Unscathed: Ukraine's T‑84 tanks withstand drone attacks, thrive in war
The full-scale war in Ukraine has been ongoing for over two years, and it has been filled with surprising developments. One notable case is the zero losses (no confirmed photos) of the T-84U and T-84 Oplot tanks, representing Ukrainian armored innovation's pinnacle. Here, we present their performance.
The Ukrainian armed forces possess several tanks from the T-84 family, which are considered the most outstanding achievements of the Malyshev factory in Kharkiv. These new vehicles are a substantial evolution of the T-80UD tanks and come in two variants.
The first variant is the final T-84 Oplot, and the second is its more budget-friendly version, the T-84U, completed on August 12, 2021. At the outbreak of the full-scale war with Russia, Ukraine was believed to have at least six T-84 Oplot tanks and one or two T-84U tanks. Interestingly, these machines are still active in combat, and so far, no losses have been confirmed. To date, they have been hit several times by Lancet-3 drones, but the tanks survived these attacks without any issues.
T-84 tanks - a refined variant of the best USSR tank
The Ukrainians used the T-80 tanks as the base for the T-84, refining them to increase the protection and survival chances of the three-person crew. The most significant change in the T-84 Oplot tanks is the replacement of the non-isolated carousel autoloader with a turret niche solution inspired by Western designs. The exception is the budget T-84U, which retained the more dangerous Soviet-type autoloader.
The second significant change is the use of heavy two-layer reactive armor named "Dupelt," which, in practice, is a two-layer version of the "Knife" armor used in T-64BM tanks, among others. This solution’s modules use shaped charges, enabling thicker walls that generate larger fragments, allowing the cumulative stream to cut even APFSDS kinetic penetrators into pieces. The two-layer version of "Knife" effectively protects against projectiles with tandem cumulative warheads.
However, the price for such protection has significantly increased to about 112,000 lbs, a record for post-Soviet tanks. For comparison, the Russian T-90M weighs 104,000 lbs. This necessitated using a more powerful diesel engine with 1,200 hp to maintain satisfactory mobility. Notably, this weight is close to that of proposed future European tanks.
Complete design
The Ukrainian tank is also equipped with a "Zaslon" active defense system, which can shoot down incoming anti-tank missiles, akin to the Israeli Trophy system.
When combined with the modern fire control system featuring thermal imaging for the 125 mm KBA-3 cannon and the crew's ability to operate in hunter-killer mode, known, for example, from the Leopard 2A6, the T-84 Oplot becomes a complete design. In hunter-killer mode, the commander uses a panoramic sight to initially aim the cannon at the target, leaving precise aiming to the gunner, significantly reducing the time between detecting and eliminating the target.
