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CHAPTER 3 – NATIONAL EVOLUTION TRENDS OF THE MBT
British CENTURION main battle tank Soviet T-62 main battle tank
Swedish Strv-103 S-Tank Israeli MERKAVA main battle tank
BRITISH MAIN BATTLE TANKS
After WW2. the British opted to rely on a mix heavy on firepower and protection, while keeping a reasonable minimum of mobility. They also abandoned at long last their policy of having both infantry tanks and cruiser tanks, which had done so much damage to tank development in Great Britain. They by then relied mainly on the 49-ton CENTURION, armed with an 83.8mm, 20-pounder gun. However, in order to counter the Soviet IS-3 STALIN heavy tank, armed with a 122mm gun, the British also developed a heavy tank of their own armed with a 120mm gun. The result of those studies was the 65-ton CONQUEROR, which entered service in 1956. However, the CONQUEROR did not stay in service for very long, contrary to the CENTURION, and was withdrawn from service in 1966. The successor of the CENTURION, entering service in 1963, was the 56-ton CHIEFTAIN, armed with a long and very accurate rifled 120mm gun. When introduced into service, the CHIEFTAIN was considered the most powerfully-armed and most heavily armored battle tank in the World. However, it was heavily criticized as being too heavy and having poor engine reliability and lackluster mobility. Still, 770 CHIEFTAIN tanks were built from 1966 on into the 70s. The CHIEFTAIN was then succeeded by the new CHALLENGER as the main tank of the British Army. This MBT, weighing up to 70 tons with additional armor modules in its latest variant, entered service in 1983, is armed with a long rifled 120mm gun and is heavily armored, continuing the British trend of emphasizing firepower and protection over mobility. The British Army later fielded the 75-ton CHALLENGER 2 and is presently working on the CHALLENGER 3 variant, with even better protection and with an improved fire control system.
AMERICAN MAIN BATTLE TANKS
The Americans ended WW2 with a huge number of M4 SHERMAN of various models still in service, thus were fairly slow in procuring more modern tanks in sizeable quantities. The first of the post-war models was the M-26 PERSHING, which actually barely had time to be rushed to Europe to participate in the final combats. The M26 was a 42-ton machine armed with a long 90mm gun. It then progressively evolved along the years, with the M47, M48 and M60 following it in production. The M60 finally introduced into service the 105mm gun, which was also arming numerous other models of European-produced tanks and became a NATO-standard tank gun.
M26 PERSHING M60A1
In 1980, a new main battle tank entered service with the U.S. Army: the M1 ABRAMS. Its initial version was armed with a 105mm rifled gun, which was soon replaced in the M1A1 variant by the same 120mm smoothbore gun which equips the German LEOPARD 2. The latest variant of the M1, the A2 SEP, tips the scale at a whopping 66.8 tons, thanks to added armor packages, making it one of the heaviest tanks in existence today. Its 1,500-horsepower turbine engine provides it with good mobility, but also proved to guzzle fuel at a heavy rate, forcing it to pay close attention to its accompanying supply lines, something that adds a certain vulnerability to it in combat operations. With over 10,000 M1 of all variants produced to date and still in production, the ABRAMS is the mainstay of the U.S. Army and has fought in numerous wars around the Middle East through the years, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also exported to a number of allied countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq and Australia. The United States is presently working on a program for a future main battle tank meant to succeed the M1 ABRAMS.
SOVIET MAIN BATTLE TANKS
Post 1945, the Soviets, who continued to rely heavily on their huge fleet of T-34 tanks, now armed with 85mm guns, vied to design their new tanks with a mix of qualities geared towards a well-protected, well-armed and highly mobile combat vehicle. However, ergonomics and crew comfort seemingly never entered that mix, with long-term negative consequences in the long run for the combat efficiency of the poor Soviet crewmen. The successor of the T-34, produced as early as 1948, was the 35-ton T-54, which was progressively improved into the T-55. Both the T-54 and the T-55 were armed with a long 100mm gun and had turtle-shaped turrets meant to deflect incoming projectiles. They had good firepower for their time and also had adequate protection but, ergonomically, were very hard and tiring on their crews, with the driver in particular having to constantly fight with a hard-to-operate manual transmission. The T-54/55 went on to be copied and produced in the thousands by other communist countries, including China, Poland and Czechoslovakia, while many other armies around the World also adopted it, particularly in the Middle East. Also produced in some quantity after WW2 was the IS-3 heavy tank, armed with a long 122mm gun and generally regarded as a formidable tank.
T-55 main battle tank IS-3 heavy tank
The next generation to enter service in 1973 was the T-72 main battle tank, produced in many variants progressively improved/modified along the years and still in production and service, with over 25,000 copies built and exported to many countries. The T-72, the related T-64, T-90 and the gas turbine-propelled T-80 variant are all armed with a 125mm smoothbore gun, which can also fire guided missiles through the tube in the more recent variants. The 125mm gun also uses an automatic loader system, which allowed the Russians to keep the crew to three men. Overall, the T-72 shows the typical even balance between firepower, mobility and protection followed by the Soviet and then the Russian Army. Its fire control system, while much more modern than that of its predecessors, is still lagging a bit behind those of the latest western tank designs, but its main gun packs a serious punch. While its overall protection level is decent and was further improved in many of its models by the addition of explosive reactive armor (ERA) bricks, the T-72 has shown its internal ammunition layout to be vulnerable to penetration, which then often makes the gun ammunition explode when hit by projectiles or shaped charge jets, resulting in the catastrophic destruction of the tank. This vulnerability has been demonstrated numerous times in past wars and is still a weakness, as shown by the continuing slaughter of Russian tanks falling victims to anti-tank missiles in the war in Ukraine, where over 300 Russian tanks have been destroyed, as of early April. As per other Russian tanks, the T-72 is a cramped vehicle for its crew, while the smaller than usual three-man crew results in less manpower available for the daily necessary maintenance tasks. Since its introduction and mass adoption into service in many armies, the Russians have developed a possible replacement for the T-72 family of MBTs, the T-14 ARMATA, which shows a radical new design philosophy and some very advanced features. The 48-ton T-14 is armed with a more powerful variant of the Russian 125mm tank gun which, like variants of the T-72, can fire a guided missile through the tube to a range of up to 5,000 meters. It is propelled by a 1,500-horsepower diesel engine, which provides it with excellent mobility. The protection is also excellent, with the steel armor supplemented by a system of ERA bricks around its outer surfaces. Where the T-14 ARMATA radically departs from conventional designs is the fact that its three crewmembers are assembled in an armored capsule inside the hull, in front of the turret, which is unmanned and remotely controlled. This is meant to ensure better crew survivability in combat but some has criticized the fact that this puts the tank commander in a position where he no longer can have an all-around direct visual surveillance capability of the battlefield. This means that if the sensors used by the commander and the gunner are knocked out, then the tank effectively becomes blind. Finally, while paraded in Moscow in 2015, the T-14 apparently still has not entered Russian service in any numbers, making many wonder if Russia will be able to afford buying it in significant quantities. At present, the T-14 has not seen combat, so is still mostly an unknown quantity to the West.
EUROPEAN MAIN BATTLE TANKS
Germany, the nation that was considered to have produced some of the best and most powerful tanks during WW2, did not resume work on new tanks until 1957, when it reached an agreement with France to jointly develop a standard European tank. This eventually resulted in the LEOPARD 1 main battle tank, which entered production for the German Army in 1963, with first deliveries in 1965. The LEOPARD 1 was armed with a 105mm rifled gun, was very agile and proved a big success worldwide, with a total of 4,500 tanks produced between 1963 and 1981, entering service with Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Greece, Turkey, Australia and Canada in progressively improved variants. In the process, its initial weight of 34.8 tons went up gradually to 42.4 tons for the final A4 variant. Germany also worked to develop in concert with the United States the MBT-70, a highly advanced tank design which included a 152mm gun-missile launcher. However, that program proved both too complex and costly and Germany withdrew from it in 1967 before deciding to launch alone its own new MBT program in 1970. The fruit of that program was the LEOPARD 2 tank, which was armed with a 120mm smoothbore gun and used the new British Chobham armor. The first of 1,800 LEOPARD 2 tanks entered service with the German Army in 1979, with Switzerland also acquiring 380 of the new tanks. The LEOPARD 2 is still in service today in many variants, including the newest A7 model.
LEOPARD 1C2 LEOPARD 2A5
Contrary to most other countries after WW2, which developed both medium and heavy tanks, France decided to concentrate of a single category of tank, the medium tank, supplemented by light tanks. The French were then heavily influenced by the lessons learned from their encounters with the two outstanding German tanks of WW2, namely the PANTHER and the TIGER. The first post-war French program was the AMX-50, which introduced the concept of the so-called ‘oscillating turret’, in which the turret was split in two parts horizontally, with the upper part mounted on trunnions fixed to the lower part. The main gun was fixed to the upper part and elevated and depressed with it. This allowed the use of an automatic loader system in the turret bustle. The first prototype of the AMX-50 was built in 1949 and was armed with a 120mm gun. Concurrently, the French developed the14.5-ton AMX-13 light tank, armed with a long 75mm gun and using the same kind of oscillating turret as the AMX-50, which allowed it to have a semi-automatic gun loading system. The AMX-13 went on to be adopted by many other armies, including Israel, Switzerland and India. Following the termination of the AMX-50 program in the mid-50s, France developed a lighter battle tank, the 36-ton AMX-30, armed with a 105mm main gun, which entered production in 1966. The successor of the AMX-30 and the current mainstay of the French Army tank fleet is the LECLERC main battle tank, which started being produced in 1991 and entered French service in 1992, with close to 800 in total built for the French Army and for the United Arab Emirates. The LECLERC is armed with a smoothbore 120mm gun similar to that of the LEOPARD 2 and of the M1A1 and which uses an autoloader system, which allows for a crew of three. With a mass turning around 57 tons, a diesel engine developing 1.500 horsepower and an advanced hydropneumatics suspension system, the LECLERC benefits from excellent mobility and has a powerful armament on par with other modern tanks. The armor is made of steel and composite plates, while later series include semi-reactive armor modules and some titanium armor. The LECLERC tanks operated by the UAE have fought in Yemen, where three of them were damaged but none destroyed. During a 2019 NATO exercise, the LECLERC outperformed both the American M1A2 ABRAMS and the German LEOPARD 2.
In 1956, Sweden started the development of a most unusual tank, the turretless Strv-103 S-Tank. The S-Tank relied on its suspension and driving system to point its fixed 105mm main gun. This resulted in a very low tank silhouette and a highly slopped frontal upper glacis, thus making it more difficult to hit and destroy. It also allowed the use of an automated loader system for the gun and a crew of only three men. Furthermore, the S-Tank propulsion was via the combination of a diesel engine and of a gas turbine, used when peak power was required. The powerpack was installed in the front section and contributed to the protection of the crew. However, one major drawback of such a turretless tank is that it cannot engage a target while on the move, unless it was directly ahead. This eventually convinced the Swedish Army to adopt a more conventional tank, namely the LEOPARD 2, to succeed the S-Tank. The first production model of the Strv-103 was delivered in 1967, with 300 S-Tanks eventually delivered by 1971.
ISRAELI MAIN BATTLE TANKS
During the first two decades of its existence, Israel had to rely on second-hand or captured tanks and on some M-60A1 main battle tanks provided by the United States. Finally, in 1970, the Israeli government decided to start its own tank program, with two prototypes of the new MERKAVA MBT completed in 1974. The first MERKAVAs were delivered to the Israeli Army in 1979. The MERKAVA was then used in combat for the first time during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, with an improved Mark 2 version following in 1983. The MERKAVA is a most unconventional main battle tank in many aspects. First, its diesel engine and transmission are located at the front, in order to provide extra protection to its crew. Second, the 120mm main gun ammunition is stored inside fire-proof containers in the rear section of the tank, next to a thick rear armored door, which allows easy ammunition replenishment and also provides an emergency escape route for the crew. While many articles mention the fact that the MERKAVA can carry a few infantrymen in its back section, that can be done only at the expense of removing most of the gun ammunition normally stored there, something that most tankers would intensely dislike to do in most circumstances. The front of the MERKAVA turret is highly profiled and sloped and has an unusually small frontal area for a 65-ton machine. The large size and heavy weight of the MERKAVA was made acceptable to the Israelis, who wanted to emphasize protection, by the terrain particular to their area of the Middle East, which is mostly bone-dry and has few significant rivers flowing through it. The 1,200-horsepower diesel engine of the MERKAVA 3 provides it with good mobility. However, its size and weight would constitute a handicap during urban combat within narrow streets. As of today, a MERKAVA 4 variant is in service with Israeli forces but no MERKAVAs have been exported outside of the country.
Many other countries around the World, notably around Asia, either produce or use main battle tanks, with many of those tanks being either copies or local adaptations of foreign designs (American, Russian, German). For the sake of simplicity and brevity, I will not attempt to cover those models in this essay.