New surprise when Russia announced to stop production of Armata tank
As soon as Russia announced to stop producing Armata tanks, the opportunity was given to T-90M Proryv-3 - the tank version equipped with Russian-developed thermal imaging sight.
According to Russian military sources, as early as 2015, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced plans to upgrade about 400 T-90A tanks produced since the early 2000s to new standards.
The reason is that this series of tanks uses old technology and has been in operation for 12-15 years so it needs to be modernized.
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| T-90M Proryv-3 tank. |
Commenting on this issue, Russian military expert Alexei Khlopotov said that the Russian Defense Ministry's upgrade of the T-90 tank is a sign that the T-14 Armata main battle tank cannot become the backbone of Russia's armored force in the short term.
Expert Alexei Khlopotov said that it is likely that within the next 10 years, the Russian army will still operate a large number of tanks of the T-72B3M and T-90M Proryv-3 duo.
The special thing about the T-90M Proryv-3 version is that this tank is equipped with a thermal imaging sight system developed by Russia.
Up to now, the production of optoelectronic equipment seems to be an inherent weakness of the Russian defense industry, and it is also related to the general level of the civil industry in general.
This has led to the fact that Russia still has to import many photovoltaic weapons from abroad, causing a significant impact on the military's combat readiness as well as exports.
Russian tanks sold to foreign customers are often equipped with Western (mainly French) electro-optical-thermal sights, while others opt for Belarusian products.
For example, the upgraded T-72 "White Eagle" tank that Russia sells to customers, for tanks exported to South America, it will use Thales's Catherine-XP 3rd generation thermal imaging camera, allowing observation in night conditions.
The "White Eagle" version planned for export to Laos will be equipped with a Sosna-U multi-channel thermal imaging sight system for the gunner and commander, produced by the Belarusian company Peleng. This is also the main equipment on Russian tanks today.
However, Russia does not want to depend too much on foreign partners, which will lead to many unwanted consequences and cause difficulties for future export contracts.
According to RIA, VOMZ Joint Stock Company has recently signed a contract to supply thermal imaging cameras for the sight of T-72B3M and T-80BVM tanks, replacing similar imported products. And soon this product will also be equipped on the upgraded version T-90M Proryv-3.
