Quote:
Originally Posted by thatguy96
Never said they weren't or even that it wasn't prudent on the part of the Russians (and everyone else still churning out T-72 derivatives).
It was a comment on the need for Western defense watchers to, in my opinion, almost entirely fabricate these reports of super-gun tanks in order to have some flashy to talk about. Jane's for instance has touted out various rumors of this supposed 140mm-152mm gunned tank for some time now, despite the products generally being, as I noted, just standard gunned T-72 derivatives. They just upped the number when the T-90 came out and it wasn't one of these super-gun tanks. I believe the T-90 was at one point speculated to have been a reduced crew vehicle of some sort as well, following the US experiments of the late 1980s with tanks with full size guns in remote turrets.
This is pretty much the same story with Chinese tank related rumors. In 2003, Jane's suggested that the Chinese had an 152mm armed tank in the works. Since then, both the Type 98 and Type 99 have gone into series production and neither turned out to be armed with an 152mm gun.
These rumors have been circulating for over a decade, with the suggestion in the Russian case that the development had been going on for some 25-30 years in total. I'm just really skeptical any time these things are brought up for these reasons.
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Well, it is a bit of a risk. Should customers start to demand in something radically better than T-90 the russian will not have anything ready in the pipeline. To be sure, this isn't going to happen tomorrow but development of a new MBT isn't instantaneous either.
I suppose that they came to the conclusion that the T-90 market niche and lack of interest in high end russian designs will last long enough to enable them to cook something new at leisurely pace. Which isn't unreasonable but they are taking a calculated risk, even if a limited one.
One has also to wonder how far advanced T-95 development was, it is possible that it was caught in the collapse halfway and never fully finished. I would not want to be foreign customer to sign for a delivery contract only to find out I have to shell out more and more money and wait for years for it to be ironed out. T-90 at least is tried and true.