The T-90M main battle tank looks great. It’s Russia’s most advanced tank. Last month, a tank crew and milbloggers rushed to put a favorable spin on a “fiery explosion”. They were outed by experts. The T-90M has a much worse problem that is a liability in combat. Many T-90Ms were lost or abandoned because of it.
This diary combines two comments which appeared in annieli’s Ukraine Invasion Day 852 and Ukraine Invasion Day 822. Both are based on articles by Forbes David Hambling. He writes about drones but doesn’t miss an opportunity to call out Russian lies and incompetence. For republication, details were added and editorial changes made.
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In the first article, Hambling cites an example of Russian gaslighting after a T-90M mishap. Here’s my takeaway.
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The T-90M has a thermal imager, a laser rangefinder and, just like in Western tanks, a ballistic computer. It also has robust armor and a big gun. Vladimir Putin would have you believe it’s the best tank in the world.
To prove the point, a video made by a tank crew shows a T-90M “successfully destroyed the enemy's assigned firing points.” The sequence recorded is as follows:
- sounds of the tank’s machinegun engaging targets in a building
- view through the commander’s imager
- burst of flame to the viewer’s right
- “Opa” (= “Wow”), “Extinguish, extinguish”
- flames go out without fire extinguishers visibly triggered
The Russian narrative tells us what we saw:
“The guys detect the launch of an FGM Javelin from a residential building….[they] used the ‘curtain’ system and successfully left the firing position. Judging by the footage, the rocket exploded in the roof area, but failed to cause serious damage. The tankers quickly put out the fire and left the battle.”
This narrative does not hold up.
- The (US-made anti-tank) FGM-148 Javelin is an infrared-guided missile. Only a laser-guided missile would trigger the Shtora’s detection system.
- The T-90M’s grenades normally generate a cloud of thick, hot smoke. The thermal imager (as in 0:23) shows the view outside is clear.
- At 6:30 the fire in the turret appears seconds after the gun breech is opened.
Savvy commenter CopiusPrime reacted swiftly and pointed to the real problem:
The tank wasn’t hit (by a missile), the fire is caused by flareback.
A flareback … is unspent propellant from the round that mixes with oxygen and creates a fireball from the breechblock after the round has been fired during case base ejection. (Photo credit: Black Wing Batallion)
Hambling adds:
“(Normally,) when the tank gun fires, all the propellant burns up in the explosion which drives the projectile forward out of the gun barrel.” If the propellant is old or poorly stored, it will not combust completely. Some very hot material will remain which will burn in contact with oxygen and can get into the crew compartment. The effect can be spectacular but not always serious. Actually, the gas is more dangerous than the flareback. It’s carbon monoxide and can poison the crew.
Debunked by observers, the Russians tried conflicting versions of the incident: here and here. It never occurred to accept the straightforward explanation of a flareback. Instead, the trend is to rewrite T-90M near-disasters as success stories.
“T-90M returning to the rear after being hit by a FPV drone”, is the caption to one video of a tank with a fire blazing behind one wheel, upgraded elsewhere to “the tank reportedly withstood three hits from FPV drones.”
There are no stories of positive success, such as T-90Ms destroying targets or winning fights (against a Bradley for example). But there are plenty of videos of T-90Ms being blown up, mainly by small Ukrainian drones.
[Russian milbloggers are habitual gaslighters. When it comes to Putin’s world’s best tank, they have to be zealous: milbloggers meet sycophants. Remontant, one of annieli’s readers, summed it up with a brilliant parody:
Glorious T-90M defeats swarm of 36 drones and returns in triumph with automatic fire suppression protecting victorious crew that absolutely did not suffer from carbon monoxide.]
Updated 7/27/24 5:40pm
Picture of T-90M, with legend of subsystems
T-90M turret showing (1) Laser warning receiver (2) smoke grenade launcher (3) gunner vision system (4) machinegun mount — From Russian MoD
In the second article, Hambling points out a glitch unique to the T-90. Here’s my summary.
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Modernization has introduced in the T-90M a flaw not seen in previous tanks. Sometimes the turret spins out of control when the tank is under fire. This glitch is described elsewhere as disco head. It’s probably because the new high-speed rotation mechanism had not been fully tested for how it works with the other electronics and mechanisms.
When it happens, the spinning turret disables the tank for combat. In this now iconic video, a T-90M is seen harassed by two Ukrainian M2 Bradleys.
After a few hits the tank’s turret started rotating in a clockwise direction and kept going.
With the turret rotating, the tank could not return fire while the Bradleys fired away. The spinning did not stop until the gun barrel hit a tree, which made the tank finally stop. A drone came later to finish it off.
The ’spinning turret syndrome’ could explain why so many T-90Ms were lost in combat and others abandoned (100 as of mid-July). Abandoned ones were demolished by specialized Ukrainian units using drone bombs.
Each T-90M costs around $4.5 M, although an accurate estimate is difficult “in Russia’s distorted economy”. Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s only tank factory, may produce just 5-10 T-90Ms a month. With each occurrence of spinning turret, the Russians lose “millions of dollars of their best hardware”.
If you’re on Twitter, please help David Hambling raise his profile. He has stood with Ukraine from Day One.
