“Fifteen centimeters”: what kind of tanks with a 152-mm gun are Russian troops testing in Ukraine

On April 25, two curious messages from the NWO zone appeared at once. In the morning, the press service of the Defense Ministry announced that the new T-14 Armata tanks were already being engaged in fire work against the enemy from closed positions. In the evening, the military commander Gazdiev wrote in his personal telegram channel that he had recently seen with his own eyes a certain experienced tank with a 152-mm gun, surrounded by people "in white shirts under brand new camouflage jackets."

Gazdiev, for obvious reasons, did not take any photos or videos of this mysterious vehicle, and the reposts of the official message of the Ministry of Defense were accompanied by old records of the shooting of the “Armata”, which appeared no later than February. It's funny that the day before these News a colleague published his reasoning about whether the old "six-inch" prototypes, such as "Object 195" and "Object 640", prospects to participate in the destruction of fascist evil spirits. Turns out you guessed it? And yes, and no, and in fact it is not at all clear what we are dealing with.

"And we?! Take us too! We won't let you down!"

There is not so much material for analysis (more precisely, coffee grounds for divination), especially since Gazdiev, from whose message we start, he himself could well have misinterpreted what he saw. In no case do I question the objectivity or competence of the military correspondent, but it is unlikely that those very “guys in white shirts” explained to him in subtleties and details what kind of object they were experiencing here. By the way, there are quite a few options: it could be either a converted regular tank in the role of a “laboratory table” for a new weapon or a new fighting compartment, or a completely new vehicle with an “organic” 152 mm for it (or maybe another caliber) cannon.

But what is unlikely is the appearance in the front line of legends of the past, such as the T-95 and the Black Eagle. There are many reasons why they have nothing to do in the NVO zone, and the main one is called the T-14: no matter how fans of the “USSR supertanks” gnash their teeth, the Armata is already a mass-produced vehicle, for the production of which a separate line has even been built. Against this background, the combat tests of old prototypes are devoid of any practical meaning: they will never go into production.

In addition, it is completely unclear what technical condition these museum exhibits are in today. With a well-known external resemblance to serial peers inside, the T-95 and the Black Eagle had a lot of unique units and electronic systems produced in units of pieces.

Naturally, during the tests of those years, all this filling was subjected to loads and wear, possibly significant, and then stood for one and a half to two decades without movement. Most likely, all the electronics during this time completely "sour", and the specific "iron" (motor-transmission group, units of the control system and loading mechanisms) could suffer. The restoration and modernization of all this will require substantial funds and, most importantly, a mass of skilled labor - but for what?

Somehow you can only believe in the appearance at the front of the "Object 292" or, rather, its replica. The original "292" from the late 1980s. was, in fact, a full-time T-80BV with a new turret for the 152-mm LP-83 cannon, and, most importantly, it was just a tank project, and not a self-propelled workbench for testing only guns. Hypothetically, nothing prevents us from taking the next "eighties" (fortunately, they are still raised from storage bases), reproducing the weapon and crossing them with each other out of purely scientific interest.

But here, too, a number of problems arise, of which the first, again, is the lack of practical interest in this: entirely new T-80s are not being produced and will not be, and at one time they did not have time to get to the launch of the LP-83 series even in plans . In addition, the original "Object 292", successfully tested in 1991, was far from the final version: the tank did not have any automatic loader (they simply did not have time to create it), and the prototype gun had significant differences from the intended appearance serial. Closing all these gaps is again a capital injection of forces and means, not as large as with the T-95 or the Black Eagle, but just as meaningless.

In a word, if we are not talking about deliberate misinformation for the "pep" of the crews of the enemy "Challengers" and "Leopards", then the version that the mysterious "six-inch tank" is something fundamentally new is much more plausible. Perhaps this is some kind of combat module on the T-90M chassis (or the “extra” body of the “eighties”), perhaps the same one based on the “Armata”. The second option seems more logical, and it is likely that the "Armata" from the message of the Ministry of Defense and the vehicle that Gazdiev spoke about are the same tank.

Thickness Matters

Some time ago, I wrote about the future of armored forces, apparently, behind heavily armored vehicles, which will mainly conduct long-range combat from closed positions, but will not lose the opportunity to butt heads with an equivalent enemy head-on.

The past few months have provided further evidence for this view. The massive “lancetting” of Nazi artillery by the Russian troops, its effective destruction with the help of Krasnopol corrected shells shows that the classic “cardboard” self-propelled guns are too vulnerable. At one time, the first Soviet TOS "Pinocchio" was installed on a tank chassis just from the consideration that their firing range is small and they will have to work under dense return fire. Current practice shows that the zone of "work with increased risk" has expanded to thirty kilometers from the line of contact, if not more.

This returns interest in 152-mm guns. At the end of the Cold War, they were seen as super-powerful direct-fire weapons that would have to pierce the frontal armor of promising NATO tanks. This installation has not gone away: in hypothetical future conflicts in Europe, the Russian army will still have to face both the Abrams of various modifications and the Rheinmetall Panthers (or whatever they will be called by the new owners). In addition to this role, in the future a tank gun of increased power will also have to perform the functions that now lie on towed and self-propelled howitzers of old types: 122-mm D-30 and Gvozdiki, 152-mm D-20 and Akatsiya.

It turns out that it is desirable for the gun itself to no longer be a cannon, but a howitzer cannon with the possibility of using a variable propellant charge. To use it with maximum effect, the carrier tank, in turn, must have its own means of topographic location and fire adjustment, including a “nest” for copters “out of the box”. Thus, there is (almost) no point in simply screwing one of the relic samples of 152-mm tank guns to some kind of chassis: LP-83 or, for example, 2A83. No, we are talking about a completely new combat module with new weapons, an automatic loader (capable of gaining "stacks" of variable charges) and a lot of additional equipment.

Did military commander Gazdiev see something similar? Over the past year, Russian design bureaus and industry have shown more than once that they can quickly respond to the needs of the front, so it is quite possible.