The unique war environment in the Middle East gave birth to the famous Israeli Merkava main battle tank, a main battle tank that can carry infantry and provide survivability of the zenith star level. It should be the only current equipment in active service that can rely on self-reliance. Tanks that can carry out single-vehicle combat with infantry are quite distinctive. Mekava's unique design concept has been sought after by a considerable number of people, such as the Ukrainian Morozov Design Bureau in this article.
R & D background, a tragedy from Mao At that time, the armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles equipped by the Russian army were notoriously thin-skinned iron cans. It was difficult to transport the infantry to the required position in the face of modern firepower. In this context, the Ukrainian Morozov Design Bureau is determined to develop a Ukrainian version of the Merkava, which is the origin of the BTMP-84 infantry main battle tank. As for why Russia’s terrible lesson turned out to be the first to awaken the Ukrainians, it can only be said that Ukrainians have a keen eye and discovered the way to make money from this incident.
The fast-moving Morozov Design Bureau completed the work on the relevant drawings in early 1997. Considering many reasons (mainly money), the Morozov Design Bureau gave up The design scheme of starting a new stove was finally used for reference from Israel's ideas. On the basis of the T84 main battle tank, it was developed by lengthening the car body and changing the engine horizontally to vertical. At the end of 2001, a number of prototype cars were manufactured. After passing the basic tests, they were introduced to the market. Then there was no more. BTMP-84 was put in the warehouse to eat ashes. According to the grapevine, in the battle with East Uzbekistan, the prototype of the BTMP-84 infantry main battle tank may have been on the battlefield. Considering that Ukraine even used the T84 sold to Thailand, the reliability of this news is still very high.
From the tube, BTMP-84 structure analysis
If viewed from the front, BTMP-84 infantry type The battle tank is exactly the same as the T84, there is no difference. To a certain extent, it also helps to improve its survivability on the battlefield (especially the survivability of vehicle-mounted infantry). If you look at the side and back, you will find the difference with T84. The rear of the car body was lengthened and heightened, and a large crew compartment was installed on the left side of the rear of the car, which can carry 5 additional fully armed soldiers. The advantage of this design is that there is no need to make major changes to the tank, the cost is lower, and the time-consuming is shorter. In addition, it will not negatively affect the protection of the tank.
Even if the Merkava with the front power system develops to the fourth generation, due to the impact of the power front, its frontal protection is still at the bottom of the new third-generation tanks. It is easy for the vehicle to be paralyzed due to a bullet in the power system, which makes it impossible to evacuate in time, making it even more dangerous when fighting in the city.
However, considering the low internal space design of the Soviet tank, the crew compartment of the BTMP-84 is quite small, and the height of these 5 soldiers is also limited. If you change to the height of a Western soldier , It’s not bad to fit four people. The occupants mainly enter through the narrow passage on the left side of the rear of the car body. In addition, there are two cabin doors for entry and exit on the top of the cabin. Compared with Merkava’s design, the clamshell hatch of BTMP-84 is not only extremely narrow (soldiers can only enter and exit one by one), but the raised hatch will indicate to the enemy that the people in the car will get off the car, thus allowing Members are vulnerable to attacks from the top. The two design concepts of BTMP-84 and Mekava can be considered as having their own advantages and disadvantages.
The car body adopts a welded structure. The overall layout of the members is the same as that of the T84. The driver is located in the front center of the car body. It is worth mentioning that BTMP-84 drives The position of the crew has been improved so that there will be no problems with the T72 tank driver’s neck being screwed off by the main gun while driving. Above the driverThere are 3 periscopes on the canopy, the middle one can be replaced with low light or infrared periscope, which is convenient for night driving. The turret, like the T84, is a welded double turret. In addition to the conventional optical periscope, the gunner and commander are equipped with additional thermal imaging cameras.
The biggest change is the layout of the power system. Because of the need to leave a passage for the infantry up and down, the entire power system changed from the traditional horizontal position to the vertical position, and was placed on the right side of the rear of the car body. Car power supply. The air intake of the engine is placed at the rear of the turret to avoid the impact on the crew. A closed armor cover is installed on the top of the engine compartment, and the engine exhaust is placed at the rear of the car body, which can effectively improve the protection of the roof attack ammunition.
In addition, the crew compartment of BTMP-84 can be changed into a temporary command compartment and ambulance compartment like Merkava, and even direct additional ammunition and fuel can be placed directly to improve the combat endurance.
Overcoming difficulties, mainstream three-generation weapon system
BTMP—84 Like Merkava, it also retains the weapon system used by the main battle Tucker. , Enough to compete with the enemy's three-generation main battle tanks. The main gun is the Ukrainian version of the Soviet 2A46M-1 smoothbore gun-KBA-3 smoothbore gun. The gun adopts a traditional structural design, with a thermal sheath on the barrel, an air extraction device in the middle of the gun, and a muzzle. There is an initial speed measuring device, the artillery adopts barrel self-tightening and electroslag remelting technology, and the inner chamber adopts a chromium plating process, which significantly improves shooting accuracy, power and barrel life. The overall performance is 27% higher than that of 2A46M-1 , The life span reached 800~850 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition or 1000 rounds of hollow-charge armor-piercing ammunition. In addition, the artillery adopts a front-drawing design, which can be quickly replaced within 1.5 hours without lifting the turret. The ammunition of the
KBA-3 smoothbore gun is split-loading, and the projectiles and cartridges are loaded separately. Affected by the crew compartment, the base number of ammunition is reduced from 43 rounds of T84 to 36 rounds. The automatic loading machine of BTMP-84 is composed of a magazine, a transporter and a pushing mechanism. The ammunition is placed vertically (the ammunition in the automatic loading machine of the T-72 tank is placed horizontally), the projectile is on the top, and the cartridge is on the bottom. . Among them, 28 rounds are wait-fire rounds, located in the turntable rotating magazine on the bottom of the turret. The remaining 8 rounds are stored beside the driver in the car. The main types of conventional artillery shells include stabilized tail shell armor-piercing shells, tail stabilized hollow-charge armor-piercing shells, artillery-launched missiles and anti-personnel blasting grenades. When loading the ammunition with the autoloader, the maximum rate of fire of the artillery reached 9 rounds/min (conventional ammunition) or 3 rounds/min (cannon-launched missiles). It can also be filled manually if necessary.
BTMP—84 can also launch a new generation of depleted uranium dehulling armor-piercing projectiles developed by Ukraine, which can penetrate 650 mm thick steel armor vertically at a distance of 1000 meters, and the armor penetration performance is achieved. The standard of three generations of main battle tanks in the West. The other is a three-stage tandem armor-breaking projectile with a depleted uranium charge type cover. Its armor-breaking thickness for homogeneous armor is about 700 mm. At present, it is difficult to destroy the armor with additional reactive armor from the front. Main battle tank.
As a unique skill of Soviet-style third-generation tanks, BTMP-84 can also launch Ukrainian gun-launched anti-tank missiles. The whole car is equipped with 8 pieces, which are loaded by an automatic loader (also can be loaded manually). The maximum range is 5 kilometers. It mainly attacks long-range enemy armored targets and low-flying helicopters. With dual tandem warheads, it can attack targets equipped with explosive reactive armor. The maximum armor thickness is 800 mm. However, considering that the current range of anti-tank missiles of medium- and heavy-duty armed helicopters generally exceeds 10 kilometers, artillery-launched missiles can only be used to ambush helicopters, and are not enough to compete with armed helicopters. At least I am puzzled by many people exaggerating the role of artillery-launched missiles.
The auxiliary weapon is 2 machine guns, one is a 7.62mm parallel machine gun mounted on the right side of the main gun, with 1250 rounds of ammunition. The other is a 12.7mm NSVT mounted on the captain’s doorShooting a machine gun with 500 rounds of ammunition. The 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun is remotely fired by the commander in the car, or it can be fired manually. It is worth mentioning that the anti-aircraft machine gun is equipped with a high-low direction stabilizer, which is stable in the range of -3 to +20 degrees, which is very beneficial for tracking moving targets.
BTMP—84's fire control system is a typical image stabilization fire control system of the third-generation tanks, which has the ability of "moving-to-moving" shooting. The entire system consists of "1G46M daytime sight for gunners", "Buran-Catherine-E thermal imager", "PNK-5 commander observation and sighting system", "PZU-7 anti-air sight", "1ETs29M anti-aircraft machine gun control system", "LIO-V ballistic computer", "2E42M weapon stabilization system" and other components. The BTMP-84's fire control system also introduces a hunting mechanism. Both the commander and the gunner can control the aiming and firing of the artillery, and no matter which attack mode it is, it has a high first hit rate.
The protective ability that has withstood the test of actual combat
In terms of protective ability, the Morozov Mechanical Design Bureau has adopted a series of enhanced protections for BTMP-84 Measures. First, it redesigned a more advanced welded turret and adopted a new type of composite armor. The composite multilayer matrix armor is alternately embedded with special materials and controlled deformation layers in the rolled armor. The overall protection capability of the welded turret is about 23% higher than that of the T-84 basic tank.
According to public data, the front armor of the BTMP-84 turret is 280 mm thick, and the sides are 180 mm. The thickness of the armor on the front of the car body is 200 mm, which is about 700 mm. . Its anti-armor piercing and armor-piercing projectile capabilities are about 21% higher than the T-84 tank's composite matrix armor, which is equivalent to 600 mm and 850 mm thick homogeneous steel plates, respectively.
In addition, TBTMP-84 is equipped with the latest "Blade" additional reactive armor block, which is an improved version of the Ukrainian version of "Contact-5". The effect of this new type of additional reactive armor defense hollow-charge armor-piercing projectile and defense armor-piercing projectile has been further improved. The "Blade" additional reactive armor has withstood the test in the Ukrainian Civil War. A T64 was hit by an anti-tank missile. As a result, apart from overturning a few pieces of reactive armor, the turret showed no signs of damage.
TBTMP—84 The front oblique armor plate of the car body is installed side by side with two rows of "blade" reactive armor blocks, each with 3 pieces. In order to enhance the defense against top attack weapons, the reactive armor block extends from the upper direction of the artillery shield to the rear edge of the top of the turret, covering the entire top of the turret. In addition, in order to improve the protection of the joint between the car body and the turret, the designers added a flexible plate on the front half of the turret. This flexible plate is made of rubber fiber, which can effectively deal with the attacks of hollow-charge armor-piercing projectiles and armor-piercing projectiles. . In addition, the designer also installed reactive armor blocks on the upper side skirts of the first three road wheels of the TBTMP-84 to enhance the protection of the side wings.
When this type of reactive armor is combined with the base armor of the T-84M tank, the TBTMP-84 turret's frontal defense against armor-piercing shells and armor-piercing shells have reached the equivalent of 1200mm and 1000mm, respectively Thick homogeneous steel plate. Such strong protection has rendered most of the anti-tank weapons in active service in the world powerless.
In view of the damage caused by landmines to the tank, a flexible plate made of rubber fiber is also installed under the front of the TBTMP-84 car body, which is used to clean the fuze with a contact rod in advance. For anti-tank mines, the driver’s seat uses a ceiling-mounted suspension, which is not connected to the bottom of the car body, which can effectively prevent the shock wave generated by the mine explosion from being directly transmitted to the driver. In addition, TBTMP-84 is also equipped with a photoelectric jamming system (blue circle in the picture below), which can effectively jam the second-generation anti-tank missile. In addition, a nuclear, biological and chemical three-proof device, automatic fire extinguishing and explosion suppression device, and thermal smoke emission device are also installed.
Mature, reliable and prepared power system
BTMP-84 after lengthening the car body, the total combat weight reached 50 tons. Therefore, the classic 6TD-2 two-stroke diesel engine is selected for the engine (this cargo is almost indescribable for our country), with a maximum power of 882 kilowatts (about 1200 horsepower), a unit power of 24 horsepower/ton, and a maximum road speed of 70km/ h, the maximum cross-country speed is 45km/h, and the maximum reverse speed is 34km/h. The engine can use a variety of fuels-diesel, kerosene, gasoline, rocket fuel or mixed fuels in any proportion, NATO standard fuel is naturally included. BTMP-84 has a main fuel tank, four additional mailboxes, and two auxiliary fuel tanks can be installed at the rear of the car body. The maximum road trip can reach 400~450 kilometers. In extreme cases, additional fuel tanks can be installed in the crew compartment, but this is not very meaningful.
In addition, in order to save fuel, this is especially important in urban combat. During the first Chechen War, many Russian T80 (gas turbine models) ran out of fuel in standby mode. , Causing the battle to start and be destroyed (give up). BTMP-84 is equipped with an 8-kilowatt auxiliary power system to supply power to the electrical equipment of the tank when the main engine is off. This not only saves fuel, but also reduces noise and infrared radiation, effectively improving survivability and continuous combat capability. In terms of wading, a 1.8m-deep water barrier can be passed without special preparation. After installing a breather and exhaust pipe, the vehicle can dive through a 5m-deep water barrier.
Export? That was the wishful thinking of the Morozov Design Bureau
Tank city combat is currently a big problem. Don’t you see that the American M1A2 and Leopard 2 were caught in urban combat without the accompanying infantry. , The performance is not much better than the Soviet tank. On the other hand, Mekava has been surrounded many times in urban battles. Under the cover of the vehicle-mounted infantry, they all repelled the enemy's siege, ensuring the safety of the tank and the smooth progress of the battle. In fact, the current heavy armoring of infantry fighting vehicles and even armored personnel carriers has become a trend. Even the world's number one and number two military powers have begun to develop heavy and even super heavy armored vehicles. At this time, when we look at BTMP-84 again, we have to sincerely admire the unique and sophisticated vision of the Morozov Design Bureau. In addition, the Morozov Design Bureau also launched the BMT-72 infantry main battle tank that can also carry infantry on the T72, which has a larger holding.
It’s a pity that it’s not at the right time, BTMP-84 has no export records so far (there may be exports of related technologies). More sadly, after the Morozov Design Bureau completely lost the ability to develop new tanks, BTMP-84 has completely become a technical reserve that has been shelved.
