Ukraine Unveils Upgraded T-72 AMT Main Battle Tank

T-72 AMT, an upgraded version of the T-72A main battle tank (MBT), was developed at the Kiev Armoured Plant based in Ukraine. The first T-72 AMT was unveiled and handed over to one of the military units of the Ukraine Armed Forces in August. Kiev Armoured Plant developed the T-72 AMT tank based on the experience gained by the Ukrainian troops in the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone (ATO) zone. The tank’s upgraded platform integrates a variety of lethality, survivability and systems enhancements.
The T-72AMT main battle tank is a heavily modified variant of the T-72A tank. The T-72AMT is one of the more advanced T-72 variants by means of installing, among other things, multiple protection explosive reactive armor modules NOZH, these being supplemented by passive armor array, and more advanced radio stations by Aselsan, navigation system СН-3003 BASALT. In addition, the modification of the T-72AMT received modern satellite navigation equipment. The T-72AMT tank is equipped with an 840 horsepower В-84-1 diesel engine.
The T-72AMT is armed with a 125mm 2A46 smoothbore gun, which has a rate of fire of six to eight rounds a minute. The main gun fires armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding-sabot (APFSDS) rounds, high-explosive anti-tank fin stabilised (HEAT-FS) rounds, and high-explosive fragmentation fin stabilised (HE-FRAG-FS) rounds. The main gun can also fire the GM ‘Combat’ laser-guided missile developed by State Kyiv Design Bureau ‘Luch’. The GM Combat missile uses a semi-automatic guidance from laser beam and can penetrate 750mm armour at a range of 5km. The sighting and guidance unit of the missile is installed above the turret to the left side of the main gun’s sight. The missile is fitted with a tandem warhead to defeat dynamic protection to destroy even heavily armoured enemy tanks.The secondary armament includes a coaxially mounted 7.62mm PKT machine gun and a 12.7mm NSV machine gun.