A Russian T-62MV Obr. 2023.
Via social media
Desperate to replace the scores of tanks it loses every month in its wider war on Ukraine, and equally desperate to give the replacement tanks a fighting chance of surviving their first encounter with Ukrainian forces, Russia is pulling 60-year-old T-62 tanks out of long-term storage—and piling extra armor onto their steel hulls and turrets.
The problem, for the four-person crews of these aging tanks, is that the Kremlin apparently isn’t uprating the T-62s’ 620-horsepower engines. A full suite of add-on explosive reactive armor weighs as much as three tons. All that extra weight makes a sluggish T-62 even more sluggish.
A photo that circulated online on Sunday depicts a heavily-modified T-62MV—a 1980s upgrade of the 1960s tank that all but disappeared from Russian service after 2008—wearing the same explosive-reactive armor that protects the more modern T-90. The Kremlin began reactivating old T-62s last year as its losses of modern tanks exceeded 1,000 vehicles.
With the ERA plus a modern-ish 1PN96MT-02 gunner’s sight for its 100-millimeter main gun, this T-62 might be the most heavily upgraded T-62. Call it a T-62MV Obr. 2023.
The problem, of course, is that the T-62MV’s diesel engine produces just 620 horsepower. Considering that a T-62MV with three tons of ERA might weigh 45 tons or more, its power-to-weight ratio is less than 14 horsepower per ton. A T-90M produces 26 horsepower per ton; one of Ukraine’s American-made M-1A1s produces 22 horsepower per ton.
A well-fitted layer of explosive reactive armor, which explodes outward when struck in order to deflect an incoming blast, in essence doubles a tank’s protection from certain kinds of high-explosive rounds.
But in the case of the underpowered T-62MV Obr. 2023, that extra protection comes at the cost of mobility. The T-62 never was a sprightly tank. Now it’s even less nimble.
This matters. Both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces frequently deploy tanks for small-scale hit-and-run raids. Examples abound of small teams of tanks from both sides speeding up to enemy positions, firing a few rounds then speeding away as enemy missiles and artillery dial in.
Western-made tanks such as Ukraine’s M-1s and ex-German Leopard 2s have an advantage in these fast raids because they have robust transmissions with fast reverse speeds; they don’t have to spend tens of seconds turning around in order to escape a kill zone at high speed.
Most Soviet-style tanks by contrast have extremely slow reverse gears—and this can get these tanks’ crews killed in a raid where every second matters. A T-62 without three tons of ERA might reverse at five miles per hour, compared to an M-1’s 25-mile-per-hour top speed in reverse.
With extra ERA, a T-62MV Obr. 2023 will be even slower.
