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About > Products > Product Details
T80UK
Model height 5cm (to turret top);
length 14cm (hull only) 19cm with gun; width 7cm
Russia's T-80 main battle tank is successor to the T-64, and when production of the T-80 began in 1976, it used T-64 components. The T-8OU, a descendent of the T-80, was developed in the early 1980s. It was the first Soviet operational tank to be powered by gas turbines, and the first to incorporate a laser range finder and ballistic computer system. The Kirov plant in Leningrad produced the hull, and the Kharkov design bureau in the Ukraine developed the turret and armament, which included Kontakt-5 reactive armour and a new guided tank missile, the Refleks, to be fired from the tank’s main armament, a 125mm smoothbore gun. It began production in 1987 at the Kirov Plant and the Omsk Tank Plant in Siberia.
With the break-up of the USSR in 1991, tank production, moved from Kirovto to Omsk. Diesel powered T-80s were developed at Kharkov in the Ukraine. However, Russia refused to supply tank parts to the Ukraine, so in the mid-1990s there were two seperate developments of the T-80 – the T-80U family in Omsk, and the T-84 in Kharkov. In 1995 the Russian army decided to standardise its tanks and opted for the T-90 (a development of the T-72) instead of the T-80U because of the poor performance of T-80BV models in Chechnya, which proved very vulnerable to RPG attack from the rear. As a result the Omsk tank plant had to rely on export orders for the T-80U, in competition with the Kharkov plant, and it is now possible to buy ‘made to measure’ T-80Us with a wide variety of options. The Russian army is now considering the T-80UM-2 Black Eagle.
Imprint Models, 14 Green Lane, Colchester, Essex CO4 0JA
+44 (0) 1206 862311