THE TANK TURNS INTO A ROBOT

Red Star. January 17, 2004. Anatoli Dokuchayev

The seventh volume of the "Russia's Arms and Technologies. XXI Century" encyclopedia is in front of us. It is devoted to armored vehicles, which have been in service with the Land Forces since the second half of the XX century until now. This book has been prepared by authoritative experts and specialists of manufacturing enterprises and companies operating in the defense industry complex of Russia, by specialists of the Defense Ministry, by historians and by journalists of the Arms and Technologies publishing house. Vneshtorgbank sponsors the publication. The encyclopedia is published under general supervision of Sergei Ivanov, the Defense Ministry of Russia.

The Armored Vehicles volume of the encyclopedia is the first in Russia that gives a detailed description of armored vehicles and their uses. At the turn of the centuries, the tank and its armament change dramatically. The role and place of tanks in the armament system of the Land Forces are now being revised. This is mainly due to the emergence of new highly effective tools of war, improvement of existing anti-tank weapons, which are widely spread around the world, and, finally, due to relatively high tank losses in local conflicts and wars. Undoubtedly, substantial research is required to come to a certain conclusion. The more so that today, the armored troops are still forming the mainstay of general-purpose formations of the Land Forces both in Russia and abroad.

The authors of the new edition assert that a feature of major importance in tanks is their conception that will remain unchanged in the near future, although the technical appearance of the tank is likely to change dramatically. The tank's firepower combined with armor protection and mobility will give it radically new capabilities. Therefore, other weapons systems or their combinations can not replace the tank. Thanks to their reliable armor protection, tanks can be involved in operations on the forward line under fire of enemy weapons, destroy different targets by direct fire and proceed further using the results of its fire. Their main mission is to destroy enemy's tanks and other armored and unarmored targets and his personnel armed with anti-tank weapons.

According to experts, in the near future, the progress and the outcome of all land battles will depend on the effectiveness and skilful application of aviation, long-range intellectual weapons and tanks. Today, tanks form the mainstay of battle formations. The mass-produced tanks must combine military and economic effectiveness.

"While working on this book,- says Nikolai Spasski, Director General and Editor-in-Chief of the Arms and Technologies publishing house, - the editorial staff tried to present to the reader the different specimens of armored equipment and science-intensive special systems and units, as well as technological advances widely used to enhance firepower and protection of future and existing tanks". The editorial staff has fulfilled this task successfully.

At the beginning of the XXI century, armored vehicles are adapted to the changing environment. They turn to ground-based highly protected combat systems making part of a combined armament system operating in a continental theater, which posse firepower and which are capable of collecting, disseminating and using tactical information on the battlefield.

A few words about the book structure. The book presents the entire spectrum of Russian armored vehicles and their armament. The reader may familiarize himself with main battle tanks T-90 and T-90S, a family of tanks T-72, including their derivatives T-80 and T-64, the Black Eagle, a family of medium tanks T-62, T-55 and T-54, T-34, light tank PT-76, heavy tanks IS-3, T-10 and T-10M, an experimental missile tank (Article 282), missile tank TI-1, etc. A wide variety of infantry fighting vehicles, airborne landing vehicles, armored reconnaissance vehicles and armored personnel carriers are presented to the reader. All is all, information about more than 100 types of vehicles can be found in the book.

Note that the book sections describing performance and operational characteristics of armored fighting vehicles are the "jewel in the crown". We have an opportunity to be acquainted with the world's most advanced science-intensive technologies.

The book contains a detailed description of armored recovery vehicles, tractors, maintenance and repair vehicles, motorcycles, trainers and mobile robotic systems.

A separate section is devoted to vehicles, both military and non-military, derived from armored fighting vehicles, including the 1522mm self-propelled tracked howitzer 2S19 Msta, which is based on units and assemblies of tanks T-80 and T-72, through to the Iset-1 transport vehicle derived from the BMD-1 airborne landing vehicle and the Eiler programmable automated dynamic analysis system. All is all, information about 48 types of vehicles can be found in this section.

The seventh volume of the encyclopedia acquaints the reader with the capabilities of today's defense industry complex of Russia in developing, manufacturing and upgrading the entire spectrum of armored equipment. By the way, a separate section is devoted to research organizations, manufacturers of armored vehicles and their components and to maintenance and repair organizations.

Today, Russian specialists are in involved in carrying out conceptual studies of prospective armored vehicles and their armament. While developing a family of vehicles to serve in the XXI century, they are using dual technology and modular construction principle and non-traditional layout solutions. Low cost is a factor, which is not least important.

Alike the previous volumes, this one uses a Classifier of Items of Supply adopted by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which is compatible with the cataloging system used by NATO and some other countries.