Object 195 — The Russian Derp Tank that Never Was
First things first, an explanation of just what a ‘derp tank’ actually is, for those of you who have never played World of Tanks. In the online computer game’s parlance, such a machine is armed with a devastatingly powerful main gun capable of obliterating any competition in a single shot. Its ease of use and tendency towards bringing about a rather unceremonious demise for any who fight against it have earned it the ‘derp’ moniker.
For the Object 195, also dubbed the T-95, such a moniker is rather apt. It would have been armed with a 152-millimetre high calibre 2A83 main gun — for the sake of comparison, other Russian tanks are usually armed with a 125-millimetre main gun, and NATO tanks are often armed to 105- or 120mm standard. An armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) round was stated to have travelled at a velocity of 2 kilometres per second, or close to six times the speed of sound. And while it’s busy crushing just about anything in its path smaller than an Imperial AT-AT, its high-spec Relikt explosive-reactive armour and hardkill countermeasures (imagine a shotgun designed to shoot missiles and/or shells) soak up anything the enemy can return in kind.
By late Cold War standards, the Object 195 would have terrorised the battlefields, enjoying the kind of dominance the Tiger tank of the Second World War did. But the question is, why on Earth would the Russians even need such a monster tank as the Object 195 in its arsenal?
Let’s go back to the days of the Soviet Union. From the 1960s onwards, the Red Army adopted a new component of their armoured doctrine. They would stock and maintain two types of main battle tank, each with distinctive roles. There would be the workhorses, mass-produced assault weapons designed to support infantry attacks. These would be backed up by cohorts of high-tech tanks that were more powerful, but also more expensive to field and maintain. The Soviets fielded the high-tech T-64 alongside the T-62, and the T-80 alongside the T-72.
The workhorses were also good for exporting to foreign armies — and the Soviet Union did this in bulk for its allies. The T-72 and its variants remains one of the most common armoured fighting vehicles on the battlefields of today, despite being close to half a century old.
Russia would continue this tradition after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the new T-90 having just entered service as the Russian Ground Forces’ workhorse, development of a new high-tech tank to supplement it on the battlefield commenced in earnest. By 1995, there were at least two projects for a new supertank on the way: the Object 195 by defence company UralVagonZavod, and the Object 640, also known as the Black Eagle, by Omsk TransMash.
Then came a catastrophe that almost torpedoed both projects — the First Chechen War (1994–1996). During the course of the war, the Russian Ground Forces deployed large numbers of main battle tanks, including their expensive T-80UMs. Particularly in the fighting for the city of Grozny, poor tactics and deployment saw many T-80s destroyed by rocket fire from the comparatively underequipped guerrillas. A humiliation like this hadn’t been experienced since the calamitous Soviet-Afghan War during the 1980s, with the full might of the Soviet Army bogged down by the mujahidin in the mountains of Afghanistan for ten bloody and painful years.
The Grozny disaster destroyed any appetite for any new high-tech tank thanks to the expenses involved. The disaster, in conjunction with delays and cost overruns, saw the cancellation of the Black Eagle tank in 2001 — Omsk Transmash’s attempts to overturn the decision went south when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002.
UralVagonZavod’s Object 195 didn’t fare much better. The project soldiered on for another decade before formally being canned in May 2010. Reasons given range from the tank being obsolete before entering production, having been in development hell for 20-odd years, to the recent reduction of Russia’s military budget. Whatever the case, throughout the decade, the Russian Ground Forces had focused on modernising the T-90, T-80 and T-72 platforms to compensate for the lack of a new high-tech tank.
The Object 195’s tale doesn’t end in tears, however. As mentioned in the initial part, the tank had a number of features that were revolutionary at the time, such as an unmanned turret to enhance crew protection, hardkill countermeasures and heavy armour able to deflect the biggest guns NATO had to offer. In fact, at the end of the Cold War, the revelation that the latest Soviet ERA was almost completely impervious to then-standard NATO anti-tank rounds led to the immediate crash development of new rounds, such as the M829A2 120mm sabot in 1994.
A great deal of the technological know-how for the Object 195 has been incorporated into the T-14 Armata, which has successfully entered production as a new-generation Russian main battle tank. Like the 195, the T-14 is blessed with an unmanned turret, hardkill countermeasures and the as-of-yet untested capability to mount a 30-millimetre autocannon to turn light vehicles and aircraft into paste.
That said, while it has much in common with the Object 195, the T-14 blends elements of the two traditional Soviet tank types into a new weapon system approaching Western-style doctrines. But the story of the Armata is one for another time.
Thank you all for reading, and I will see you next time.
~ Harry