Challenger 2 OES thread 1/
The OES Challenger 2, known in military parlance as the Operational Entry Standard (OES) – often synonymous with Theatre Entry Standard (TES) – represents an advanced tier of armoured capability, a step above the baseline vanilla model. 2/ Throughout its deployment in Iraq under Operation TELIC (OP TELIC) from March 2003 to May 2011, the CR2 underwent numerous enhancements in both survivability and lethality. The operational periods in Iraq were segmented into thirteen 6-month rotations, each numerically designated from I to XIII using Roman numerals.

1/ The effects of rodents on AFV’s

Rodents have long been a problem for infantry in the trenches, but a lesser known fact is the issue of rodents when they embed themselves in armoured fighting vehicles. 2/ Yesterday I shared a post showing a 2S9 Nona with an infestation of mice in the exhaust. Without pest control, rodents can render full battlegroups of tanks and AFV’s inoperable, as experienced by the 22nd Panzer Division during the Soviet Op Uranus, Eastern Front, 1942.

The Great Eastern European IFV drought of 2023 thread🧵 The War in Ukraine has led to a drought in IFV’s on both sides, in turn we now see exotic ‘one off’ IFV’s and even some small batch productions, as well as IFV’s upgraded to have more firepower and flexibility.

IDF tac markings🧵

This thread will cover the tac markings commonly seen on IDF heavy vehicles. 1.This tac marking is usually on the turret basket at the rear of the vehicle, it consists of Hebrew alphabet characters Aleph(א), Bet(ב), Gimel(ג)or Dalet(ד). The characters indicate the tanks designation within a platoon, the number indicates which platoon, the first image shows Beit(ב) tank belonging to 1st platoon.

Recognition thread 🧵
23 S-300V vehicles being transported in Russia, we can see this pretty much comprises of multiple systems, all of which are needed to create a functioning S-300V air defence battery. Luckily for you, the S-300V family was added to the app the other day, so here we can use the app to work out some of the variants we can see.
Using the new search function, simply searching S-300V brings up all the vehicles I need.

Development of the BMP-T🧵

Following on from Object 781, we have the Object 782, which was designed in parallel to the 781. The Object 782 is again on a modified T-72B hull, similar to the 781 with a raised superstructure, a reworked frontal hull and 2x 40mm grenade launchers in the hull.

South Africa’s Fighting Caracal, a thread on the history of the Rooikat.

The Rooikat is a South African Armoured recce vehicle, equipped with a 76mm high velocity gun for fire support, combat recce and anti-tank ops, it entered service in 1987 with the SADF, but its inception came a decade prior. The Eland-90 was the primary recce vehicle of the SADF, a four wheeled armoured car modelled on the Panhard AML-90, which first saw action during Op Savannah in Angola, 1975.

1/3 Trials of the T-80BV Obr.2023, this model has a new roof mounted cage which is said to protect against Javelin/NLAW and also has the cellular amplifier antennae mounted on the turret. 2/3 Now to put it mildly many of the design decisions on the T-80 series are very odd, for example on the T-80U the smoke grenade dischargers are placed on top of the Kontakt-5 ERA, so if the ERA detonated you would also lose your means of smoke cover, now on this model the cellular data antennae have been mounted on top of the Relikt ERA, which of course would destroy them if the ERA detonated.

Thread about the Ladoga protected command and staff vehicle for senior commanders. The Ladoga was based on the T-80 chassis, instead of the turret and fighting compartment a large superstructure was fitted in place, which contains two sections separated by a wall with access via an internal hatch, the two compartments are the drivers compartment and the superstructure itself.

Short 🧵 about this T-80UD Obr.1985 posted by @trip_to_valkiri ⬇️ Extremely rare early model T-80UD Obr.1985 with K-1 instead of K-5, note how the K-1 is laid out in the T-64BV style rather than the single row style like the T-72AV. I’m not sure where this tank is, whether it’s in Ukraine at Kharkiv which produced the engines….

50 questions, random selection of vehicles, beat me Post results in comments

A Thread on the M2020🧵🇰🇵

So, the North Korean M2020, after seeing this I instantly messaged @TankDiary and we had a chat, we have some conclusions on this which I’ll list and elaborate on below. 1.It’s based on a T-72, this can be seen by the central mounted drivers pos, rear circular fan cover, exhaust and roadwheels, some people say it’s a T-62, but they are wrong. There is an extra roadwheel thrown in the mix so it has a slight extension to the hull

1/3 Russia hasn’t deployed any APFSDS rounds stronger than the 3BM-42 Mango round to Ukraine, this round being made in 1986. It’s understandable as to why they would do this given that Ukraine doesn’t really have anything that the 3BM-42 can’t deal with… 2/3 so it will be interesting to see that with the pledge of CR2’s if the Russians begin to field much larger APFSDS rounds, namely the 3BM-59 Svinets-1 and 3BM-60 Svinets-2 as these have a much longer rod giving them more penetrating power.

A thread of inflatable vehicles I seen whilst researching the 45th Separate Engineer Camouflage Regiment Mil No.58142, based at Inzhenerny 1. The regiment uses inflatable ‘vehicles’ of all kinds, these are surprisingly not just MBT’s and APC’s yet full S-300 batteries and radars. Seen here are some radar systems, the 1st behind the jet is a 76N6 ‘Clam Shell’ for S-300 batteries. The 2nd and 3rd being the 9S18M snowdrift search radar for Buk platform. The 4th being the 30N6E2 ‘Tomb Stone’ radar for S-300 variants.

DTC10-125
The best 125mm pound for pound kinetic energy round in existence(according to Chinese sources), the DTC10-125 is a Chinese 125mm APFSDS round, what’s special about it? 🧵 It starts with Russian tanks, despite all having the same 2A46 125mm gun series. There are different autoloader models, the latest models of these are the 2A46M-4 and M-5, these allow the use of the 3BM-59 Svinets-1 and 3BM60 Svinets 2 APFSDS rounds…

Photo 🧵. After the capture of the T-90M today, that confirms that Ukraine have either captured or destroyed every variant of in service Russian tank, list as follows in follows tweets with bracketed comment showing how common/rare said variant is. T-62M (reserve storage, uncommon)
T-72A (uncommon)
T-72AV (uncommon)
T-72B (very common)
T-72B1 (common)
T-72B1 Obr.1989 (very rare)
T-72B Obr.1989 (common)
T-72BA (uncommon)
T-72B3 (very common)
T-72B3M (Biathlon variant, rare)
T-72B3 Obr.2016 (very common)