Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1150145
of tanks was their survivability when exposed to NBC factors and when confronted by enemy, and so much emphasis was put on the protection of vehicles and their crews on an WMD. For instance – the inside of the turret and the hull of the T-64 (Object 432) was lined with 10 to 50 mm thick anti-radiation lining, with the average thickness being approx. 40 mm. In addition, the tank featured a fan-powered filtering system main- taining a overpressure inside the vehicle (although engaging in combat in the atomic regime meant that the crew compartment would become depressurized, which required taking advantage of personal protection equipment). The application of all those measures meant that the im- pact of ionizing radiation on the vehicle crew was 15 times lower in the case of exposure to an explosion of the yield of 30 kT at a distance of 900–1,000 m away from the site of explosion so that the dose of 200 R (Roentgen, which equals 20 millisievert, i.e. 2 Sv – Sieviert) is not ex- ceeded as it would lead to a chronic and acute radiation sickness (ARS). If operations were carried out in a nuclear fallout zone, the means of pro- tection featured in the T-64A ensured an 18-times decrease of radiation impact on the crew, which made it possible for the crew to operate for 12 hours (with the maximum dose exposed to being 200 R) in an area contaminated with fallout of the radiation level of 300 R. The above pro- tective measures featured in the T-64 were considered of greater value in combat applications than the strength of its armor. So what does the above mean in the context of the "poorly" protected tank sides referred to earlier? Well, to make it easier to imagine – it's rather hard to fight tanks using anti-tank weapons when you're an infantryman dying of ARS. To put it in a nutshell, Soviets assumed that infantry units would be rather little able to attack tank hull sides effectively on an NBC battlefield if they are neutralized either by tactical nukes explosions or by increased radi- ation occurring right after nuclear weapons are used on the battlefield – and this describes the conditions in which NATO's positions were to be broken through. Regardless of how terrible the above vision may look like from today's perspective, it was the real point of view of Russians at the time, and it served as the ground for the design of the protection mea- sures featured in the "great trio" of Soviet tanks. This viewpoint started changing only in the 1980s, when the NBC battlefield concept was not a dogma anymore, and vehicles started benefiting from more comprehen- sive protection features. However, Germans realized that they needed to find a proper successor to the PzF 44 already in the mid-1970s. On 23 January 1973, the Bundeswehr set requirements for a new an- ti-tank grenade launcher. It was to be lightweight, user-friendly, able to pierce through armors of future tanks, offer a greater firing range, and necessarily suitable for firing from enclosed spaces. On top of that it was to be a modular solution. With new information incoming continuously, the conceptual stage lasted quite a while and came to an end in 1978, when Dynamit-Nobel was asked to design the new weapon – together with its partners, i.e. Hensoldt AG and Heckler & Koch. The weapon was to be called Panzerfaust 60/110, where the first number denoted the caliber of the launcher, and the second number – a caliber of grenade. The first prototypes were made in 1982–1983, and in 1985 the new weapon was ready for trials. Like in the case of other weapons used by Germans, the trials were long and extensive because the Bundeswehr always adopts "complete" and ready, fully-fledged weapon designs, usually not inclined to develop and work on successive versions of flawed small-series batch- es. As a result, the new weapon made it to the production stage in 1989, but was adopted by German army on 30 September 1992 (!). Therefore, it had been a decade since the first prototypes saw the light of today and 14 years since the contract was awarded to Dynamit-Nobel (1978) until the weapon became officially adopted. There were at least a few reasons for such a delay, with the main one being not the fall of the bipolar rival- LAND FORCES