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Russia to Upgrade 150 T-72B Tanks

Rubric: Russia, Future

A contract on modernization of 150 Russian tanks T-72B will be signed by the end of March 2016, said Aleksey Zharich, deputy director of Uralvagonzavod, a Russian tank producing company on Thursday, March 10.

The tanks will be upgraded up to the T-72B3 version with improved protection; generally, each vehicle would cost defense budget 78.9 mln roubles ($1.1 mln). It is planned to hand over to the military 32 vehicles to the amount of about 2.5 bln roubles ($34.7 mln), reports Lenta.Ru.

T-72 tanks

As was reported earlier, modernization cost of T-72B up to the T-72B3 version amounted to 52 mln roubles in 2013 prices, including 30 mln for complete overhaul. Major difference of the 2016 version from standard T-72B3 is the Relict-class active armor modules (instead of Contact-5 class used before) and new, more powerful diesel engines V-92S2F.

The serial modernization program of Soviet-made T-72B tanks combined with complete overhaul of these armor vehicles was adopted in Russia in 2010. First variants of that upgrade (in particular, T-72BA) had a trial nature, but since 2012 the T-72B3 version was recognized as a standard.

Basically, the upgrade of the T-72B3 version is related to a new fire control system, including the Belarusian-made Sosna-U gunner’s multichannel stabilized sight, and a new 125-mm gun 2A46M-5. Improvements in the autoloader allow using of the new Svinets-type extended projectiles.