variant 6TD. The
option of installing a gas turbine engine, the 29G product with a
hydro-volumetric turning mechanism, which in the mid-80s for some time began to
be considered as the main engine for serial and advanced tanks, was also worked
out. The final decision on the choice of the engine for the prospective came
only in the late 80-s, the collapse of the
Transmission schematics of
Object “
Chassis of the test
rig was created on the basis of the T-64 with coaxial torsions, the tank was
supposed to use the chassis with non-axial torsions (2/3) of differentiated
stiffness. Hydraulic shock absorbers
with a two-stage characteristic, also considered a variant with bladed
shock-absorber. The use of the
undercarriage based on the “Object
The
final design
The final design of
a tank with
One of the missed
opportunities was the design of the tank object “
Object “
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