T-72 main battle tank
The T-72 is a Soviet main battle tank family that entered production in 1973, and it traces its design lineage to the T-64. Its development was shaped by a rivalry between two design teams—Alexander Morozov’s Morozov KB in Kharkiv and Leonid Kartsev’s Uralvagon KB in Nizhny Tagil—each pushing competing solutions to improve on earlier Soviet tanks. Before the T-72, two test designs were tried in 1964: Nizhny Tagil’s Object 167 (T-62B) and Kharkiv’s Object 434. The Object 434 stood out for its ambitious layout, including a hull reduced to a minimum and a crew cut to three, enabled by introducing an automated loading system. When you encounter a T-72 today, you’re looking at a tank that was not just built in large numbers—about 25,000—but also kept fighting for decades through refurbishment. …
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