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Modern Battle Tanks and Support Vehicles

fust published 1997 by

Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited, Park House,

1 Russell Gardens, London NW11 9NN

and

Stackpole Books, 5067 RitterRoad, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055, USA

The moral right of the author has been asserted

or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without first seeking the written permission of the Publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Russell, Alan K.

Modern Battle Tanks. - Completely rev. and updated ed. - (Greenhill Military Manuals)

1. Tanks (Military science) 2. Tanks (Military science) - Identification

I. Title II. Battle tanks and support vehicles

623.7'4752

ISBN 1-8S367-258-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Publishing History

Modern Battle Tanks and Support Vehicles

is a completely revised and updated edition of

Battle Tanks and Support Vehicles (Greenhill Books, 1994)

Typeset by Vector Publicity and Communications

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bath Press

Introduction

Over the past twenty-five years the Main Battle Tank has

regained its place as the 'Queen of the Battlefield' by virtue

of a series of technological revolutions in the field of passive

and active armour protection. It had been threatened almost

to the point of battlefield extinction by the advent of

multitudes of light anti-armour infantry weapons and various

anti-tank guided missiles, all of which can easily punch holes

through large thicknesses of conventional homogenous steel

armour plate, The world's major tank designers fought back

with what were originally considered to be unconventional

ideas but are now accepted universally

In the West the breakthrough was considered to be the

UK's development in the sixties (with fielding in the early

eighties) of the layered composite 'Chobham' armour. This

effort has been matched by America's development of its

even more advanced 'Depleted Uranium' heavy armour

package for the M1 Abrams MBT family; whilst in Israel and

the East it was the development and use of 'reactive' armour

blocks used to disrupt shaped-charge warheads. All these

concepts have set back the anti-tank weapon designers for

years until new methods of penetrating the armour

protection such as tandem warheads, precursor charges etc.

could be developed to redress the balance somewhat.

Also of growing concern to the major powers is the

acquisition of indigenous MBT design and manufacturing

capabilities by what are now being termed 'Regional

Superpowers'. With sufficient battle experience and the

necessary infrastructure, as Iraq had for the Second Gulf

War against the UN Coalition forces, these powers can

easily challenge on the regional level with a good chance

of creating significant regional conflicts.

The Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) talks have

reduced the East/West European theatre tank forces to

levels where such a scenario cannot be far removed from

happening on a regular basis, especially with the

thousands of spare MBTs which have become available

for sale to any country which has the necessary hard cash

available.

For the future, as the cost of the MBT rises, the need of

the major powers is perceived as being for modest

numbers of higher quality vehicles. The UK's

Challenger 2, France's Leclerc and America's M1A2

Abrams are typical examples of this philosophy However,

in order to afford these vehicles and keep an affordable

national tank production capability it is vitally important

for costs to be spread out. The only viable way for this to

happen is for the vehicle to become an export item to

valued client nations. It is therefore interesting to note that

all three of these vehicles have had important export

orders placed in the early nineties by such countries in

the Middle East. How long can this continue is anybody's

guess but a major reshaping of the world's MBT industries

for the 21 st Century is well in hand.

Contents

Introduction

Vijayanta, India

The Future

T-55 variants, Iraq

TAM (Tanque Mediano Argentine),

Argentina

Merkava Mk 3/Mk 4, Israel

Merkava Mk 1/Mk 2, Israel

NORINCO Type 59, People's Republic of

China (PRC)

Mag'ach (Upgraded M48/M60

series Patton), Israel

NORINCO Type 69/Type 79, PRC

Sho't (Upgraded Centurion), Israel

NORINCO Type 80/Type 85/Type 90, PRC

OTOBREDA/IVECO Fiat C-l Ariete,

Italy

T-55AM, Former Czechoslovakia

GIAT Industries Leclerc, France

OTOBREDA OF-40 Mk 1/Mk 2, Italy

GIAT AMX-30/AMX-30 B2, France

Mitsubishi Type 90, Japan

Krauss - Maffei Leopard 2 to 2A5 Series,

Germany

Mitsubishi Type 74, japan

Vickers Defence Systems Khalid, Jordan

Krauss - Maffei Leopard 1 to 1 A3 Series,

Germany

PT-91, Poland

TR-580, TR-85, TR-800, Romania

Krauss - Maffei Leopard 1A4 to 1A5 Series,

Germany

OlifantMk lA/Mk IB, South Africa

Kl (Type 88 or ROOT), South Korea

ArjunMk 1, India

T-90 Series, CIS....

... 73

T-80U Series, CIS 75

T-80/T-80B Series, CIS 78

T-72S Series, CIS 81

T-72B Series, CIS 83

T-72 A, G and Ml Series, CIS 85

T-72, A, B (export) and M series, CIS 87

T-64 Series, CIS 89

T-62, CIS 92

T-55, CIS 95

T-54, CIS 97

T-34-85, CIS 99

Bofors Stridsvagn (Strv) 103A/B/C, Sweden 101

Swiss Ordnance Enterprise Pz 68 Series,

Switzerland

Vickers Defence Systems Challenger 1,

112

Chieftain FV4201/Improved Chieftain

FV4030/1.UK

118

Vickers Defence Systems Mk 1/Mk 3, UK

122

Centurion, UK

124

T-84, Ukraine

128

Abrams M1A1/M1A1(HA)/M1A2, USA

130

Basic Abrams Ml/Improved Performance Ml,

USA

136

M60A3/M60A3 TTS Patton, USA

140

M60/M60A1 Patton, USA

144

M48A5 Patton, USA

148

103

M48A1/M48A2/M48A3 Series Patton, USA

152

Swiss Ordnance Enterprise Pz 61,

Switzerland

M47/M47M Patton, USA

155

105

M-84 Series, Former Yugoslavia

158

Vickers Defence Systems Challenger 2,

Abbreviations

... 160

107

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