How a Russian Army Tank Landed at a Louisiana Gas Station

2023-04-18 13:03:24

Roanoke, Louisiana, 491 inhabitants spread over an area of ​​1.11 km2. No town hall, but a post office installed since 1865 and above all a “relaxation” area to “take a well-deserved break in your road trip”, according to travel sites. The few employees of this improved service station of a casino often have the opportunity to see all sorts of vehicles in the image of American excess. But what they were able to discover in their parking lot last Wednesday morning was unexpected to say the least: a Russian T-90 tank, placed in the back of an American truck trailer!

What could this 50-ton steel monster doing there, having obviously been used recently? To better understand the improbable journey of this tank which trod the Ukrainian battlefield until ending up on a truck stop in Louisiana, we must go back to the appearance of photos of the machine on the American social network Reddit.

They appeared in a specialized channel on the discussion platform called “Tank Porn” last Wednesday, posted by a user named Mutantlight. The latter explained to the specialized media “The War Zone” that he did not live very far from the truck stop, and that he came across the T-90 by chance. “I’m a guy from the south who’s been into tanks ever since he played War Thunder (a video game) and came across this beauty,” he told the website.

VIDEO. War in Ukraine: tanks, mortar guns, these heavy weapons abandoned by the Russians used against them on the front

Abandoned on a trailer

Once the information was shared on the social network, the community of tank enthusiasts set in motion to understand where this Russian vehicle came from. The managers of the relay have provided the first elements of an answer. “The transmission of the truck that pulled this old trailer broke down,” said Cody Sellers, manager of the establishment. “The person transporting the tank had to go back to Houston to buy a new truck and asked if they could store it at Peto’s,” also explained to The War Zone Valerie Mott, assistant manager of Peto’s Travel Center and Casino in Roanoke. , solving a first mystery.

None of the locals, however, had any information on the origin or final destination of the Russian tank. And again, it was the investigators of the tank fan community, who, with a bit of ingenuity, answered these questions. A member of the OSINT group, which tracks military equipment used in the war in Ukraine, under the Twitter pseudonym Naalsio, claims to have been able to determine that the tank “belonged (originally) to the 27th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Guards”.

The device was reportedly abandoned in Kurylivka, in the Kharkiv oblast, around September 25. It was then captured by Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, hence the yellow “9” on the tank that landed in Louisiana. This is the marking that the 92nd Brigade affixes to its military equipment.

A shipping tag, affixed to the 125mm gun and provided by a Louisianan to the TWZ site, shows that the tank was sent by an organization called the “multinational assessment field team” from the port of Gdynia, Poland. The port of destination is listed as Beaumont, Texas, approximately 145 km west of where the trailer was found. The “End Consignee” listed on the label is Building 358, 6850 Lanyard Rd, Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, MD.

“Current of transferring material taken from the enemy to reverse engineer it”

This address is none other than that of the Aberdeen Test Center (ATC), a specialized laboratory of the American army in the “test” of weapons of war, in particular armored vehicles. Its motto, “We test, you survive”, says a lot about its business.

For arms consultant Stéphane Audrand, it’s no surprise that the Russian tank found itself on its way to ATC. “It is common to transfer material taken from the enemy for the to debone. Since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainians have done this almost systematically. The object is to better understand the opposing material, ”he explains to the Parisian. Even if this Russian T-90 is a tank well known to the military in the United States and within NATO, it is always useful to know its latest developments, especially since the Americans have had little opportunities to access recent Russian models.

“It has been regularly modernized since the 1990s, in particular with French thermal cameras, but since the embargo the Russians no longer had access to it. They were able to upgrade their tank with new armor and new electronics, which makes it interesting to take it apart,” adds the military armament specialist.

“In Aberdeen there is a live fire test bed. We can also test its thermal signature, its mobility, also analyzes Stéphane Audrand. Then they will shoot it to test its vulnerability to different weapons depending on the distance, angles. And I imagine that there will be feedback to the Ukrainians on this test. “It’s a bit like an F1 team getting their hands on the prototype opposite. This tank can also end up in units with ex-Soviet equipment to train the American army as well. confront in real conditions,” adds the consultant. A real luxury that only GIs can afford.