Any insight into using a T-90 at 15,000’ up?
More of a weight and size issue for tanks than altitude. Also, no signs that the light tank they built is stolen from anyone as a whole. There’s some thought that they may have taken some stuff from the M8 project that we cancelled, but there’s no obvious copying going on with it.
The T-90 is interesting - it’s not a lot larger than the Chinese light tanks, which is why it can be at a disadvantage in a slugging match with larger Western tanks that have the size (and therefore gun depression) to sit behind a hill with only the turret and gun muzzle exposed to the other side and send “go away” projectiles. However, in this case, the small size may pay off in that the Indians may be able to what actually is a main battle tank into the area, whereas even with APS the Chinese Type 15 tanks are still just light tanks. APS is damn near magical at keeping projectiles and missiles out of the hull, but APS systens still have their limits.
That said, the Type 15 has a gun roughly comparable in performance to our first generation M1s and the common NATO L7 105mm MBT main guns and it is likely to be able to give the T-90 a run for its money due to the 30-some years of development time between the two. The Type 15 can also mount explosive reactive armor, which is unusual for a light tank, and despite all the retrofits to the T-90 design, they’re still retrofits to an older platform where the Type 15 is a clean sheet modern design.
The T-90MS as fielded by India isn’t exactly an all domestic or all Russian effort, though. It may have some surprises for the Type 15 in its turn. Copying from Wikipedia to save typing:
The T-90S Bhishma (named after the guardian warrior in the Mahabharata) is a vehicle tailored for Indian service, improving upon the T-90S, and developed with assistance from Russia and France. The tanks are equipped with the French Thales-built Catherine-FC thermal sights,[24] and use Russian Kontakt-5 K-5 explosive reactive armoured plates.[25] and Kontakt-5 ERA in addition to the primary armor which consists of laminated plates and ceramic layers with high tensile properties. The new welded turrets first developed for the Indian T-90S Bhishma have more advanced armour protection than the early cast turrets.
In April 2008, the Indian Army sent a request for proposal to Rafael, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Rosoboronexport, Saab, and IBD Deisenroth Engineering for an active protection system for the T-90S Bhishma.[26] The contract is expected to be worth US$270 million. Saab’s LEDS-150 won the contract in January 2009.[27]
A third contract, worth $1.23 billion, was signed in December 2007 for 347 upgraded T-90Ms, the bulk of which will be licence-assembled by HVF. The Army hopes to field a force of over 21 regiments of T-90 tanks and 40 regiments of modified T-72s. The Indian Army would begin receiving its first T-90M main battle tank in completely knocked-down condition from Russia’s Nizhny Tagil-based Uralvagonzavod JSC by the end of 2009.[28][29]
The T-90M features the ‘Kaktus K-6’ bolted explosive reactive armour (ERA) package on its frontal hull and turret-top (the T-90S has ‘Kontakt-5’ ERA), is fitted with an enhanced environmental control system supplied by Israel’s Kinetics Ltd for providing cooled air to the fighting compartment, has additional internal volume for housing the cryogenic cooling systems for new-generation thermal imagers like the THALES-built Catherine-FC thermal imager (operating in the 8–12 micrometre bandwidth).