"T-94" Soviet Tank

[Graham1973]

I found this in a 1990s 'Yellow Peril (Japan)' techno-thriller called 'The War in 2020' (1991), the book ends with a note indicating that the writing of it was finished in April of 1990. It features this tank which I am guessing was based on the reports of these tanks in the west. Here are the details extracted from the novel.

T-94
Main Battle Tank
Nationality: Russian
Time period: 1990s (Story is set in 2020, the tank was introduced into service "...more than two decades earlier...")
Crew: 3 (Commander, Driver, Gunner), seated in a single compartment in the forward hull.
Description: "The basic T-94 design, introduced more than two decades earlier, consisted of a tank hull traditional in appearance, but instead of an old fashioned turret there was merely an elevated gun mount. The commander, gunner, and driver all sat in a compartment in the forward hull, scanning through optics and sensors packed into the gun mount. ...only the narrow main gun housing rose above the flat deck..."

Armament: No specifics provided, the main gun is described as 'oversized'.
Electronics: Electro-optical sensors, an "...automatic acquire-and-fire system..." and both sophisticated and basic communications systems.

I'm now wondering just what reached the Western Press in the 1980s.

 

[Hood]

I think the idea that the next Soviet tank would have an external mount was quite prevalent by 1990.
During the early-1980s the US DoD planners were thinking in terms of the NST (New Soviet Tank), a T-64 development with composite armour, which by 1983 was known as the FST (Future Soviet Tank) and which was soon identified as the T-80B. The term FST then was applied to future Soviet technology. FST-1 covered developments using T-72B and T-80U technology and FST-2 covered more revolutionary developments which were likely to be introduced during the 1993-95 timeframe, foremost of which was the 135mm (or even 152mm) externally-mounted gun with the tank's crew safely enclosed in the hull which had thick sloping armour and an array of advanced electronic defensive and fire-control equipment including a laser optics-blinding weapon. There is a claim that the M1A1s depleted uranium armour was a direct result of the analysis of the potential impact of the FST-2.
Articles on the FST-2 was published in April 1988 in Newsweek and the Daily Telegraph, although in this case it was wrongly labelled as the FST-1.

As we now know, and probably NATO intelligence was aware of, the USSR was indeed working on such a concept, Morozov designing the Object 477 during 1976 to 1984 and Uralvagonzavod beginning work on a similar tank during the late 1980s.
So the author of Yello Peril should surely have been quite aware of these trends and so his 1990s tank conforms to the descriptions of the FST-2.

A few of the FST concepts from the 1980s can be viewed in this thread: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/fst-series-of-tanks.3097/