This tank had every chance of a great successful future. Its development and then testing showed good results, therefore it was considered one of the most promising armored vehicle projects of post-Soviet Russia and could take an honorable place in the ranks of the army RF. However, it was never put into production, and the only application that was found for a promising vehicle was to become a prototype for creating new tanks. All this is about the "Black Eagle" of the Russian army - the T-80UM2 tank.
The project of the Russian promising main battle tank T-80UM2 had several names - "Black Eagle", "Object 640", "Tarantula". Its development began in the 1990s and was carried out on the basis of the Omsk design bureau of transport engineering.
During the initial design, the armored vehicle was a modified chassis of the T-80U tank with a new design turret mounted on top. The machine body is elongated and divided into three sealed compartments. The central compartment is intended for the control compartment, which is associated with the fighting compartment. The fuel tanks are located in the side compartments.
Interesting fact: always during the demonstration of the tank, his tank turret was covered with a dense camouflage net.
The crew was located in the tank hull below the turret level. Access there was through the commander's and gunner's hatches in the turret hull, as well as the driver's hatch in the tank hull. Places for the crew were equipped with adjustable seats with two positions: traveling and combat.
When designing the tank, it was planned to equip it with armament in the form of a 125-mm cannon, a 7.62-mm machine gun paired with it, as well as a remote anti-aircraft installation with a 12.7-mm Kord machine gun. The vehicle's ammunition was located in the automatic loader.
The turret of the armored vehicle was developed from scratch: it was welded in the form of two symmetrically spaced armored compartments, which were rigidly fixed on a common base.
The "heart" of the promising "Black Eagle" was to be a new gas turbine engine with a capacity of more than 1500 hp. and a combat weight of 48 tons. This decision led to the fact that the tank significantly exceeded the characteristics of Western tanks of the third generation: according to Novate.ru, on average, their specific power is 20 - 25 hp / t, while the "Object 640" this figure exceeded 30 hp / t.
Since 1997, when the first prototype of the "Black Eagle" tank was presented, more than once the media have published data on the progress of the development and testing of a promising armored vehicle. However, at this stage they constantly stopped: the car did not go further than the test site, and no information about the timing and plans for mass production was made public.
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Ultimately, the path of the "Black Eagle" ended, in fact, did not begin. And this happened through a statement by representatives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation that the serial production of the promising Object 640 tank is no longer planned.
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However, they did not forget about the promising development: it was announced that the experience gained while working with this tank would serve as a significant head start for the modernization of existing armored vehicles. On April 28, 2011, the former First Deputy of the Main Armored Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Yuri Kovalenko commented that the developments of the "Black Eagle" will be used in a new promising development - the main battle tank "Armata"
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A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/231019/52168/