Soviet engineers, never short of unconventional approaches, already designed (on official specs) a first blueprint of a turbine-powered tank in 1949. In the late 1940s with the advent of the In the Jet age, turbines seemed to be a promising alternative to conventional engines. The Soviet military staff became enamoured with speed for tanks already in 1929, purchasing the Christie tanks in USA, which were reverse-engineered in USSR and copied as the BT series, the ancestry of the famous T-34. This made a fast moving target less likely to be hit even at relatively short ranges. Speed was always valued as a form of active protection, especially when guns were un-stabilized. Never exported until the 1990s (by Ukraine) and completely overhauled as the T-80UM, it gave birth, still in Ukraine, to the T-84 Oplot. Its speed but limited range made it suitable only for "cavalry-type" armored tactics, alongside more conventional MBTs on the great plains of Eastern Europe. Much costlier than the T-72, it was, like the T-64 before, considered much as a domestic "elite MBT" to be treated with special care, unlike the mass-produced, easy to manufacture and maintain T-72, it was neither intended for export. Often confounded with the latter by NATO experts at the beginning, it has the same family traits of contemporary Soviet MBTs but was by any means a specific branch of MBTs. Perhaps 40 years in the making, this old concept going back to 1949 was only materialized in the 1970s and the final tank borrowed parts from the T-72 and others from the T-64.
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