2024-07-23 07:02:10
It was a simplified version of the T-72B Obr., a 43-ton, three-person tank of the Soviet army, in 1985. intended for export. Compared to the T-72B, the T-72S has fewer jet armor units and less protection against nuclear and chemical attack. The main weakness of the T-72B is its poor night-battle optics, which require the use of an easily detectable infrared searchlight.
in 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union disrupted efforts to sell the T-72S. Iran likely purchased a few, but apart from Iraqi units that rode around with captured Iranian tanks, no other users emerged. Dozens of T-72S were simply lying around without a buyer – so they were briefly used by the Russian military in the 1990s.
The T-72S is something of an oddity. And maybe he would have disappeared into history if Russia in 2014. would not have invaded Ukraine – and expanded the war eight years later.
The Soviet Army left behind at least one T-72S when it withdrew from Ukraine in the 1990s. in 2014 mobilizing for war, the Ukrainian military dusted off that single T-72S — and assigned it to the 53rd Mechanized Brigade.
It is unclear what happened to that lone T-72S as the war progressed. Ukraine, which has restored dozens of T-72s from long-term storage, received hundreds from Russia and bought hundreds more from its allies abroad, is now the main user of almost all variants of the T-72, from the oldest T-72 Urals produced in the eighth in the decade, to fresh factory T-72B3Ms, just taken over from retreating Russian units.
During eight years of hard fighting, the Ukrainians lost as many as three hundred T-72s. The only “T-72S” can be among them. It is possible that the war caused the T-72S to disappear from Europe, at least for the time being.
If the odd reduced-class T-72B were to return to the battlefield, it would likely be on the Russian side – if it hasn’t already. After losing thousands of modern tanks in Ukraine, the Russians began digging into their Cold War-era stockpiles in search of working tanks — and recovered all but the oldest T-72As and T-72 Urals.
They revived more than 400 of the approximately 900 T-72Bs in storage. If there were any T-72S mixed in among the nearly identical T-72Bs, no one outside the Kremlin knows about it. And if the Russians lost any T-72S in battle – among the hundreds of written off T-72Bs – almost no one knows about it either.
Thus, it is possible that the only such T-72S fought or will ever fight in the Russo-Ukrainian war. As a result, the decommissioned T-72B may become the rarest tank, according to Forbes.
2024-07-23 07:02:10