With russia's stockpile of T-80 tanks for refurbishment nearly exhausted, the Kremlin has turned to building a "hybrid" that effectively resembles a T-80UE-1 upgraded to the T-80BVM standard

Overall, despite the declining use of armored vehicles on the battlefield.

This is nonsense that has to stop, if I could snap my fingers and make 500 MRAPs appear it would make a strategic difference for Ukraine, same thing with Bradleys or similar IFVs.

The story here is that russia sucks at iterative armor design, not that armored vehicles are obsolete.

If russia was producing a tank like the SEP v3 Abrams with a Bullfrog C-UAS or APS system this would be a different story. They can’t and they wouldn’t even if they could. As such these tanks can be seen as the equivalent of pursuing the white whale in moby dick.

  • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
    8·
    5 days ago

    I guess that is neat. Not sure they will be able to get the numbers to make a difference or have the doctrine to be able to do so. I wonder if it will have any appeal in the foreign arms trade.

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
      14·
      5 days ago

      They lost engine and chasis production for the T-80, the T-80 lineage is extinct in terms of reproductive capacity, these are just junkyard frankenstein tanks.

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
        9·
        5 days ago

        the T-80 lineage is extinct in terms of reproductive capacity, these are just junkyard frankenstein tanks.

        That is good to hear :)

      • pluggerslugs@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        I understand that they can’t build new engines, but is there really nobody in Russia who refurbish these things? Are they just in awful shape after being pulled from storage or something, because otherwise it’s hard to believe that Russian industry is incapable of overhauling a Soviet-era turbo diesel. Like even if they do a shitty job and the engines only last a year or two, it seems like they should be able to make them run at least.