Hey T72 Balkans on Fire is not that bad if...

[Castout]

I've just reinstalled T-72 game in my new rig. With a 2Gb memory the gameplay is as smooth as silk. Thus it becomes much more enjoyable. My only complaint is that the campaign is too short. There i said it now i'm a happy clam.

btw can a Su-100 kills a T-72 with a side hit?
And it sure to take a lots of hits with the AP to kill off just a T-55 at under 2000m or downright to about a 1000m.
weird isn't it? 125mm smoothbore gun of the T-72 doesn't seem to be very powerful. Which one is at fault? My perception or the game realism?

[Skybird]

Russian SABOT amo is lighter in weight than NATO ammo. but Russian tank guns and ammos have a higher muzzle velocities. however, the Russian SABOT projectile looses speed faster than western projectiles, giving it less range (for damaging effect on impact), and less precision. that's why at real long ranges they prefer to fire their laser-guided mini-missiles instead of SABOT, doing that via the gun tube (max 5000m ) However, at short ranges the 125 mm and standard ammunition is as lethal as the Rheinmetall 120mm and standard ammunition, for the kinetic energy is in the overkill range anyway. I would assume that a T72 should have not much problem to kill a T55 at 2000m. So it is probably the game, not your perception.

However, a lot depends on the SABOT type. the differences in penetration probability are huge, sometimes.

NATO tanks would prefer to evade fights at the long range of the T72//80, where the Russian tanks would fire at them (precisely!) while still being out of range for NATO ammunition, and evading the short range as well where even western top tanks would be highly vulnerable to the slightly inferior Russian SABOTs. NATO tanks therefore would try to keep the battle in the medium range, becasue that is where they would dominate against russian tanks.

ATGMs not taken into account, of course.

[Castout]

Are the Russians still using infrared for night fighting instead of thermal sight + light intensifier because if they do they can barely see anything at long ranges just like what happened to the Iraqis where the engagement i heard can be as far as 5 clicks. I'm aware of the significant velocity drop at long ranges and accuracy problem in the T-72s and they need to stop while firing.

Talk about tanks i heard there's some dissapointment over the Merkava performance in the last year's Lebanon war. Obviously I never thought that infantry anti tank weapons can be so effective against modern tanks. A wake up call for every other modern tank probably? Does anyone know ho many tanks do the Israeli actually lost in the war? Did it happen on a day or accumulated over the war period?

Nevermind abt the Merkava. I just googled it.

[Chock]

With regard to the original post, there are a lot of differences between various models of T-72, as you would expect with a model of tank that was in production for nearly twenty years, and is in fact still having upgrades offered for it by many companies around the world.

About T-72 variants:
Dependant on what model T-72 we are talking about, its resistance to hits and its gun accuracy can vary. Late 80s models combine a 1K13 laser designator sight (9K120 Svir) with the 9M119 round (3UBK14). This two-piece round is capable of hitting out to 5000 metres and has a 4.2 kg shaped charge warhead which can apparently penetrate 700mm of armor. Typically the T-72 variants equipped to fire this carry 6 rounds. The first variant to carry Svir was the T-72B, variants without this capability were designated T-72B1 although there is an export version which carries it, designated the T-72S (being a T-72M1M with Svir system fitted). This export variant is rare, as the Svir round is massively expensive, which is kind of at odds with the T-72's reasoning.

After around 1984, T-72s were often fitted with EDZ (elementy dinamcheskoi zashchity - loosely translating to: dynamic protection elements) reactive armor, later variants using a different charge and often described as 'responsive' rather than reactive armor, because they tended to fire off less charges in defence and thus cause less damage to the tank itself. From around 1990, the T-72 could also have Shtora-1 electro-optical jammers fitted (usually only actually mounted to the tank when deployed for combat). This is an IR emitter system which is tuned to confuse trackers for missiles such as the NATO TOW and other wire-guided systems. The first T-72 bearing this being designated the T-72BM, this model also having the same fire control system as the T-80. Shtora did not prove effective on Iraqi tanks in the Gulf War however (but of course, they may have just had a crappy export version).

Polish and Czeckoslovakian-manufactured T-72s (such as the T-72M) have no Soviet-made equivalent, being subject to many local variances. They are fitted with a TPD-K1 laser rangefinder similar to the one found on T-72A models. The export variant (common in the Gulf War) was the T-72G. These are (usually) vastly inferior to Russian T-72s produced for the Russian domestic market, being made with much thinner armor, basic side gill armor, and very often (but not always) no NBC protection, although side skirts were sometimes retro-fitted. These slightly improved ones usually being designated T-72Ms and T-72M1s. More recent Polish-made T-72M1s feature several significant improvements, under the banner of the Drawa systems. These include a wind sensor, a better ballistics computer, a better night vision system, laser radiation warning sensor and one of two variants of a locally developed reactive armor systems named ERAWA-1 and ERAWA-2, the latter using a double layer of reaction plates, although, being more modern, it is much thinner than the earlier variants.

Any T-72 with a K designation is a command variant, which has additional radio equipment, a collapsible antenna mast and an auxilliary generator fitted, which means it has less room for ammo, typically carrying six less main gun rounds and a bit less MG ammo. Versions with a K1 designation are for company commanders and carry similar equipment to the K-suffixed variant, apart from the collapsible antenna (making them indistinguishable from a standard variant externally), they also carry additional navigational equipment.

The main disadvantage with a T-72 above all is that it is really designed for swamping targets as opposed to striking accurately, which has been its downfall against many modern tanks when it has come up against them. On paper the T-72 can get off rounds quicker than an M-1 Abrams and many other modern tanks, but the reality is that since each round has to be aimed (and much of the correction required for aiming is not done by computer in the T-72) its actual effective rate of fire is much lower than it's speedy autoloader would seem to suggest.

The Main Gun:
The T-72 has a D-81TM 125mm gun with four main ammunition types, these being APFSDS, HEAT, HXP and Anti-personal flechette (this is rare). APFSDS initial shell types (i.e. available in the 1970s and therefore common in client states) include: the steel 3BM9 and the tungsten carbide 3BM15/3BM17. The 3BM15 can penetrate 150mm of steel armor with a 60 degree slope at 2km range. In the 1980s the 3BM32 became available, taking penetration up to 250mm, there are other types available, but the Russians are cagey about what their better ammo can do, although it seems likely that things will have got better as technology has moved on.
HEAT rounds include the shaped-charge 3BK18M, which can pop through 260mm of armor, the explosive charge in this being 3.15kg.
As previously stated, the 1K13 laser-equipped T-72S can fire the Svir guided anti-tank projectile, the projectile 'riding' the laser beam designator funnel, the nosecone of the projectile dropping away after the projectile leaves the barrel, to reveal the optical ports which detect the laser, small fins providing course corrections. These are devastatingly accurate weapons, with 700mm armor penetration, but they are not cheap, at almost 50 thousand dollars per round! Needless to say, typically a Russian T-72 tank will only carry between six and four of these rounds, and most foreign T-72s probably won't have them at all.

The T-72 in Balkans on Fire
Up against most of what you find in T-72, Balkans on Fire, the T-72 should kick ass, and it is not really fair to compare its lack of prowess against modern NATO tanks in conflicts such as the Gulf War to model its performance in the game. The T-72, like the many Russian tanks before it was built to a price in order to provide a large force at a reasonable cost.
This is a strategy which served the Soviets well in WW2 where the simple and cheap T-34 kicked the much higher-quality Nazi tank's ass, and so you can see why they would continue to favour the methodology. If you wanted to buy a T-72, it would cost you a little over a third of the price of an M-1 Abrams or a Challenger or similar! So it is fair to say that used in the right way (which given that in the game you often cannot do), a T-72 would be formidable against many things, but to compare it to modern NATO stuff is roughly equivalent to comparing a Spitfire to MiG-17.

Chock

[Castout]

Wow Chock hats off. That's a bloody complete information on T-72. Thx

About the game: It seems to be lacking opposition tanks with only Leo 1A4 being a worthy opponent.