ugust 24, 2026:
For over half a century, T72 tanks have formed the backbone of the Russian tank force. Earlier this year, a new version, the T-72B3A, entered service and has recently appeared in Ukraine. The T-72B3A builds on the T-72B3 upgrade package developed in the early 2010s, integrating modern fire controls, including thermal sights, as well as Relikt explosive reactive armor and a new 2A46M-5 smoothbore gun. The new tank has some lifesaving improvements, including an upgraded Arena-M APC/active protection system. Arena-M has been around for at least two years but has limitations in a drone environment. Arena-M uses a Doppler radar, and unless the Ukrainians are determined to get a particular tank with drones, it will require 20 or more drones to do so.
Although Russia gives a lot of publicity to its more modern tank designs, such as the T-14, T-90, and T-80BV, most of the new tanks the Russian army has received since 2000 have been refurbished and significantly upgraded T-72B3s. Before the Ukraine War, the Russian Army had about 3,000 tanks in service, and 65 percent of them were T-72B3s, which you hear little about. The new breakthrough design, the T-14, has fewer than 100 in service, and production cuts, which began in 2015, were recently announced, with only 10-20 units built per year. The T-14 is mostly about publicity. The T-90 has been produced in large quantities, but not for Russia. The T-90 was a 1980s project intended to incorporate T-80 features into numerous T-72 upgrades. Originally designated the T-72BU, Russia renamed it the T-90 when it began production in 1993. That helped make the tank an export success, with most (84 percent) of those produced exported. In fact, India and Algeria each have more T-90s in service than Russia. Worse, Russia has quietly put over a third of its newly built 550 T-90s into reserve. While the T-90 was loudly proclaimed the next big thing, the Russian army preferred the refurbished T-72B3. These proved more reliable, though that got little publicity. While all the upgrades (new engine, gun, fire control, and protection) made it nearly as expensive as the T-90, troops preferred it, and older officers quietly agreed it was a better tank than the new T-90/T-72BUs.
This apparently has something to do with the T-72BU's design (trying to merge T-80 elements into the T-72 design) and the decline in manufacturing quality in the Russian defense industry after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Since the T-72B3 was introduced in 2013, it has been produced in far greater numbers than any other tank, and that continues. Especially telling was how T-90s began to be taken out of service (and put in reserve) as soon as enough T-72B3s became available. At the same time, the most popular Russian tank for export customers is the T-72B (a B3 with fewer upgrades), and these cost nearly two million each but can be delivered within a few months of signing the contract. The T-72B3 has been so popular among Russian troops that the government is giving it greater publicity in state-controlled mass media.
Russia still has over 3,000 late-model T-72s in reserve (storage) because these are so frequently reconditioned and upgraded for Russian use and export customers. It appears that all of these will eventually be returned to service once refurbished and upgraded. Production of the T-72 continues, but mainly under different names and often outside Russia.
The T-72B3 turned out to be nearly as expensive as the T-90, but early tests showed it was worth the cost. This was evident in early 2015, when the first T-72B3 tanks entered service in the Russian Army. While the T-72B is a 1980s model with modern fire control and additional armor, the T-72B3 is a more recent upgrade with more advanced, expensive equipment. This includes an improved fire control system and 21st-century communications equipment. The T-72B3 costs nearly twice as much as the T-72 B and is part of Russia's effort to modernize its armed forces. Most T-72s in service are pre-1991 models that are very inferior to the most modern American, European, and Chinese tanks.
The T-72 is a Soviet second-generation tank that entered production in 1971. At least 25,000 T-72 tanks were built, making it one of the most widely produced post–World War II tanks, second only to the T-54/55 family. The T-72 was widely exported and saw service in 40 countries and in numerous conflicts. Improved variants are still being built for export customers. The T-72 was the most common tank used by the Warsaw Pact from the 1970s to the Soviet Union's collapse. It was also exported to other countries, such as Finland, India, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the former Yugoslavia, and was copied elsewhere and built both with and without licenses.
Poland and Czechoslovakia produced licensed versions of the T-72 for other East European countries. These tanks had better, more consistent manufacturing quality but had inferior armor compared to Russian-made models, lacking the resin-embedded ceramic layer inside the turret front and the glacis armor. The Polish-made T-72G tanks also had thinner armor compared to the Soviet Army standard of 410 mm for the turret. Before 1990, Soviet-made T-72 export versions were similarly downgraded for non-Warsaw Pact customers, mostly the Arab countries. Many parts and tools are not interchangeable among the Russian, Polish, and Czechoslovakian versions, causing logistical problems.
The T-72 shares many design features with earlier Soviet tanks. Some of these are viewed as deficiencies in a direct comparison with NATO tanks, but most reflect how these tanks were envisioned for employment, based on the Soviets' practical experiences in World War II. The T-72 is extremely light at 41 tons and much smaller than its Western counterparts. Some roads and bridges in former Warsaw Pact countries were designed so T-72s could use them easily, while NATO tanks could not pass at all or could do so only at very low speed. Yet this lighter weight is a feature for many less affluent users, such as those in Nicaragua.
The basic T-72 was relatively underpowered, with a 780-hp supercharged version of the 500-hp V-12 diesel engine block originally designed for the World War II-era T-34. The 0.58 m, 23-inch-wide tracks run on large-diameter road wheels, which make the T-72 and its descendants easy to identify. The T-64/80 family has relatively small road wheels. One reason the T-72B3 is so popular is its very reliable, capable 1,130-hp engine, which old-timers have always wished the original T-72 had.
The T-72 has a comprehensive NBC nuclear, biological, and chemical protection system. The inside of both the hull and the turret is lined with a synthetic fabric made of a boron compound, meant to reduce penetrating radiation from neutron-bomb explosions. The crew receives clean air through an extensive air-filtration system. A slight overpressure prevents contamination from entering through bearings and joints. An autoloader for the main gun allows more efficient forced smoke removal than traditional manually loaded tank guns, so NBC isolation of the fighting compartment can, in theory, be maintained indefinitely. Exported T-72s lack the anti-radiation lining, and most users don’t use or maintain the NBC protection system.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. and German analysts examined Soviet-made T-72 tanks equipped with ERA (explosive reactive armor) blocks mounted on the turret and front. It was found that this ERA rendered most modern American and German tank projectiles ineffective. This led to the development of more modern Western tank ammunition, such as the M829A2 and M829A3. Russian tank designers responded with newer types of reactive and composite armor. ERA is still a popular and relatively inexpensive upgrade for exported T-72s.
The T-72B3 addressed most of the complaints about earlier upgrades, often because the Russians had the opportunity to buy Western armor and fire-control equipment, at least until the 2014 sanctions were imposed. Many export customers preferred to equip their T-72s with this gear, as did India with their T-90s. Russian manufacturers managed to match a lot of the foreign equipment, or at least earlier models of it. Thus, the T-72B3 has thermal sights that enable the gunner to spot other tanks at night up to 8 kilometers away and positively identify them at about a third of that distance. The T-72B3 incorporates many world-class protective features, not just in defense against enemy armor-piercing rounds but also landmines and roadside bombs. The T-72B3 has a modern fighting compartment with flat-screen displays, some of them simply showing what is in the vicinity of the tank. In addition to modern communications, the T-72B3 has electronic sensors and some electronic jamming capability. But most importantly, the T-72B3 is reliable and, as the saying goes, “it just works.” That feature hasn’t been common with Russian tanks since World War II, when the T-34 was a breakthrough design that was technically inferior to Western, especially German, models, but it just worked.