Talk:T-72 tanks in Iraqi service

message: In my opinion this page should be cleaned up, especially the scans, if they're kept at all, should be moved to sources.The page is very unorganized, compared to other pages describing tanks. I suggest 
structuring it into Production, Features(armor, gun, engine and other equipment) and then to move on to its history in the Gulf War.
As well I doubt the sense of conclusion, this sounds like some kind of personal study.
:: Not only that but there is POV language scattered throughout this article that borders on the familiar: "that honor goes to"; "utterly outclassed".  76.10.147.14 (talk) 06:33, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agree 100%. This entire article is not written in an encyclopedic style. Most of it seems to focus on the U.S. Army's experience fighting against this vehicle. It's also much too detailed -- why would an article on an Iraqi tank have particular vehicle numbers and commanders of U.S. Army vehicles, some of which the author concludes were not even knocked out by the tank that is (nominally) the subject of the article? I agree with the original suggestion -- someone who knows enough about the vehicle should reorganize the article into sections comparable to other tanks: Design, Production, Features, Operational Experience. This last should be an overview of the operational experience, written NPOV (who is the "enemy" depends on who's writing), and leaving out the detailed descriptions of what happened to various U.S. Army vehicles. Save the names and vehicle numbers for Soldiers magazine. Darkstar8799 (talk) 12:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Overall make-up

message: Are you sure the Iraqi tanks had reactive armor?  Ive never seen a photo of that and I don't believe the Iraqi's ever bought it. DarthJesus 16:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reactive Armor

message: Only talking about combat performance compared to the M1 and Bradley seems a little American centric. Did it ever encouter the Challenger? Did it see combat during the Iran-Iraq war? 145.253.108.22 11:52, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Why ''Challenger 1'' and Iranian MBTs are not included

message: Is it just me, or does this article seem to be, well, for a lack of better phrase, trying too hard? I mean it goes on for several paragraphs about how it might have damaged an Abrams, and the conclusions section description of how American's where unsuccessful for not destroying more(!) enemy forces made me chuckle out loud. 70.101.32.218 04:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I insist, my anonymous friend, this "monkey model" of the T-72 was the biggest thing which faced M1s and Bradleys in battle, so the article is focused mainly on that aspect of the tank. For the Soviet T-72, yes, we have the main page, but remember that no Red Army tank has confronted an American tank in open action, never. Your claim of "rambling" makes me laugh; this article has a good number of published and reliable primary and secondary sources with a citation for almost every paragraph, so your claims of "speculation" are, to be lenient, out of place. If you want, you can discuss it with the guy that rated this article as a "B" class (who is an established and respectable Wikipedian).
DagosNavy 00:20, 02 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Huh?

message: "The Iraqi engineers tested this reinforcement against smoothbore 120 mm Chieftain tank guns in 1989, apparently with some success."
Chieftain tanks do not have smoothbore guns and never have done but have rifled 120mm guns. Also, not sure if a HEAT round was ever actually created as standard loadings for most (if not all) Chieftain users was a mix of APDS(APDFS) and HESH rounds.
*Oooops!. Good point. The Chieftain's L11A is certainly a rifled gun, surely I was thinking of the Abram's Rheinmetall 120mm Gun at the time of the edit. About the type of ammo used in those tests, the Russian source mentions различными боеприпасами, which means with different ammunitions, so we can  only guess if they fitted some kind of HEAT round to the gun standards. In any case, the HESH warhead creates a shock wave, whose power is likely to be scattered or deflected by a spaced armor plate. Thanks.
DagosNavy 12:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chieftain "smoothbore" 

message: quote:
The only chance for the Asad Babil against American tanks was to lure them to close range combat, or trying to ambush them from dug-in positions. But even in those conditions, the M1s usually prevailed, as proven in circumstances like the Battle of 73 Easting,
/end of quote
Nice to see people talking out of their asses, what the hell has this to do with anything, in "73 Easting" Iraqis were themselfs ambushed, having a lunch break and out of their vehicles, so this whole line is irrelevant and i suggest it be removed from the article.
Cheers.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.231.217.247 (talk) 02:41, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Whole line now corrected and well sourced, boy.--Darius (talk) 23:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combat performance: 

message: Do not use undefined acronyms, especially if you are doing so because 'it is common knowledge and everyone who reads this article will/should know it'. In this article are numerous references to IFVs. A reader should not have to look up on google or elsewhere what an IFV is. Use the full term when first reference followed by the acronym in parenthesis. Use of the acronym can then follow in the rest of the article. example: IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle). I had to look it up. Providing a link to a relevant wikipedia article is not enough. Give the full name first (and provide the link via the full name).  I am fixing this today. But to all the military buffs please remember this for other non-military enthusiasts.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theshowmecanuck (talk • contribs) 14:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undefined Acronyms 

message: This needs to be moved, the name Lion of Babylon should be reserved for the ancient Babylonian symbol of that name.--R-41 (talk) 18:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving to Lion of Babylon (battle tank) to avoid confusion with the ancient Babylonian symbol of the Lion of Babylon 

message: The current version of this article descirbes the Asad Babil as licence produced T-72M tank. According to Zaloga (M1A1 vs T-72 Ural) the licence produced model "Asad Babil" was a T-72M1. The article also uses the SPIRI arms trade register as source for the number 250 - 300, although licence built tanks are not imported. --EndlessUnknown (talk) 13:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think they were assembled, rather than license built (from scratch), which may mean they show up as being imported. (Hohum @) 17:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Zaloga the assembly from knock-down kits was sheduled to start in 1989. These knock-down kits were bought from Poland (not the Soviet Union), after the Soviet Union did stop direct support and sales to Iraq when the West started to support the Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. At least 100 T-72 were bought directly from the Soviet Union in 1979/80. In 1991 the Taji  tank plant was destroyed, having been upgraded the same year by Burmar-Labedy. --EndlessUnknown (talk) 18:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  T-72M or T-72M1 

message: I lol'd: "The large aerial strike was repulsed (Um,NO it wasn't. I was THERE. Please stop spreading Iraqi propaganda.)with one Apache brought down"
That's cool, but the original writer has a source, whereas you are alone in your claim.  Discuss your disagreement here, find some people who agree with you, quote them, and then maybe it can read "It is disputed whether the large aerial strike was ultimately repulsed by the Iraqis, although one Apache was brought down".   --moeburn (talk) 10:39, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "I was there!" 

message: Based on the above suggestions, input, and discussions, I have performed a few edits that clean up the page substantially. The extreme amount of unrelated information, puffery, and undue weight has been removed. In addition, a host of copy editing mistakes have been rectified. Yes, the edits are drastic, but this page has been in dire need of major work for years.
Some of these sources might be a bit of a stretch, but there really isn't much information about this tank out there. Cheers, --Stratocaster27t@lk 06:05, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Improvements 

message: The introduction and first section state it's disputed whether even a single "Lion of Babylon" T-72 was ever built. Then other sections talk about combat performance and encounters with M1 Abrams and Bradleys. Which is it? If there is any doubt this tank ever existed, how can Wikipedia talk of "combat performance"? 190.194.223.134 (talk) 00:11, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did this tank exist, or didn't it? Make your mind up, Wikipedia! 

message: 90% of this article isn't about the Lion of Babylon, whose existence we can't even confirm, it's about T-72 operated by Iraqi units. Some of those were maybe modified by Iraq, or at its request. The whole article mixes the two, which isn't helpful. It would be better to have two articles, or have it the other way around: turn this into an article about Iraqi T-72s, with one sections discussing the (potentially non-existent) Lion of Babylon. Cortador (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. This article talk about a project to locally create a T-72M1, which never came to fruition. The article even mentions that polish officials said that the tank was never made. It is very confusing that it goes on to talk about it's "combat history". I believe that the combat history was confused with polish produced T-72M1 that were in Iraqi service. (the article even mentions that lion Babylon is often incorrectly used to refer to all T-72s, so someone probably fell victim to this blunder) I think that there should be a split for the lion of Babylon and T-72s in Iraqi service. StupidTankNerd (talk) 01:17, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @StupidTankNerd I created a move request. I don't think this move is particularly controversial, but I wanted to go through the formal process just in case. Cortador (talk) 08:50, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article should be split into one about the speculative Lion, and one about T-72s used by Iraq 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved.  Cortador (talk) 06:57, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Lion of Babylon (tank) →  – This article is currently named "Lion of Babylon", which was the name of an Iraqi project to manufacture/assemble T-72s locally. No tanks may ever have come out of this project. However, the article body primarily talks about T-72s that Iraq had simply acquired from other countries. Confusingly, the term "Lion" is still used frequently in the article, suggesting to the reader that these are tanks from the Lion of Babylon project, even though few (if any) of the cited sourced actually refer to these tanks as Lions. I suggest that we rename this page to "T-72 tanks in Iraqi service", as this is what the article is actually about, and introduce a section named "Lion of Babylon project". If we can find sufficient reliable sources, we can then spin that section off into an article specifically about that project. Cortador (talk) 08:48, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Support per nom.  (talk) 05:09, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 5 July 2023