India's many battle tanks are in certain cases superior or at par with many other by world standards. But the delay in launching the Arjun Main Battle Tank has been a matter of concern for the Indian Army.
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India's many battle tanks are in certain cases superior or at par with many other by world standards. But the delay in launching the Arjun Main Battle Tank has been a matter of concern for the Indian Army. Therefore the induction of the T-90S Bhishma Tanks acted as a boon for the Indian Army.
Here I am going to share a few facts about the Indian Army's main tank which are worth reading.
1. T-90S Bhishma is originally derived from Russia. Bhishma is a dubbed name just for T-90S. Russian Ministry Of Defence found that it could no longer afford to manufacture two war tanks in parallel. The one being T-80U which was of better quality and another being T-72B which was cheaper. Therefore they started giving small orders along with improvised features in hope for improving exportation to other countries. Later to showcase the sole battle tank of Russia, the ministry launched the T-90S, an amalgam of T-80U and T-72B with far superior fire control system.
2. Initially India never built the T-90S tanks. In 2001 around 310 T-90S tanks were imported from Russia. Out of which 120 were delivered completely, 90 in semi knocked down kits and 100 in complete knocked down kits.
3. The sole purpose of purchasing T-90S was that it had features almost similar to the T-72 which were then used by Indian Army there by simplifying training and maintenance.
4. Coming to the new features of T-90S, it has a new engine, jamming system, laser warning receivers. These Tanks can be used for more than 3 decades with little or no mid-life improvement. The tank has a Fire Control System which includes day and night sighting system mounted at the commanders’ station which allows the detection of a target between the ranges of 700m to 1100m during night.
5. The tank includes one 125mm 2A46M smoothbore gun which is stabilized and has a thermal covering. The easy part is that the gun tube can be effortlessly replaced without dismantling the turret inside.
6. It is built in with both passive and active defenses and the shielding is done by traditional armor plating with explosive reactive armour.
7. It has an improvised mobility factor. The tank has a deep snorkel that can carry 5m of water with tools which can be deployed in 20 minutes to avoid 5m deep water obstacles. The motorized transmission also includes two planetary gear boxes and two final drives which improves its mobility. It can also carry 1600L of fuel in the fuel tank, which is defiant of armor plating.
8. After a series of imports from Russia, finally India got the licence to manufacture the T-90S. Russia supplied documents for the local manufacture of the tank in India. A T-90S Bhishma tank was thus manufactured by the Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi, Tamil Nadu on January 7, 2004. Following which 10 others were manufactured by the end of 2009.
9. On November 2012, The Tribune reported that the Army had placed an order of around 250 T-90S tanks which has improved electronic devices.
10. Overall 700 tanks were purchased from Russia till date out of which some were partially or completely built in Russia. But the current contract for manufacture of 347 T-90S Bhishma, which are to be built in India under licence, will lead India to the largest force of modernized tanks in South-Asia.
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