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Russia To ‘Modernize' 800 Vintage T-62 Tanks Due To Ukraine Losses: Report
[The Drive] Russian plans to return hundreds of Cold War-era T-62s to service points to serious attrition, supply chain, and industrial capacity problems. In response, Ukraine resurrects the Boys antitank rifle. The Russian military is reportedly set to receive some 800 refurbished and possibly upgraded T-62 tanks in the next three years to try to help make up for severe losses it has already sustained in its ongoing all-out invasion of Ukraine. Many of the nearly antique T-62s have already been pulled out of deep storage and sent to Ukraine, where they have shown to be of debatable utility. If the situation is as it is reported to be, the decision to reactivate hundreds of these remarkably old Cold War-era tanks offers fresh evidence that western sanctions and other factors are hobbling Russia's arms industry. It also provides more evidence as to the poor state of Russia's more advanced armor, with many hundreds of tanks destroyed, damaged, or captured and others sidelined due to being worn out or without high-tech replacement parts after nearly nine months of continuous combat. Gurulyov reportedly said that the T-62s in question would be modernized with new thermal and night vision optics and additional armor and other defensive features, particularly to help protect against anti-tank guided missiles like the U.S.-made Javelin. He does not appear to have provided any granular specifics about these planned upgrades. There was no mention of updating the tank's armament, which consists of a 115mm main gun, a co-axial 7.62x54mm machine gun, and a 12.7mm machine gun on top of the turret. Russia certainly has many hundreds of T-62s in storage that it inherited from the Soviet Union, the vast majority of which are understood to be T-62M subtypes. The first T-62s entered Soviet service in 1961. In the 1980s, the Soviets had put thousands of these tanks through a broad modernization program that included adding more powerful engines, upgraded fire control systems, and new defenses. In terms of new defensive features, a number of different subvariants emerged, including ones with Kontakt-1 explosive reactive armor (ERA) packages and first-generation Drozd active protection systems. Oryx (OSInt) has photo documented over 7,000 Russian vehicle losses of which 1328 are tanks. Russia - 7022, of which: destroyed: 4240, damaged: 164, abandoned: 306, captured: 2312 Tanks (1328, of which destroyed: 757, damaged: 51, abandoned: 53, captured: 468) Real losses are higher. Posted by: Snash Shairt9621 2022-10-13 |
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