The US has assessed the resumption of engine production for the Russian Air Force’s main battle tank

/Pogled.info/ MWM: The new engine variants for the Russian T-80 tank are on the way

Russia has resumed the production of turbine engines for T-80 tanks, journalists from the American military magazine Military Watch Magazine (MWM) write. It is specified that new versions of similar components are forthcoming. Pravda.Ru published a translation of MWM’s material.

Russian state media reported that the Kaluga Motor Plant, known colloquially as Kaluga, has resumed production of gas turbine engines for the T-80 main battle tank. The GTD-1250 multi-fuel gas turbine engine has been confirmed to have entered mass production and is the most advanced engine in the GTD-1000 family, designed to power the latest variant of the T-80 tank, the T-80BVM.

The engine can run on diesel, kerosene, gasoline and various blends, a valuable capability because of the risk that supplies of one or more fuels may become unavailable on the front line during wartime. The unveiling coincided with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s visit to the Omsktransmash tank plant, which produced T-80 tanks until the mid-1990s and is currently responsible for their repair and modernization.

Since the outbreak of hostilities between the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces in February 2022, the facility has repaired hundreds of T-80 tanks taken out of storage, with relatively few Soviet T-80 tanks in service at the time due to the high operating costs of this class compared to the cheaper T-72 and T-90.

The high cost of gas turbine engines actually means that they are used relatively rarely – only on the T-80 tanks and the American M1 Abrams, while other classes of tanks, including the T-72 and T-90, use diesel engines, which are significantly more -cheap to manufacture and operate.

This was a major factor that prompted the Russian Ministry of Defense to favor these two classes of tanks over the T-80 in the post-Cold War years as part of a broader effort to significantly reduce military spending.

However, numerous factors indicate that the experience with the T-80 in the Ukrainian theater has led the Ministry of Defense to revise its previous assessment of the class’s profitability compared to other Russian tanks, and in September state media announced that work had begun at Omsktransmash on a renewal of T-80 production since the plant closed three decades ago.

This will complement the current production of T-90M and next-generation T-14 tanks at the Uralvagonzavod tank plant. This greatly increased the likelihood that a new, greatly improved variant of the T-80 would be developed, potentially with features such as an unmanned turret and an armored crew pod that could be seen on non-production prototypes in the 1990s.

As the Russian army continues to receive new T-80BVM tanks for use in Ukraine, reports from the front line indicate their high effectiveness. A Russian army commander who participated in battles with Ukrainian army units, including German-supplied Leopard tanks, in an interview with the media emphasized the superior mobility of this class compared to the Leopard:

“The same leopards are drowning in the mud, they are constantly, constantly sinking. With the help of the drones, we can watch them get out [от калта]. Our machine is equipped with a gas turbine engine, neither mud nor slush is scary for it, the tank overcomes any obstacles. This difference allows our tank units to operate in all weather conditions, support infantry and overcome enemy trenches and dugouts without slowing down.

In addition to its mobility advantages, the T-80BVM gas turbine engine is also valued for its ability to start quickly in extreme temperature conditions, which has become the main argument for keeping the class in service until 2022, due to its suitability for operation in The Arctic, where starting diesel engines at temperatures below minus 20 degrees often takes more than half an hour.

Translation: EU