The Armata tank is not ready again

The British edition of The Times noted that the deadlines for the readiness of the "future tank" - the T-14 "Armata" - are once again being transferred to the Russian Federation. Apparently, he will not be put in the troops until the beginning of 2021.
23.02.2018
RedDVL
Origin source
The expert of the Royal United Services Institute, Igor Sutyagin, sees the main reasons for the delay in the manufacture of the "wunderwall" product in the degradation of the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation and the ban on deliveries from the US and EU countries of electronics for combat vehicles. This was reported by The Times:

Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the Armata T-14 main battle tank had been scheduled to be operational by 2011. The date was pushed back to 2020, with plans for 2,300 vehicles but the latest forecasts refer to about 64 tanks ready for testing by January 2021. Mr Sutyagin said problems included software issues and sanctions imposed after of the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which have affected the importation of components from the US. “Sanctions and the state of the Russian defence industry means that all programmes are delayed,” he said. The T-14 tank caused red faces when one broke down during the rehearsal for a Red Square parade in 2015, one of its first public sightings.

It is difficult to say how much Mr. Sutyagin is a competent analyst, but the whole history of the "development" of the T-14 tank is a string of continuous shifts of certain terms. Therefore, one should not be surprised or outraged by another. If we follow the canonical history of this panther, then the development of a promising tank was started in the USSR in the 80s of the last century in several KBs (Nizhny Tagil, Kharkov, Leningrad). In 2010, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation announced that by 2015, the mass production of these machines will begin, and by 2020, 2,300 new tanks will be supplied to the troops. In 2011, the generals confirmed the deadline, specifying only that "if everything goes smoothly." But already in 2012, the timing of T-14's acceptance into service and its supply to the troops smoothly shifted to 2017. Now officially the military department of the Russian Federation adheres to the following "schedule":

- in 2018, preliminary tests of the Armata tank will be completed (the transfer of the original term is about 6-7 years).

- in 2019-2020 the main tests of the experimental batch of T-14 tanks should be completed (its number varies in different sources from 26 to 64 cars).

- Serial production of "Armata" tanks will not begin earlier than in 2020 (transfer of the initial term for 5 years, minimum). Actually, as we see, Mr. Sutyagin did not say anything critical in terms of chronology.

The issue of the cost of the tank, which aroused a few years ago stormy moans among the lovers of brutal fighting vehicles, has recently subsided, since there is no contract for them yet. Recall that in 2015, the general director of the manufacturer of the tank - the corporation "Uralvagonzavod", Oleg Sienko said that one copy will be pulled at 250 million rubles, or nearly 4 million dollars. That is, the initial armada of 2,300 tanks without taking into account the cost of shots, fuel, maintenance and storage cost at least $ 9.2 billion. And it was necessary to understand that since 2014 manufacturers have been fighting a lot of war veterans, in which the cost of one tank began at a total of 500 million rubles! And the price of 250 million rubles was previously calculated precisely for a mass-produced car. In any case, the figures were unpleasantly shocking and it turned out that one "Armata" costed about two and a half T-90 tanks, which by the way, stopped the Russian army at the end of the first decade of the XXI century (in the Russian army they are generally armed already three main battle tanks, which is as if excessive).

However, that there is a price! The tank "Armata" in fact is not yet. Until now, there are initial tests of ammunition for this tank (and since 2015), and when they end, and where they will be produced, is still unknown. The same veil of darkness and over the gun of the tank - while testing its prototypes. Therefore, the current plans of the department of Tuvan Napoleon Sergei Shoigu for the next two years look much more modest:

In 2018-2019, it is also planned to order 30 T-90M tanks, of which 10 will be new-built vehicles, and another 20 will be tanks from the Russian Army fleet that will be upgraded to the T-90M level. In addition, the documentation has information on the purchase of 31 tanks upgraded to the level of the T-80BVM tank in 2018 and the same number in 2019. These tanks, unlike the T-90s not equipped with diesel but gas turbine engines, will also be taken from the army (they are not commercially produced since the early 1990s). Thus, it is planned to purchase 92 tanks, which will be enough for equipping three linear tank battalions, and BMPT companies to ensure their experienced military operation.

To understand correctly: the army will buy only 10 new T-90M tanks, and the remaining 82 cars are simply upgraded. In general, the militaristic madness of the Resource Federation is smoothly counterbalanced by its real financial and technical capabilities. Thanks to which two ambitious state programs for arms purchases (SPO 2008-2015 and GPO 2011-2020) have been successfully ripped off, and the third GPU with a budget of more than 20 trillion rubles and up to 2027 has been placed in the garbage can. For the most part, all the so-called. "Putin's militarization and industrialization" was reduced to the purchase of imported machine tools for defense plants and the production of late Soviet arms articles. The maximum, completion of what was started under Mikhail Gorbachev (nuclear submarine project 955 Borey).

And if we talk seriously: in a country with an average salary of 400 euros, planning multibillion-dollar spending on idiotic tanks is a formidable fiasco, which is difficult to explain even by the patriotism of the brain. Cure of which, by the way, is now being employees of Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil. Their company with huge debts merged last year in the state corporation "Rostekh", and on the joys of the hard workers cut wages and increased production rates. Most likely, on the tank "Putingrad" after this, you can safely put a fat cross.

Officials

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