When Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Ukraine’s military retained around 900 T-64s in storage and 786 T-64Bs in operational units. Ukraine’s arms industry also tinkered with schemes to convert T-64s into heavy troop carriers, and with a T-64E tank carrying a twin-barrel 23 mm autocannon to supplement the main gun, but none of these novelties entered production. Ukraine’s military also received a dozen similar but cheaper T-64BM2s built by the Kharkiv Design Bureau and retaining the older 700-hp engine. This was important considering the Bulat weighed 10 tons more than the original T-64. – Fast-rotating turret capable of 180-degree rotation in five seconds, compared to 16-24 seconds needed for Russia’s T-90 tank 850 horsepower 5TDFM diesel engine compared to the 700 horsepower 5TDF on all prior T-64s. This resulted in the new Kombat gun-launched laser-guided missile, which could penetrate 750 millimeters to a range of 3.1 miles, and the Nozh explosive reactive armor, which was designed to degrade even kinetic shells and survive longer when sustaining multiple hits. Though hampered by inefficiency and corruption, Ukraine’s still considerable arms industry worked at developing domestic upgrades for the T-64 fleet to replace Russian-built technologies. It decided to keep only its latest T-64B tanks in service, and it put T-72 and T-80s into storage for eventual sale abroad. Īfter the fall of the Soviet Union, Kyiv inherited 2,300 T-64s. You can read more about its Soviet origins and technical innovations in this companion piece. However, the costly design was never exported outside the Soviet Union, which instead incorporated its innovations into the cheaper T-72 tank. The secrecy-shrouded T-64 outmatched most NATO tanks In the 1960s and 70s. It was a Soviet super tank pioneering a variety of unprecedented technologies, including an autoloading 125mm main gun, a smaller three man-crew, sophisticated composite armor, and the capability to fire anti-tank missiles from its main gun. The T-64 tank was developed and built in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv during the 1960s.
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