Kharkov's Object 490 Buntar, Bokser and Object 477 "Molot" advanced tanks

Kat Tsun said:
Below, in order respective, is the Obj. 299 tank, missile/VLS tank destroyer,

Re the missile/VLS tank destroyer shown, any ideas regarding the missile types planned?

No, I don't even know if the VLS tank had a real name besides the generic "all purpose combat vehicle" ("unified fighting vehicle"? ["all role armored fighting vehicle chassis"?]), but if I had to guess it would be some sort of fiber optic missile like Spike.

Brief digresion: The Soviets were well ahead of the curve when it came to this sort of thinking than the USA was, probably because they had better knowledge of American advantages in microelectronics, cybernetics, and fiber optical communications than the Americans themselves, thanks to stuff like Line X before it was terminated and KGB rooting around in Israel. None of it was secret to them, or the people they quite literally stole the ideas from, but the practical implementations of such things were further away than anyone at the time could have ever imagined I suppose. Except for Spike. Spike is cool.

There was a bunch of stuff like robotic vanguards, NLOS anti tank missile fires, and robot wingman helicopters and tanks were all serious discussions present in Soviet thinking in the mid to late 1980s, not that any Soviet industry in the most brightest future would have been able to deliver it, but they dreamed big. There is a diagram on btvt or something that shows Obj 299s or something operating in concert with robotic tankettes as a reconnaissance vanguard and long range guided missiles from VLS carriers, along with helicopter gunships, covering the flanks.

It was pretty cool. The Soviet Army of the Year 2000 was gonna be nothing but spicy memes.

Then LKZ got closed down, Obj 299 was taken behind the shown and blown up with TNT, and the leftover scrap mailed in unmarked postage with engineers' return addresses on 'em and vaguely threatening letters composed of newspaper clippings accompanying the monthly gore package. IIRC think the engineers got absorbed by Kharkiv and 490A happened.

Since 299 had a short life and mostly produced what modern people might call "Youtube promotionals" (a couple mockups and a robot and automotive testbed) like FCS I suppose the missile itself was just some notional FOG that would be guided by the gunner in salvo launches to a kill zone. Maybe. Nothing else really makes sense for VLS.
 
I'm not sure if this has been answered but of these concepts which was considered "best" or most likely to enter production by the Soviets themselves?
 
I don't think the USSR lasted long enough to determine which was a favorite. The closest frontrunner would be Hammer/477, which produced about a dozen prototypes. Or two dozen. Maybe 30-40. Depends on how much you want to classify 477's incarnations as Hammers, Barriers, or whatever.

All of these tanks were very much experimental, and like the American CATTB, Thumper, and TTB, they wouldn't translate to production models, per se. The Americans had already abandoned the idea of "Abrams 2" that CATTB basically represented by 1992 and were chasing a 40-ton medium represented by TACOM's Future Combat System (singular, the plural one came later) which only appeared in automotive mockup form as HD-40T. There was an old Discovery Channel episode featuring Wombat in the 1990's. It died.

Kharkiv's major programs of the 80's go something like this: Object 490A and then 490 in all its flavors. This is like half a dozen tanks at least, the most famous/radical/stupid ones developed by Evgeny Morozov at Kharkiv, as I understand, and they explored radical stuff like two-man tanks, robotic turrets, and articulated hulls. This is all under the program of Perspective 2001 (which may just be a name of a shillpost by Evgeny to sell his dumb tank to the Armor Directorate), which analyzes futuristic tanks, "universal combat platforms" (Obj. 299), and robotic vanguards for the Soviet Army of the year 2000. If you think the Japanese and Americans were smitten with the idea of 5th generation computing, you ain't seen nothing yet. Then 490 is leaked along with an early codename to NATO, which is published in the Washington Post or New York Times, and everyone loses their minds, and the project is reshuffled as Ob. 477 "Hammer", but at that point it had about as much in common with the early 490s as T-64 does T-80 anyway. There's a clique of dudes at btvt who slob the knob of Morozov's stupid wagons but they are actually really shitty thanks to the power of hindsight (2-man crews simply do not work and given how hard it's been to make relatively simple tanks since the 1980s for some reason, are still as far away as they've ever been; conversely the assertion by the clique writers that "VLS tanks" are far away seems to be rather unfounded: Israel has been using them since the 1970s, essentially, and launch geometry didn't stop the Japanese from making VLS trucks in the form of Type 96 or the Sons of Abraham from using Jumpers), and Morozov seems to have been full of himself honestly. Kovalyuh also was a bit of a spicy boi but at least he had common sense.

OTOH there's a diary of the Boxer development program which talks about Boxer/Rebel/Hammer in detail by Yuri Apukhtin (The Last Charge of the Soviet Tank Engineers or something), it's basically his memoirs and he was one of the design team guys working on the 1980s Soviet supertanks at Kharkiv.

So here goes a rough timeline of the 477:

1980: Morozov also bad mouthed a lot of the more conventional 3-man tanks that were basically souped up T-64s and tried to sell 2-man tanks to the Soviet Army because he was the Most Soviet Tankineer and I guess he felt that if you got rid of the third man you could fit the gun in his seat instead. Considering the USA fell for the same nonsense 10 years later I suppose there is some merit until you discover how dumb 2-man tanks are.

1982: Nick Shomin, top dog and head honcho of the Kharkiv bureau pulls all the big men into a meeting and they talk about their tanks. Kovalyukh, who is Evgeny's subordinate, shows up with a bland but sensible 3-man design incorporating protected ammo storage, in-line crew seating, an external turret mount, and a high pressure 125mm cannon (possibly 2A66? the gun was notional and seems to have waffled between 125-130mm). It's the tank on post #13 in this thread. Morozov shows up with a dumb 2-man tank that has dual non-articulated body and a gun that can't shoot sideways because it's angled weirdly. Morozov laughs at Kovalyukh's primitive boring tank and claims his tank is much cooler, radical, and therefore better. Shomin says that Morozov might be right but he sides with Big K instead and Morozov gets mad and sulks for a year in his room working on his much dumber tank instead.

1983: Big K and some other dudes work on a full scale model of the tank interior. Morozov sulks. Big K feels confident that the tank will work and everyone else agrees except Morozov. This is important because the gunner seats ahead of the commander, while the TC is inclined and seated behind him. The layout is similar to how the Abrams tank is, with the gunner's head tucked between the thighs of the TC, but if the loader's seat were a magazine and there was a massive fire bulkhead between the two compartments. It's pretty spicy and cool.

1984: Some dour men from the Armor-Automotive (Soviet TACOM) and Artillery Directorates show up with a gaggle of straight laced experts in tow and tell Kharkiv that they need a bigger cannon to crack the new super tanks of the future. They look at 490 with disapproval and shake their heads or mutter among themselves at everything Big K shows them. Big K gets pulled into Nick's office and K and some of his boys start hammering out (ha) the new caliber, and a big talk is whether they want a 140mm or 152mm gun. The papinions are strong but one the Armor Directorate's tanknology expert came prepared and wheels in a bunch of numbers and slides and convinces everyone 152mm is great since they'd been working on it in Russia for the past couple years anyway so there's no reason to get into a tizzy about calibers. Okay debate over.

1985: Someone set up Kharkiv the bomb. NATO finds out about Object 490, the "Rebel" codename, and that Ukraine is building a 152mm armed supertank. Everyone loses their minds. The codename is changed to "Hammer" and the Object code is changed to 477. The source of the leak was never identified, maybe it was an American spy satellite or maybe there was a CIA mole or something. Who knows, not important. Work continues.

1986: The Big Year. Gorbachev's purges are in motion and Kharkiv needs to be reorganized to cut out the chaff and leave the cream. Apukhtin becomes chief of optics development at Kharkiv, but some bureaucratic stuff happens, so Yuri is put into a position equal to his boss and so now the optics department is headed up by two guys who can't agree on anything. Hot memes ahead but this is the lesser of the issues facing the fire control system's troubled history with optronics. Small P (Polyakov) is made chief design lead after a month when the final Kharkiv bureau shuffling is done, probably because he isn't spicy like a habanero like Big K but spicy like a bell pepper.

Big K realizes that the combat imaging systems are going to need supreme, Herculean efforts to overcome because the need for long range thermal sights on the 477 is going to be hard given the improved performance of the 152mm cannon over the 2A46 and the T-80's shitty sight system just isn't enough. What he wants is something similar to EMES-15 but what he has to work with is at least a generation behind in performance, similar to Leopard 1 thermal imagers. He calls Krasnogorsk and asks them what they can do and they say that while it's not the best, they might have to install the T-80U's Agava-2 (the shitty FLIR) into the production wagons while waiting for the next generation of FLIRs.

Other problems creep in like the lack of an engine powerful enough to drive the tank. Kharkiv begins designing a super engine to power the 477 at the same time. Also the automatic loader doesn't want to function with the large ammunition due to vibration problems or something. The fact that it isn't a carousel but rather similar to Stryker Mobile Gun System or Expeditionary Tank is probably why it doesn't work in practice, even the United States took decades to work that problem out and it required a new magazine. Oh and the ammo drum that the Soviets used has two piece rounds instead of single piece 105mm, but it's still a dual magazine feeder design is the point I'm making. I don't have a picture of the loader system and while I'm sure there are some on Google, I just don't know if they're accurate, but like Stryker MGS/Expeditionary it fed a small drum from a big drum (actually two big drums, one held projectiles the other held the propellant) and the small drum fed the gun with 8 shots. It was dumb.

At this point, the only things going to schedule are the cannon, which the Russians have promised to provide via General Livchenko of the Tank Directorate but they haven't called back, and the armor arrays which are pretty much finished. Everything else is broke. The engine doesn't want to start, the fire control system is perennially problematic, and the rest of industry isn't providing good enough components for the implementation of the FCS.

At the same time (actually, the first event), E.A. Morozov gets the "You're Fired!" speech from his boss. I don't know why he was fired specifically, maybe he was selling bad memes, said "Do you know who my father is," a few too many times, or maybe he said something snooty in a meeting about how Shomin was just a small brained shill for 3-man wagons. Maybe it's because he sulked for 5 years like a petulant child and kept flipping over figurative tables every time someone mentioned Kovalyukh's grossly superior tank instead of actually working to assist the bureau. Big K's hard work and devotion to tanknology are recognized by Nick and he is given his old boss's job. Nick is now his boss. Big K retires due to being sick with something (it turns out to be colon cancer). Morozov's firing and Big K's retirement are separated by about a year of possibly the hardest work done on the tank.

1987: Engine works. A lot of FCS problems are isolated to LNIRTI's bus controller is causing power surges or something and breaking all the fire control system components. Yuri is mad as hell and half suspects sabotage, but it's probably just the USSR being shit at making microelectronics. Small P works in the optics division with Yuri.

1988: Big K dies, 477 lives. Kharkiv never mated the Agava-2 sights to the 477, having said no to the offer from Krasnogorsk, and the automatic loader still doesn't work but they got it to work on a static test stand. The first austere prototype fires one round successfully and jams or something, but is extremely fast and comfortable to drive. It also likes to detrack itself and get stuck in the ground.

1989-1990: More vehicles are built, armor protection is refined, armor modules are lightened with addition of titanium alloys, and a 30mm cannon is added like on BMP-3 to yeet trucks and stuff on suggestion of the Tank Directorate I guess. A dozen or so prototypes of motley and varying configurations are built and the final vehicle still has problems. The FLIRs are still a no-show and Krasnogorsk doesn't know when they'll be able to make better ones than Agava-2. The automatic loader still jams a bunch but it shoots more than once in a row, usually, the vehicle's protection is now within parameters needed to defend against next generation guns, and the mobility and track vibration issues have been solved. Things are looking up.

1991: The Soviet Army orders a single battalion of 50 tanks to be put through the paces. Then the Soviet Union collapses.

1992: Somehow the 477 team still has a job! Ukraine needs new tanks, so Object 477 is renamed "Barrier" and then "Note" (like music, not sticky notes), and Kharkiv scraps the Soviet era dual piece cannon. Instead they move to a somewhat simpler if still conceptually complex single piece large caliber (about as big as the American 140mm ATACS) 152mm cannon, with a 6 or 8-round feeder drum fed by two 12-round replenishers. Mostly this is because the 2A73 is Russian and General Livchenko can't promise shit to Kharkiv. In addition the Kharkiv Bureau is ordered to produce a new TIS system to fill in the literal empty voids where they're supposed to go.

The 90's: 477 fades away slowly. A full up prototype of Note is built during the trainwreck that is the 90's, and morphs into about a dozen prototypes, that do odd ball tests and demos until the 2000s. The last time Object 477 fired her gun was the early 2000s when she did a live fire to test the Kharkiv KB-A 152mm. A lot of her technology found its way into the piecemeal T-84 Oplots, Yataghans, and Oplot-BM that were supposed to fuel the development of 477 into a production vehicle but never happened really, due to Kharkiv never delivering on products, the Germans eating the export market, and the 1990's generally decaying the tax base and funding of the Malyshev Factory and associated complexes.

Russia waffled on helping the Ukrainians with this and eventually didn't bother since they were busy producing T-90 for their domestic use beginning in the early 1990s. There were studies for improving Warsaw Pact T-72s (or maybe just Russian/Soviet ones) as the "new" T-72BU in the 1980s for the 2000s by slapping a T-80U turret on T-72BM, and this turned into T-90. Eventually. T-90 found export homes in India (instead of good tanks, like T-84 and possibly Obj 477) and 477 herself (himself?) may find a home in Chinese tank factories in the future. The Russians at the same time as Musical Note and Barrier were also working on a super tank, the Object 195, which was derived from some failed competitor to 477 shat out by UVZ, and never worked properly for the same reasons 477 never had a functional FLIR. The stopgap solution was to acquire Catherine-FCs from France in the early 1990s for the T-90, and try to sit on it, but I think there may have been issues with basically everything in 195 since it died.

The backup was Object 148, a more austere version that would use a 125mm high pressure gun (the 2A82 trialed in the 80s) and a less radical fire control system derived from T-80U or T-90 or something. Western armies know 148 as the T-14.

andrei_bt or anyone can feel free to correct my mistakes or misinterpretations, since I don't speak Russian. Maybe there's a translated copy of the memoirs or something done right instead of by machine.
 
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It's all nice and dandy but... "Shitty" Agava-2? Which is somehow generation behind EMES-15(which is in fact of same generation with some edge on Agava-2 side with 128 elements linear matrix against 120 linear of EMES-15 and x18 zoom agains x12 in addition to screen dublication for commander)? And on par with Leo 1 thermals(which? EMES-18 which itself is descendant of EMES-15 and not previous gen? Or EMES-12 which has no thermal whatsoever?)? And T-90 being T-72BM(what is that even? T-72B obr. 89?) with T-80U turret?..

Too much mess in otherwise good post.
 
It's all nice and dandy but... "Shitty" Agava-2? Which is somehow generation behind EMES-15(which is in fact of same generation with some edge on Agava-2 side with 128 elements linear matrix against 120 linear of EMES-15 and x18 zoom agains x12 in addition to screen dublication for commander)? And on par with Leo 1 thermals(which? EMES-18 which itself is descendant of EMES-15 and not previous gen? Or EMES-12 which has no thermal whatsoever?)?

That is quite good and compares well with AN/VSG-2, assuming the fields of view are similar. What was the issue with using it in 477 that caused Kharkiv to reject it though? Were they just wanting something that could ID a tank out to 3 kilometers? Granted, no tank sight in the world could do that at the time, but I guess it would be nice to have.

And T-90 being T-72BM(what is that even? T-72B obr. 89?) with T-80U turret?..

T-72BU is what T-90 used to be called before it was renamed T-90. Although I'm probably misremembering if it used the actual T-80U turret, or just the fire control system and FLIR from T-80U. This would be especially the case with the T-90A, which has a brand new welded turret, but I think the earliest T-90s/T-72BU had some surplus T-80U turrets that the Russians just had in a warehouse or something.

e: On BTTR it's mentioned that T-90 used T-72B turrets with the 1A45 FCS from the T-80U, so that's probably where that came from.
 
https://defensepoliticsasia.com/progress-in-russian-thermal-imaging/ has some great context.

First generation Abrams (1980) thermal viewer could achieve 10x magnification, meaning it could resolve targets clear enough to identify them out to 2+km. This was in the 1980’s. Soviet thermal imaging system however had an abysmally short range. The Agava-2 from the same era has a magnification of up to 4.5x optically. Although the Agava-2 could also do an 18x with an electronically interlaced magnification, the object would be an unidentifiable blob on the screen. The main difference between US and Russia is the US’ ability to create sensors with the resolution to resolve targets at a further distance than contemporary Russian inherited Soviet imagers could.

EMES-15 has 4x (wide FOV) and 12x (narrow FOV) optical magnification
 
And in meantime in favorable conditions it was able for target recognition at around 2.5km. Bigger limiting factor was screen itself, not imager.
Anyways I "like" that context especially for last phrase about sensors themselves, while Agava-2 had better one that both M1 and Leo 2 had (which used kinda same detector), even if better only marginally.
 
Agava-2 didn't enter Russian Army service with T-80UK until 1992, apparently.

It may have been "available" in 1987 in some esoteric form, but I suppose the tremendous difficulty Russian semiconductor operators have in not sneezing or coughing on the wafers had something to do with it being pushed back for about 5 years. So I guess the Krasnogorsk discussion that Kharkiv and the Muscovites had was speaking about things in the future or something. The Soviet contemporary of DR-617/636 was Agava-1, i.e. what was available in 1981 when AN/VSG-2 entered service, which was some awful 50-line vertical scanning array which was obviously inferior in every regard and so bad even the technologically shaken Soviets were unwilling to go for it.

By 1992 the USA was prototyping 2nd Generation FLIR for the M1A2. I don't think having a FLIR equivalent to a 12 year old thermal sight, when your enemy is on the cusp of a major technological coup, qualifies as anything less than "shitty", TBH. But Russian/Soviet microelectronics manufacturing being shitty is basically a given. For some reason they were never able to master semiconductor production and I don't know why this occurred except that their clean rooms' HVACs were faulty and blew dust around instead of sucked it up, or something like that, or maybe their manufacturing techniques were just really bad (perhaps they were trying to make them like mirrors or something), but either way the FLIR problem caught them with their pants down and they never seemed to have recovered.

Russia can apparently only make FLIRs comparable to old French FLIRs like Catherine, i.e. single-band MWIR, while the US Army has already graduated to dual-band LWIR/MWIR FLIRs that cost more than a Russian tank.
 
There's a good account from the US perspective here: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498658.pdf

The Soviet industry kept reasonably up as far as SSI, MSI, LSI chips (up to 1970s) though quality control was often poor. The introduction of VLSI (very large scale integration) exponentially increased the complexity of manufacture and started a relentless cycle of shrinking that demanded constant development of new processes and tooling. Quality control became all-important. The 'design bureaus' and scientific research establishments often had the intellectual and technical ability to design and even build devices in small prototype batches but mass production required turning the design over to the big state factories, with their often poorly-skilled labour force and old production processes and tooling. Western companies benefitted from vast consumer demand to scale up production of microelectronics and amortise the tremendous costs of innovating in production methods and tooling.
 
Agava-2 didn't enter Russian Army service with T-80UK until 1992, apparently.
Never argued with that. Only with it being "shitty" compared to EMES-15 and comparable to some mythical Leo 1 thermals.
As for current russian tech - you're wrong, but doubt that you will be interested in details.
 
152 mm version of 490A
image011.jpg


Soviet 80s Future tank projects. Object “ 490” , Object “490A” (Rebel), “490A” with 152 mm gun (Boxer).

 
There was a bunch of stuff like robotic vanguards, NLOS anti tank missile fires, and robot wingman helicopters and tanks were all serious discussions present in Soviet thinking in the mid to late 1980s, not that any Soviet industry in the most brightest future would have been able to deliver it, but they dreamed big. There is a diagram on btvt or something that shows Obj 299s or something operating in concert with robotic tankettes as a reconnaissance vanguard and long range guided missiles from VLS carriers, along with helicopter gunships, covering the flanks.

Is there anything more on these long range VLS carriers?
 
LVisingr said:
Avimimus said:
It'd also be interesting to find out the tonnage of 'Rebel'.


According to the quotes by author of the article at Russian forums: Buntar under 60 tons, Boxer/Molot 52-55 tons, Nota 61-62 tons.
is there open crew escape space out the rear of the tank next the engine compartment vice img015 above?

The initiall Boxer design is here - http://btvt.info/7english/490A_eng.htm
it is very different from 477, but still had the same designation (Boxer)
It's weight was 44,5 tonns, same as serial produced T-80UD.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Via Mr King over at TankNet, an apparent model of the Object 299:


EDIT: Though another commentator is claiming that it is actually a model of the RDF/LT with the 75mm HV autocannon.

It is 299. Most certainly it isn't RDF/LT. The RDF/LT had a mere five roadwheels, the overhang of the gun was greater, and the engine was in the back rather than the front, as is the case here. There was also an infantry fighting vehicle, an armored breaching vehicle, and VLS missile carrier planned to accompany the tank. LKZ managed to build a couple mobility prototypes of the new chassis (APC model) and a robotic(?) mine clearing vehicle, but it never progressed further than that. There are pictures/concept images of the 152mm ammunition and cannon that was planned for the 299, too, but who knows if it was actually ever seen in the steel.

The interior layout always struck me as odd, though. Surely the crew should be behind the gun, with as much mass of the tank in front, but I suppose that would make optronics somewhat complex (since 299 is a pre-fiber optic tank design) and direct vision mostly impossible without a complicated series of mirrors.

Below, in order respective, is the Obj. 299 tank, missile/VLS tank destroyer, some sort of engineering vehicle, and a combat mobility vehicle, all based on the 299 as I understand. There is some stuff on Gur Khan's blog which has the same pictures in colour too, where he says that the last vehicle is actually called Object 232, but was related to 299 in some manner. He also has pictures, again in colour, of concepts of the 299 IFV (it carried 8 dismounts, 2 crew, and had a robotic turret with some large caliber [57mm?] automatic cannon) and a few other vehicles, but I don't know if it would be polite to post the images here without his permission.


Quite a nice design IMO. But that long overhanging front-end looks like it would spend more time potato farming than crossing undulating ground. What time-frame are we looking at here for this design please?

Regards
Pioneer
 
@Andrei_bt

I'm interested to the munitions planned for the Ob-490 namely the "Variable form charges". I am curious on how it achieved, does the casing made out of some flexible material ?

As we know typical tank gun charges are placed on a rigid cylindrical casing made of nitrocelluose or even metal casing. But variable for charge, that looks radical.
 
KMDB early 70-s
More like or mid-70s? Text on this page also mentions obj.476, and all that perfectly fits description from Chapter 26 of Morozov diaries from December of 1975:
10.12.75. After a long search, a turretless version of the tank which I've proposed to Listrovy for study, confirmed the possibility of creating such a model, but at the same time revealed many difficulties and questionable places. In general, such an option could hardly immediately win recognition, much less understanding of our Customer.
My further searches for an option of turretless tank have led me to try to place the ammunition load in front of the gun with the next shot on an automatic cart with a rammer on the floor of the hull to the cannon breech. This layout of the vehicle immediately does put everything in its place.
We got good solutions to other questions that seemed unsolvable. Listrovoy and Omelyanovich showed the first design study of this layout. Indeed, everything turned out well, simple, harmonious and beautiful. On the basis of my proposals developed earlier, you can create a good enough vehicle with a gap and a big leap from all existing vehicles, and even those in development, both our and foreign, while keeping the old dimensions and weight not exceeding 38 tons.
Protection of UFP 700 mm, inclined at 75 degrees. The angle of elevation of the gun is 30 degrees, the volume of fuel inside the hull is 1000 liters. A shortened gun which protrudes forward of the hull by 1 meter, 2-man crew, and full all-round visibility, (capable of) driving backwards, short control rods to the engine and transmission. Provides the possibility of manual loading of the gun, good protection of the vehicle from damage from above, safe storage of fuel inside the vehicle, small internal volume - about 11 m3. Engine 6TDM and HST. Protection of viewing devices from contamination.
Interchangeability of crew members for driving and firing from vehicle. Simple and very rigid body. Simplicity of the layout, design and all devices of the machine, along with low cost. The best protection of the crew from mines, radiation, etc. due to the shielding of the fighting compartment with fuel and ammunition. Non-rigid accommodation of crew members. There is a potential to reduce the total weight of the vehicle without decreasing its other characteristics. This all gives a big leap.
Reducing crew personnel. The regiment (about 100 vehicles) had 300 people, now 200 people will be needed.
The positioning of net armor on the (front) edge of the hull will increase protection against a shaped charge warheads and, in total, it will allow to abandon the very complex anti-CE add-on armor kits "Dikobraz", "Shater", etc. Against armor-piercing projectile, UFP protection of 700 mm is enough for all calibers and types of ammunition.
It is necessary to boost the development of this layout in every possible way and get ahead of the obj. "476", since after it, the plant will not be able to afford second prototype.
 
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NATO would have been having kittens if that had made it to production!
 
Soviet make nearly a dozen exp-tanks During1970 to1991,then Russia continued.
from Soviet molot to Russia Armada. here is a draw of all these really were tanks 8e5c7dbf9d94204.jpg
other like Obj490. only made wooden models or just blueprints.
 
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Grey Havoc said:
Via Mr King over at TankNet, an apparent model of the Object 299:


EDIT: Though another commentator is claiming that it is actually a model of the RDF/LT with the 75mm HV autocannon.

It is 299. Most certainly it isn't RDF/LT. The RDF/LT had a mere five roadwheels, the overhang of the gun was greater, and the engine was in the back rather than the front, as is the case here. There was also an infantry fighting vehicle, an armored breaching vehicle, and VLS missile carrier planned to accompany the tank. LKZ managed to build a couple mobility prototypes of the new chassis (APC model) and a robotic(?) mine clearing vehicle, but it never progressed further than that. There are pictures/concept images of the 152mm ammunition and cannon that was planned for the 299, too, but who knows if it was actually ever seen in the steel.

The interior layout always struck me as odd, though. Surely the crew should be behind the gun, with as much mass of the tank in front, but I suppose that would make optronics somewhat complex (since 299 is a pre-fiber optic tank design) and direct vision mostly impossible without a complicated series of mirrors.

Below, in order respective, is the Obj. 299 tank, missile/VLS tank destroyer, some sort of engineering vehicle, and a combat mobility vehicle, all based on the 299 as I understand. There is some stuff on Gur Khan's blog which has the same pictures in colour too, where he says that the last vehicle is actually called Object 232, but was related to 299 in some manner. He also has pictures, again in colour, of concepts of the 299 IFV (it carried 8 dismounts, 2 crew, and had a robotic turret with some large caliber [57mm?] automatic cannon) and a few other vehicles, but I don't know if it would be polite to post the images here without his permission.
You wouldn't happen to have more info on the object 299 would you? It frankly looks like the most sensible tank out of the ones here (although the the 490B is my favorite).
 
Thank you for these designs. I'm reminded that two-crew models run into 'human' issues when doing anything but fight. They need a support team to help reload, help guard while the crew de-gunge tracks and do all the other 'needful' extras. Also, 'workload', with the unfortunate non-driver having to do 'C&C', kick the balky auto-loader, target etc etc.

Unless, like MIG pilots, they were commanded like chess-pieces by 'C&C': Given the inherent failings of Russian army's systems, a recipe for disaster...
 
Any more images of this three-person-crew Object 490 variant?

View attachment 706820

All versions of 490 had three-man crews, except E.A. Morozov's design, which was rejected out of hand by KMDB director N.A. Shomin very early on, so is somewhat irrelevant beyond historical footnotes.

Focus was on the -490A competitor by V.R. Kovalyukh for the entire 1977-2002 period of NST-80 development. Beyond Shomin's own common sense decision, the GABTU wasn't interested in two-man designs. What's pictured is just a late version of the Object 490 Poplar/Boxer/Rebel design, which Andrei_bt documents pretty extensively on his website.


The actual tank as built looked something like this:

1693170595469.jpeg

1693170604679.png

This is a 3D model of the Russo-Ukrainian Object 477A "Nota" which was the final stage of the 490/477-series (their name was changed due to intelligence leak by Western CIA, which led to Newsweek publishing an article about "the Kremlin's New Dreadnought", in the mid-1980's, and a panic at the GABTU when someone brought it into the office) developed by KMDB. It was finished around 2001 with something like six units produced, and in 2002 it completed a full series of state trials, and now lives in a shed somewhere in Ukraine:

1693170716693.jpeg

This is him now, or rather about a decade ago, maybe? Presumably he doesn't work either, else he would have seen combat by now on the frontlines with his friend Oplot-BM, who has the same (or derived from) armor package and similar fire control system on the dieselized T-80 chassis.

Thank you for these designs. I'm reminded that two-crew models run into 'human' issues when doing anything but fight. They need a support team to help reload, help guard while the crew de-gunge tracks and do all the other 'needful' extras. Also, 'workload', with the unfortunate non-driver having to do 'C&C', kick the balky auto-loader, target etc etc.

Unless, like MIG pilots, they were commanded like chess-pieces by 'C&C': Given the inherent failings of Russian army's systems, a recipe for disaster...

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. The Russian Army today is to the Red Army of 1985 what the Bundeswehr today is to the Bundeswehr of 1985, for one thing, and for another, no Soviet tank would have had a two-man crew.

The Armor Directorate was pretty adamant it didn't want to sacrifice the workload until advanced artificial intelligence systems arrived, which would be able to practically automate either driving or gunnery, appeared. This is a fantasy even today so it's not likely to be soon. The only people exploring two-man crews with any serious development was the "demographically challenged" NATO army which produced things like the HD-40T/WOMBAT Future Combat System (not to be confused with the Future Combat Systems).

We know this because the Red Army was considering teletank operations in the 2000's and figured a crew smaller than three-men would be incapable of combat, even when having identically redundant crew stations, while operating robotic combat vehicles (similar to Uran-9) as a vanguard. The result was that the robotic vanguard goes first, and the MBTs hide behind a hill or something, while the operators in the tanks controlling the robots attack and degrade enemy defensive positions, then the tanks, mechanized infantry, and artillery attack more conventionally.

Two man vehicles were rapidly dismissed by the Red Army as unworkable, unlike in the West, where I guess they persisted for at least a decade.
 
All versions of 490 had three-man crews, except E.A. Morozov's design, which was rejected out of hand by KMDB director N.A. Shomin very early on, so is somewhat irrelevant beyond historical footnotes.

As far as I can tell this is one of Morozov's early designs, with an earlier variant having a crew of two in the turret.

What's pictured is just a late version of the Object 490 Poplar/Boxer/Rebel design, which Andrei_bt documents pretty extensively on his website.

I am aware, I got the image from that website.

Andrei explicitly states on his website that this a version of the Object 490 Poplar with three crew. All the other images on his website of the Object 490 Poplar (distinct from the the Object 490A, or the later weird 4-tracked Object 490, Object 477 etc) show a variant with a two-man crew.

The first link you posted states this:
It is also worth mentioning that after creating a version of a tank with a crew of 2 man, a version of a tank with a 3-man crew was created, in which the driver was placed reclined.

The second link (where I originally got the image from) states this:

One of the missed opportunities was the design of the tank object “ 490” with a three men crew. The tank had a classic layout, ammunition and fuel was completely isolated from the crew. The automatic loader was located in a turret niche and had a simple scheme similar to many modern developments (“Leclerc” e.t.c.). The restrictions on the length of the rounds were not so tight as in other projects.

My query was only concerned that specific three-person-crew iteration of the Object 490 design, not Object 490A or it's development into Object 477.
 
E.A. Morozov's 3-man 490 was designed to try to appease N.A. Shomin and the GABTU, but the decision had already been made to pursue V.R. Kovalyukh's more conventional design by that time. Maybe the model still exists at KMDB locked away somewhere in a storage room?

Internally it probably wouldn't look much different, aside from having a turret that resembles more a Leopard 2 than a Mobile Gun System.
 

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