The Ukranian BMT-72 - Insanity.

[MarkSheppard]

The russians have actually looked at the engine in front idea, and rejected it because of damage to the engine in case of a penetrating hit.

They wanted a tank which can drive from East Germany to France, despite being knocked out and having their crews killed 3-4 times; a lot of minor hits can kill a lot of the crew, without significantly impairing the tank's mobility or firepower; allowing it to be repaired and put back into action once more after hosing out the dead crew.

Replacing an entire engine compartment after it took a APDFS round and stopped it is a bit more complicated than slapping armor plate over a 105mm APDFS hole and repairing spall damage in the driver's compartment...

[PlasmaKrab]

OK, I get the point.
I was more familiar with the Israeli idea that a trained crew is the hardest thing to replace in a tank, meaning that the engine was there to buffer shots for the crew, not the other way around.
Given the Soviet doctrine of that time, the idea that the crew is more easily replaced than major systems makes some sense, except regarding troops morale... (and electronics-rich control systems that might not be very spall-proof, by the way)

Anyhow, isn't the whole point of these tank-IFV hybrids and the heavy APC BTR-T/BMP-T series about protecting the infantry and the crew?

[loktarr]

PlasmaKrab said:

Given the Soviet doctrine of that time, the idea that the crew is more easily replaced than major systems makes some sense, except regarding troops morale... (and electronics-rich control systems that might not be very spall-proof, by the way)

After all, it's a WW2 proven doctrine. T-34s were back in combat up to 10 times before being disabled. Cost was something like 10.700.000 deads, more than the total of Israel population.

[Marek_Tucan]

To be fair most of these deaths didn't come to crews of T-34's. They had a significantly better chances of survival than the cannon fodder.

[Suhiir]

MarkSheppard said:
They wanted a tank which can drive from East Germany to France, despite being knocked out and having their crews killed 3-4 times; a lot of minor hits can kill a lot of the crew, without significantly impairing the tank's mobility or firepower; allowing it to be repaired and put back into action once more after hosing out the dead crew.

OK, learned my new thing for the day.
While I knew the Soviets weren't as concerned with casulties as the NATO nations I didn't realize they went so far as actually planning for their equipment to survive the crew.

[badger45]

They weren't, it's kind of urban legend. Soviet construction schools, whether on tanks, aircraft or submarines (e.g.) were always concerned about the crew in a normal way, AFAIK there is no proof to say nonsense like "crew matters less than engine". Engine forward is not found on any major soviet tank as well as on any US, British, French or German tank.