Talk:T-72/Archive 1

message: The author of this page seems to be consistently 5 to 10 years behind the curve in his understanding of Russian and Ukranian tank technology, and several statements are glaringly incorrect. I have made a number of corrections. I welcome discussion of them.
:And he seems to think T-62's have an autoloader...Perhaps he's from a different time line? :o) But we should not forget that wikipedia is basically an amateur project. Making mistakes is part of the normal process of article building. They have the essential function of annoying (or amusing) experts so much they put in the correct information. ;o) It may be of comfort to you that the articles about the Western tanks are far worse!
MWAK--84.27.81.59 17:15, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outdated article? 

message: I've changed the description of the T-72 as a "medium tank" to a "main battle tank", as that fits the tank better. "Medium tank" is more of a historical term than something that is used for modern tanks, as the distinction between heavy and medium tanks has all but disappeared.
--Martin Wisse 21:48, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Description medium tank instead of mbt 

message: : ...approximately one-third cheaper per unit than the M1 Abrams
Is that correct (i.e. 2/3 the price of an M1), or should it be one third the price of an M1?  —Michael Z. 2005-08-5 05:05 Z
* I had a few problems with the edit that this quote came from. In modern USD -   seems to suggest somewhere around 1 million USD for an export T-72S and  suggests 2 million USD for a T-90. From http://members.aol.com/panzersgt/hist.html - the M1 was supposed to cost about 0.5 million USD (in 1972 dollars) - the M1A2 in present day dollars costs about 6.7 million USD ]. Anyone have any better T-72 numbers ? Megapixie 05:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cost 

message: I believe the following are incorrect:
"Even the most recently produced T-72s are not especially well protected against conventional threats (with the notable exception of the T-72BM); NATO standard 120 mm/L60 guns, firing the M829 series depleted uranium APFSDS rounds or German Tungsten DM-53 can kill them on the first shot from any angle out past two kilometers, and even the older NATO standard 105 mm/L68 can kill a T-72 at a kilometer or more—at least with depleted uranium ammunition.[Citation needed] (in fact it could kill any modern tank as well because no armour offering effective protection against DU APFSDS exists)"
T-72BM is produced at 1988. Its armor protection is more than respectable, even in today; as for the potency of DU APFSDS, many existing armor of today is capable of defeating them, since M829 is known to have been defeated with composite armor combined with Kontakt-5 ERA. M829A1 is a powerful round, yet its speculated penetration value--610mm RHA--is lower than that of M1A1HA. The A2 is the same story. M1A1 with armor upgraded to M1A2 standard and other upgraded tanks of the same generation could withstand it, including the T-80UM and T-90M, a T-72 derivative. It was believed that the A3 model has an obsecenely penetration value--960mm at 2km--but that was the result of over estimating its velocity. It turns out that the A3 model was slower, not faster, then the previous models, as the same experts who did the initial estimation readily admits. The DU sabot is the most formidable armor piercing bullet there is. It is not invincible.
Also, the stuff about improving crew survivablity by improving fire control is nonesense. The fire supression system in the T-72 can be improved alright, but the fire control system? Taking the shells stored in the ammo compartment would reduce the total number of ammunition carried to 20 something, and no improvement in FCS would justify that--for urban fighting against infantry type threats that's plenty, but that's all the small ammo load can handle.
-Chin, Cheng-chuan
:A lot of what's written in the current article is utter garbage western (especially US) propaganda. Just for example, the stuff about manual loader being faster. First of all, a manual loader in Abrams isn't faster, and definitely not consistent. He can have "bursts" of fast loading, provided that conditions are perfect but he gets tired, and can't maintain those "bursts" indefinitely. T-72's autoloader loads 6-8 rounds per minute, which is comparable to a manual loader with "bursts" and even better when it comes to consistensy. Basically, whoever wrote the current article purposely tried to "dog T-72 out" because he is a bitter loser who hates anything in Russian military.
I sick of allot of propaganda,the T-72's gun on certain models was thought to be not that good,but the real reasons were flaws in the ammo.
Many people think that a T-72 is not able to take out an Abrams,but a T-72 armed with a AT-11 Sniper/Svir would knock out an Abrams with little or no problems.
Dudtz 4/24/06 8:03 PM EST
::: It's not 'incorrect', it's absolute nonsense.  Somebody a: is unaware of the capabilities of 'even the most recently produced t-72', and b: the simple fact that armour capable of defeating DU APFSDS has existed since the eighties.  
::: The original article here was nothing more than a long description of the 'inferiorities' of the T-72 model with no context at all, comparing its original spec to current American models.  I edited and almost totally rewrote the article from a neutral POV, and all that 'apples-to-oranges' drivel was gradually filtered back in by people who apparently have only read Clancy, and got all excited and hyped-up when American tankers blasted their way through a retreating force equipped with kit that was 30-years out-of-date.  Umm. . . that's not anything to get excited about, IMHO;  that's just the expected outcome. As for who wrote the 'original article', and what parts belonged to whom, I'm not at all sure, but whoever he was, he also wrote the same propaganda in the other soviet tank articles.  Sigma-6 18:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Such myth emerged after the two Gulf wars. The truth is - not only iraqi tanks had obsolete munitions, but in addition their gun's bores were totally worn out - it seems saddam's generals never ever bothered to replace them (even after iranian war) - hence, accuracy (and penetration power to some degree) went to hell. 195.98.64.69 02:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DU sabot and crew survivability 

message: Can someone rewrite this article from a more neutral point of view, without always comparing the T-72 to modern Western tanks (how about comparing it to the tanks of its generation), and without going off topic?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.203.98.96 (talk • contribs) 
: I would be in favour of that too, at least keeping the latest T-72 in its context, and then noting that the Iraqi engagement involved obsolescent tanks on one side.  Anonymous, if you are familiar with the subject, then be bold!  —Michael Z. 2006-01-16 17:17 Z
I fixed what I could, like the part about Iraq, but I am not an expert on tank characteristics, so I can't rewrite that much.
: Agreed.  Personally, I have no problem with comments like ". . .and inferior", if they're put in context, as in ". . .and inferior, compared to the systems produced twenty years later in the American tanks that it was up against in Iraq."
: I understand the powerful (sexual?) need Americans have to claim that their equipment is superior to everyone else's, but can they refrain from adding little comments on the main articles unless they can contextualize them? Comparing old systems which were breakthroughs at the time to much newer, more advanced ones, and referring to them as 'inferior' just makes you look foolish.  Of course, the 1st Rate Ship-of-the-Line is 'inferior' to the Dreadnought, but unless you can bring a dreadnought back to 1805, you're not going to win the Battle of Trafalgar with it.  
: The fact is, when the T-72 was initially produced, the US was fielding the M-60, and the original M1 model had a 105mm gun, and the Iraqi T-72 was not ever much developed beyond the T-72's initial design state, while the M1 that faced it in 1991 and 2003 had benefitted from decades of upgrades in technology.  Why is this so difficult to understand? Sigma-6 18:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it is more than a bit snarky to suggest that people who compare tanks have sexual disfunctions. The fact is, the T-72 is not a artifact of a bygone era, it is a weapons system that is still in use today, and is encountered on the battlefield by modern western tanks. In fact it may be THE most common tank design still in use. Now, I think it would be unfair to suggest the original Soviet designers or planners were deficient just because they did not anticipate western MBT technology of the 80s and 90s, but we should at least note that it is vastly inferior to modern MBTs, both western and eastern. People who are not familiar with tanks in general may pop into WP to see what a "t-72" is when they read about them in the news, and they need at least a rough overview of how they compare to other tanks. Identity0 08:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  T-72 in context 

message: One thing that was neglected in this article was that the T-72's autoloader had the habit of wanting to stuff-in the arm of gunner.  It was not unheard of to see a Soviet soldier who had lost an arm to his own T-72 tank. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.138.139.155 (talk • contribs) .
:I thought that was a common myth. I know the BMP-1 autoloader was supposed to be lethal, but I thought the T-72 (etc) series autoloader was okay? Does anyone have any hard sources to share either way ? Megapixie 00:39, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the T-64's loader was initially worse than the T-72's.  There's a bit about autoloaders in this PDF Why Three Tanks?, but it takes a bit of reading to sort out all of the objects.  —Michael Z. 2006-02-28 02:31 Z
Oh God, it's ignorant people like the person who posted the arm-eating autoloader lies that post the most disrespectful and disinformed propaganda about Russian tanks. T-72's autoloaders don't "eat" anyone's arms. It's pure and utter lie! Man, the whole T-72 article was written by an ignorant jerk with no respect or knowledge for the T-72 and its performance. Not only are there numerous lies and ungrounded speculation, he didn't write an article about T-72, he wrote a comparisson of "T-72 vs...", and even that was filled with lies and disinformation. I have been reading about T-72 for a long time, in books and various publications and they all put this low-life of a person to shame. I don't know yet where to start but I'm thinking of editing this whole thing to a more neutral article that mostly concentrates on technical stuff. Just look at M1 Abrams article here - more propaganda from ignorant people that list only its positives, even though there are tons of negatives, as well as never-ending Pentagon propaganda and lies. I don't even know if I should bother, there are already reputable sources on the net about T-72 that debunk all these lies from jerks who know nothing about T-72.
That is definitely a myth. Anybody who has been inside a T-72 and has a little bit of common sense realises that       it's almost an impossibility because of the protective shields on both gunner's and TC's sides. Even if this shield is removed,   it would take either a very stupid person or a masochist to lose his arm, simply because any of either TC's or gunner's actions during combat doest not require to put their arms in the way of the ramming device. --Renius 21:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I read those shields were added *because* of the problems found with the autoloaders being dangerous. Toby Douglass 16:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Autoloader Problems 

message: WAIT A SECOND.
The T-72 is NOT the most common Soviet tank in the late 1980s. It was the T-80. The first line of this entry is wrong. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.239.222.84 (talk • contribs) .
: According to a table in Soviet/Russian Armor and Artillery Design Practices: 1945 to Present (p.165) - CFE counts for armor (European Russia): 1990 to 1997
      T-72   T-80   T-64  T-62  T-55  T-54  PT-76 Total
 1990 5,092  4,876  3,982 2,021 3,130 1,593 602   21,296
 1991 5,092  4,907  3,982 2,021 3,130 1,593 602   21,327
 1992 2,293  3,254  1,038 948   1,266 539   483   9,821
: The T-80 doesn't become the most common tank until somewhere between 1991 and 1992. Could you cite a source before going any further please. Megapixie 01:27, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have expanded the above to include all the tanks covered in the table (the actual table covers from 1990 to 1997 - but I'm too lazy to enter the complete data). Megapixie 10:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: T-72 versus T-80 numbers

message: "its rate of fire depends very much on the state of repair of the autoloader, which is necessary due to the extremely small and cramped interior space in the turret, which prevents the addition of a fourth crew member as a loader."
I have removed this line from "which is necessary" onwards.  The sentence misrepresents the Design intent of the autoloader.  The decision to adopt an autoloader was to allow for the reduction of the crew tank size as a result - The sentence implies that the small size of the turret is a design flaw (rather than an intentional feature) which has been patched up by using an autoloader.  Besides, the presence of the autoloader and the resoning behind it is explained elsewhere in the article.
I have also added a sentence to the Introduction of the article attempting to put the T72 into context with the tanks that entered service at around the same time.  I'm hoping that it might balance out the inevitable comparisons to the M1 if the reader is made aware that the T-72 belongs to the previous generation of tank design...  86.132.51.63 22:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A couple oF small changes

message: the first line in the section calls it a "common myth", but then goes on to say that it does, in fact, have a lesser ability to depress its main gun. so which is it? is it a myth? or is it fact? if there aren't any replies to this in a few days, i'm going to edit out the "myth" statement. Parsecboy 13:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: gun elevation

message: Hello, I was just passing by this page and was having trouble
with the following paragraph.
Armour
Armour protection of the T-72 was strengthened with each succeeding generation. The original T-72 turret is made from conventional cast armour. It is believe the maximum thickness of 280mm, the nose is about 80mm and the glacis of the new laminated armour is 200mm thick, which when incline gives about 500-600mm LOS thickness. Late model T-72 features composite armour protection.
In particular, 
It is believe the maximum thickness of 280mm, the nose is about 80mm and the glacis of the new laminated armour is 200mm thick, which when incline gives about 500-600mm LOS thickness. L
I don't know enough about the subject to be confident in 
rewording this, but it's awfully hard to understand.
If somone has a minute, this paragraph could use a little care.
- Rockthing 06:39, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Armour 

message: tK T-72 equipped with the Russian TPDK-1 is designed to be zeroed for APDS ammunition with a muzzle velocity of 18oom/s.At this range the tangent elevation for the HE and the HEAT round is automatically adjusted.With the invent of soft core ammunition with lesser muzzle velocity the problem of zeroing has been increased,especially in respect to the HE and the HEAT ammunition.all inputs on zeroing and zeroing problems of the tank are welcome here.59.94.253.222 12:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ZEROING PROBLEMS OF TK T-72