The IS-7 never entered production and as the Cold War’s chill spread over the civilized world the Soviet Union’s tank factories toyed with various experimental designs. Until the arrival of the T-64 the Soviets believed in mass-producing overwhelming numbers of smaller medium tanks like the T-54 and T-55. Weighing 68 tons–heavier than current generation MBTs–and armed with a 130mm naval gun fed by an autoloader, it ran on a 1,050 hp engine and had a top speed of 60 km/h.īut the concept of the heavy tank died. An example is the IS-7, or the seventh Stalin tank. The Stalin tanks averaged 50 tons and as the Soviets developed succeeding variants they eventually created the most advanced and powerful tanks in the world. It was also ahead of its time with armor that was impervious to anti-tank guns and a 500 horsepower diesel engine. a circular turret, low profile, and a large main gun. The Stalin 3 marked the beginning of the new Soviet template for tank design, i.e. But it did see combat in the Far East against Japan and production continued during the first years of the Cold War. The third iteration of the feared Stalin tanks arrived too late for any decisive battles in the European theater. It’s an un-gentle reminder that whoever seeks dominion over the Earth must first contend with the Bear. (Of that number just 2,800 are assumed to be “modern.”)Īs its relationship with the West deteriorates Russia is now rearming and building tanks. The Soviet Union’s relentless military-industrial development also left today’s Russian Federation with a peculiar conundrum: What to do with so many leftover weapons? It’s believed the Russian Army is stuck with an estimated 23,000 Soviet-era tanks. Even when derided as crude and unsophisticated the Red Army’s armor always leapfrogged the West in terms of cost-effective mass-production, ruggedness, and firepower. In the ensuing decades the Cold War arms race inspired the continuous production of new and ever deadlier tanks. The lesson learned from defeating the Axis powers would resonate for generations to come: Tanks will decide the outcome of any great war over Eurasia. This is why the Red Army possessed between 22,000 to 25,000 armored vehicles, including at least several hundred KV-1 and 2 heavy tanks, at the onset of the Great Patriotic War.īy the time the almost indestructible Joseph Stalins arrived at the Reichstag the total number of Soviet tanks had swelled to more than 60,000. The army with more tanks isn’t necessarily the more powerful army.As the world’s dominant land power the Soviet Union understood the value of mechanized forces. By contrast, a direct hit by a 120-millimeter armor-piercing shell on any medium-weight armored vehicle is likely to obliterate the target.Īll this is to say that simple numbers don’t tell a complete story. It’s not even clear that a TAM could destroy a Challenger 2 with a direct hit on its frontal armor. In a direct fight, a TAM brigade is unlikely to pose much of a danger to a Challenger 2 brigade.Īfter all, the armor on the Challenger 2 is “among the best in the world,” according to U.K. The Challenger 2 boasts a 120-millimeter gun. The Argentine tank is armed with a 105-millimeter gun. The TAM weighs just 30 tons, compared to the Challenger 2’s 62 tons. “Our country cannot even reach the Falkland Islands with combat-equipped military personnel,” Argentine newspaper La Nacion reported in 2016.īut let’s imagine Argentine and British tanks somehow could meet in battle. Four decades after the Falklands War, Argentina lacks the transport and logistical capacity to deploy and sustain heavy forces over long distances and spans of time. Today the roughly 200 TAMs equip two brigades. Around the time of the war, the Argentine army was in the process of reequipping its armored brigades with locally-made Tanque Argentino Mediano tanks. During the 1982 Falklands War, British forces crossed thousands of miles of open ocean, engaged and soundly defeated an Argentine force. Earlier, in 2014, a regiment of 48 Challenger 2s deployed to Poland for one of the biggest British war games in recent memory.Īs recently as 2016, the California think-tank RAND concluded that the British army was “capable of sustaining a deployed armored brigade indefinitely, even if many of the details regarding how remain unknown.” In Western armies, an armored brigade might possess a hundred or more tanks. Most recently in October 2018, 5,500 British troops with 180 armored vehicles including eight Challenger 2s deployed to Oman for a combined-arms war game. Once deployed, tankers train for high-intensity warfare alongside infantry, artillery and air power. And perhaps more importantly, the British armed forces still practice deploying the tanks over long distance aboard the British fleet’s amphibious and transport ships. But for all their flaws, the Challenger 2s are effective tanks.
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