[Skybird]

I repeatedly heard and read and saw in films that the Russians use modified verisons of the T-72 which are superior to those used by the Ukrainians. These improvements are related to turret armour, added AT-11 Refleks-capability (how much I hate these damn little things, its a potential cannon-kill capability over 5000m), electornics and sights, it for exmapel no logne rhas an iF light, but thermals added like T-72 modernized in Western use.

Steel Beasts allow comparison to a certain degree, their mathematical models are very good, but of course are fed with non-secret, publicly available data, they also freqeuntly finetune their data for ammo and armour, where new real world data becomes available.

I thought these two videos might be interesting for some. You see comparisons between the modern T-72B3' gunner's sights and station, and that of one of the older Russian T-72.





Aiming and getting the shot out is faster in M1 and Challenger-2, and the fastest and easiest in Leopard-2 from A5 version on. Its small differences in ergonomy, simplifying the workign steps of the procedure, but these add up. And when two tanks meet in duelling each other directly, these may make the difference.


P.S. I say again. I HATE Refleks. It should be forbidden. And I also now the AT-11 is not called Refleks anymore, but to me these barrel launched mini-missiles are damn "Refleks" all along. Can really ruin any tanks day. Western tanks ma ybe able to shoot at 5000m, what usually they do not, but with range growing precision goes down. The Refleks has a longer travel time and needs to be led, but as long as LOS is given, it does not loose precision. Giving the T-72 and T-80 shooting these a decisive range advance over Wetsenr tanks - if they manage to find and identify targets at that high range. Its also expensive ammunition and thus not in high supply.