The President of the Republic and Supreme Commander of the Serbian Armed Forces Aleksandar VuÄić, accompanied with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence NebojÅ¡a Stefanović, PhD, the Chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces General Milan Mojsilović and the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko attended the presentation of new T-72MS main battle tanks, donated by the Russian Federation, which will be used to equip the Serbian Army units. After the presentation of the tanks and materiel, President VuÄić expressed his gratitude to the Russian Federation and President Putin for helping Serbia with this donation.
The tank was developed, designed and manufactured by the Russian Company UralVagonZavod. The T-72B1MS White Eagle tank has received PN-72U Sosna-U day/night gunners sight. Commanders seat is equipped with PKP-72 Falcon`s Eye (Sokolinyi Glaz) panoramic sight with third-generation thermal imager mounted at the rear of the left side of the turret. To increase protection against HEAT (High-Explosive Anti-Tank) ammunition, the tank is fitted with the Kontakt-1 Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) mounted on each side of the hull and around the turret. The T-72B1MS can be also fitted with wire cage armor mounted at the rear and on the side of the turret to offer more protection against rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attacks.
The T-72B1MS White Eagle keeps the same armament of the T-72 MBT series including one 2A46 125mm smoothbore gun able to fire different types of ammunition including armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS), high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) and high-explosive fragmentation (HEF) projectiles. The tank is fitted with a new automatic loading system mounted on the turret floor and also on the rear wall of the turret. The carousel carries 24 ready use projectiles. The tank`s 125mm 2A45 gun is equipped with new stabilizer. One 7.62mm machine gun is mounted coaxially to the right of the main armament. Back of the commander hatch, there is one RCWS armed with one 12.7mm 6P49 Kord heavy machine gun.
This new modernized version of the T-72 was specially designed for the export market. In June 2016, 20 T-72B1MS MBTs were delivered to Nicaragua. The Latin American country has planned to purchase a total of 50 T-72B1MS MBTs. In January 2019, Laos has shown a number of T-72B1MS during a military parade in the capital. In November 2020, Serbia has received the first batch of 11 upgraded T-72MS White Eagle main battle tanks from Russia. In November 2020, Vietnam has announced its interest to acquire Russian T-72B1MS. Serbian army has unveiled its new T-72B1MS White Eagle on November 28, 2020.
