The leaking of an original set of technical blueprints of the Soviet Object 195 main battle tank has provided new insight into the ambitious program to preserve the country’s qualitative armour advantage into the 21st century. 3D artist Gustiiz3D produced a set of renders “based on an authentic album of schematics that recently leaked online” that provided further details on the tank type, which was known colloquially as the ’T-95.” It would have been the first major clean sheet design to join the Soviet Army since the T-64 in 1964. The T-64 was considered close to two decades ahead of Western main battle tanks in its capabilities, with its use of a smoothbore gun, the penetrative capabilities of its armour piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) rounds, and its use of advanced composite laminate armour, not being replicated on Western tanks for 15-20 years.
The T-64 design was significantly enhanced in the 1970s and 1980s, while its close derivatives the T-72 and T-80 were brought into service in incrementally more capable variants from 1973 and 1975 respectively, the former as a lower cost and simplified variant, and the latter as a much more costly and mobile variant. Despite being significantly less capable than the T-64 or T-80, downgraded export variants of the T-72 would demonstrate significant superiority over Western rivals during both the Lebanon War and the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the introduction of the new Western tanks in the 1980s, specifically the German Leopard 2 and American M1A1 Abrams, narrowed the capability gap in several respects. The Object 195 program was intended to provide Soviet armoured units with a vast and sustained armoured warfare advantage from the lat 1990s or early 2000s, much as the T-64 had from the early 1960s.
Much as the T-64 had introduced a major improvement in firepower over Western tanks with a 125mm smoothbore gun, which compared highly favourably with the American M60 and German Leopard 1’s 105mm rifled guns, so too was the tank developed under the Object 195 program expected to introduce a 152mm main gun with tremendous advantages in penetrative capabilities. Where the T-64 had pioneered new levels of crew protection and automation, its next generation successor was expected to similarly lead the world in setting new standards, with armour protection levels reportedly intended to reach 1,000mm against APFSDS rounds and 1,500mm against shaped-charge attacks. The tank would pioneer a new layout with three crew isolated in an armoured capsule, and operating the turret and main gun remotely, much as the T-64’s use of an autoloader had allowed for a revolutionary layout in its own time.
The next generation Soviet tank was expected to have a lower silhouette than even the T-64, which was far below that of Western main battle tanks, with this largely being facilitated by its crew layout. Although the tank appeared to have the potential to be the most revolutionary in post-Second World War history, however, and was brought to prototype stages, the USSR’s disintegration and subsequent extreme decline of the Russian economy, industrial base, and tech sector prevented it from being developed to completion. Following the program’s cancellation in the 2000s, Russian Army would in 2015 unveil a next generation tank built around many of the same concepts as that of Object 195, the T-14 Armata, although this was considered a less ambitious ‘toned down’ design reflecting post-Soviet technological an budgetary limitations.
Major delays to the T-14 program have left its future highly uncertain as of the mid-2020s, a quarter of a century after the ’T-95’ was intended to have entered service. These delays have allowed China to gain a decisive lead with the new Type 100 tank, which is already in service, with the United States and South Korea poised to closely follow with the respective M1E3 and K3 programs, which if operationalised would leave Russian armour increasingly far behind. While the latest Russian derivative of the T-64, the T-90M tank, is considered broadly on par with its most capable Western counterparts such as the M1A2 Abrams, while even older Soviet-built T-72 tanks have proven capable of going head to head with and destroying newly built Abrams tanks, the sustainability of the current position of Russian armour remains in question as the country’s ability to move beyond the T-64 design remains in question.