For those who dont know,M-84 is Yugoslav modernisation of T-72.THis test was made in late 80's when Yugoslavia beat the US military industry and win several competitions against US.That test was from Quvait competition,and i must notice that M-84 is outdated now,(in wersion in use) but some nice modifications was maden.Anyway that tank does not manufacture it anymore coz production facilitys was all ower ex Yugoslavia.In 1989y Yugoslavian arms and weapon export was 2.3B$,in 3-rd place behing russia and USA. After the Gulf War a competition between the different tanks employed by the coalition was held: - In the 25 km race the M-84A finished 9 minutes ahead of M1A1. - The M-84A won the shooting competition with 100%. - Shooting was done from 2000m at a 1m2 target. The speed was 40 km/h. - M-84 got 100% in the competition - The M-84 crews were kuwaities. Info taken from - Defensa n? No:158 page 59
the Iragi T-72 got man handled by the Abrams in both Iraq wars..no contest. Think of real war not just shooting practice mate
Acctualy gunner of M-84 on those tests was a Yugoslav (Serb from Banja Luka) on teaching and maintenance job on M-84 in Kuwait (mostly Palestinian refugees/mercenaries realy- according to him they were apt pupils and learned fast). M-84 realy was good tank in 80's and early 90's. Had a number of sensors and very good shooting computer. All systems had at least three backups. It looked like T-72 only from outside. According to mentioned Yugoslav, Kuwait had mostly mercenary army. And of those the best trough the war were Palestinians, who after 1991 war were purged from the Kuwait becouse of Arafat supporting Saddam. According to him there were two reasons for Kuwait to buy M-84: - debt of Yugoslavia for oil. Yugoslavia was quite happy to pay in arms shipment or recive armed shipments from others as means of payment (like MiG-29 from SSSR), -provisions paid. According to him Kuwaitis (his words) won't drink a glass of water if not paid a provision. Kuwaitis were happy with M-84 tanks once they mastered them. On one of tank forums one US tanker from second gulf war (desert shield/desert storm) was still puzzled by Kuwaitis thinking the world of M-84 and their claims that it is better than Abrams. About shooting computer and sensors. Iran tried to buy this eqipment modified for their M-60 tanks in early 1990's but shipments from producer (Iskra- Fotona) from Slovenia was confiscated by Austrians who promptly tested them and used them on their own tanks. Also one thing has to be mentioned that laser range finders for tanks for M-84 were exported to SSSR for their tanks.
The pronounced low silouette of the T-72--and newer series of Russian tanks--results in a confined and compact fighting space for crew. Of course the T-72 had an auto-loading system for the main-gun that eliminated the need for a "loader." Does this mean that they must recruit men of shorter stature for the "T-Series tanks? Just so they can "fit" inside? Tim
Not realy. I'm 182cm in height and not too slim and i fit into the M-84. Basicly human loader takes much more space than other crewmembers ans he has to move around the gun when taking the round off the shelf and loading it into the gun. Auto loader is smaller doesn't need much space to move around and doesn't make mistake in loading a wrong type of ammo (providing that when ammo was loaded man loading it did not make mistake in classification of round when entering type into the computer). Comparing to Abrams M-84 looks a bit cramped but in reality it is not. It just eliminates the unused space and space for the loader. Also the rationale like "When the autoloader can help change/repair the track i'll be for it until then..." is nonsense. 3 men can easily change/repair a track in knee deep mud. I've seen it done.
Now blasster read good my first post.I sayed that is outdated by now,but back then was one of best world tank.M-84 has higher speed then T-72 in that time,stronger engine,betther SUV,etc. Next generation of M-84 is "vihor tank" 2 prototypes was made,but was stoped his production.It was eaven lower sillhouette,betther armor,SUV,it was not modification of T-72 like is M-84 (M-84 is around 60% changed T-72) but completly new project. About Iraq and tank fights there,that is...unreal actualy.U cant use tanks propertly when u got no air supremacy.And i doubt that Iraq T-72 was modificed at all.But in heawy tree cowered battlefield,and on hill,mountains (like ex Yu) that tank haqw clearly start advantage in mobility,and air supremacy does not help that much.In nato agression on Serbia,only 5 tanks was destroyed by NATO,and only 1 was M-84.For 78 days it was poor score.
and how many NATO tanks were lost hmmmmm? thats a 5 to 0 score which means they have a 100% winning average.
None nato tank was engaged so i dont get ur point. About u blaster,read ur post and say what u wrote.What was ur point? If u cant say anything what is argument,question etc,dont botther to spam with that.Il be nice,like i allways try to be.
sinissa, what it means is that Serbia the Serbians were clever enough to use their terrain to hude their military away and thus negate the huge aerial firepower advantage of their opposition. The Iraqis in both (I think it was both - certainly the first) 'Gulf Wars' made extensive use of dummy vehicles, especially tanks, which were duly destroyed by Coalition air power, which then took the heat of the actual real tanks, which were either squandered in battle against Coalition tanks or saved up for the next war, where the process was repeated. And yes, as far as I am aware they were simply stock Soviet export T-72s.
Does the self-loading feature of the Russian T-72/74 series actually result in any real-advantage in battlefield conditions? 'Seems to me there is a slower load-time, and adversaries can tell when tank is reloading due to the fact the barrel "cocks" while loading the next shell--barrel seen going up/down as the system cycles the next shell. I would imagine a good loader could beat T-series self-loading times, and be a better asset in the turret if one of the crew was wounded. Was the loader sacrificed in order to keep the turret-size small, the profile low, and to make room for increased ammunition storage? Does the self-loading system take-up more room in the turret than a crewman would have in the first-place? It would appear to me that the Russians sacrificed much in pursuing the doctrine of a 3-man crewed MBT with the lowest possible silouette. If self-loading systems were such an obvious improvement, I would have expected all MBTs would have adopted such systems, and to my knowledge they have not. Tim
That depends on what you a re going to count as an advantage, for example for any given number of crew you will be able to fully crew more tanks with an auto loader than without (eg 12 crew members, 4 tanks with, 3 without). The Soviets felt that numerical superiority was more important. You can pretty much guarantee that any tank is reloading immediately after it has fired, even if you can't see the barrel moving A good loader can beat the autoloader, but the autoloader doesn't get tired and may be better than your average human. A human would probably take up more space. The french have used autoloaders in their tanks for a considerable period of time upto and including the Leclerc, a lot of Soviet/Russian designs do to, the S-tank had an autoloader, as does the Japanese Type 90. So they are not exactly uncommon and most countries have at least experimented with them. The reasons for not adopting an autoloader are usually "a human can do other things besides load a gun, maintenance, guard duty etc", "a human can load faster than an autoloader", "a crew works better with four people", "autoloaders can malfunction", and there's probably a few I've forgotten. The real reason is probably that most of the tanks in service today were designed back in the 1970s and an autoloader wasn't specified or they didn't think one would work and so a human loader is what they got. And of course don't forget the T72's autoloader was specifically designed the grab the nearest gunner, rip his arm off and stuff that into the gun instead of a real round. :roll:
Thanks for the reply guys. Perhaps this question should have been posed in a new thread... but this one was active. I was always under the impression they recruited dwarves to crew T-72/T-74/T-80 series tanks. So which doctrine is best... a four-man crew with dedicated human loader, or a 3-man crew of dwarves and an autoloader? (big smile) Tim