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The Obiekt 279, or Object 279, (Объект 279) was a
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
experimental
heavy tank Heavy tank is a term used to define a class of tanks produced from World War I through the end of the Cold War. These tanks generally sacrificed mobility and maneuverability for better armour protection and equal or greater firepower than tanks ...
developed at the end of 1959. This special purpose tank was intended to fight on cross country terrain, inaccessible to conventional tanks, acting as a heavy breakthrough tank. It was planned as a tank of the Supreme Command Reserve.


Design

The tank was developed at the
Kirov Plant The Kirov Plant, Kirov Factory or Leningrad Kirov Plant (LKZ) ( rus, Кировский завод, Kirovskiy zavod) is a major Russian mechanical engineering and agricultural machinery manufacturing plant in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was establ ...
in
Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
by a group headed by the engineer L. Troyanov. The work on the tank started in 1957, which was based on a heavy tank operational requirements developed in 1956, and a pre-production tank was completed at the end of 1959. This unique tank boasted increased cross-country capability. It featured four-track running gear mounted on two longitudinal, rectangular hollow beams, which were also used as fuel tanks. The tank suspension was hydro-pneumatic with complex hydrotransformer and three-speed
planetary gearbox An epicyclic gear train (also known as a planetary gearset) consists of two gears mounted so that the center of one gear revolves around the center of the other. A carrier connects the centers of the two gears and rotates the planet and sun gea ...
. The track adjuster was worm-type. The specific ground pressure of this heavy vehicle did not exceed 0.6 kg/cm2 (~8.5psi). The track chain, running practically along the whole track length provided for increased cross-country capabilities on swampy terrain, soft soils and area full of cut trees,
Czech hedgehog The Czech hedgehog ( cs, rozsocháč or ') is a static anti-tank obstacle defense made of metal angle beams or I-beams (that is, lengths with an L- or Ɪ-shaped cross section). The hedgehog is very effective in keeping light to medium tanks and ...
s, antitank obstacles and the like. The tank was equipped with the powerful 1000 hp 2DG-8M diesel engine, enabling the 60
metric ton The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton (United States c ...
tank to attain 55 km/h (34mph) speed, with active range of 300 km (186 miles) on one refuel. It also had auto fire-fighting systems, smoke laying equipment and a combat compartment heating and cooling system.


Armour

The tank hull, with a maximum armour thickness of , was covered by a thin, elliptical shield protecting it against APDS and
shaped charge A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to form an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, init ...
ammunition. It comprised large cast irregular shape structures of variable thickness and slope. The all-cast front part of the hull was rounded in shape with thin armour panels against
HEAT In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is al ...
projectiles, which ran around the edges of the front and sides of the hull. The sides of the hull were also cast and had similar protective armour panels. The all-cast turret, with a maximum armor thickness of 319 mm, was rounded and had anti-HEAT protective panels. The turret ring was also heavily protected. The tank was equipped with
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence (CBRN defence) are protective measures taken in situations in which chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear warfare (including terrorism) hazards may be present. CBRN defence consis ...
(CBRN) protection.


Armament

The tank was armed with the 130 mm M-65 rifled gun. The secondary armament was a 14.5 x 114 mm
KPVT The KPV-14.5 heavy machine gun (KPV is an initialism for Krupnokaliberniy Pulemyot Vladimirova (Large-caliber Machine gun Vladimirov), in Russian as Крупнокалиберный Пулемёт Владимирова, or КПВ) is a Soviet de ...
coaxial machine gun with 800 rounds. The weapons were stabilized in two planes by a "Groza" stabilizer. Object 279 carried 24 rounds of ammunition, with charge and the shell to be loaded separately. The gun was provided with a semi-automatic loading system with a rate of fire of 5–7 rounds/minute. Firing control system comprised optical rangefinder, auto-guidance system and L2 night-sight with an active infrared searchlight. An improved variant of the gun was later tested on the experimental tank
Object 785 The Obiekt 785, or Object 785 (Объект 785), was a Soviet experimental main battle tank built in the late 1970s. It was an improved variant of the T-80B, with seven road wheels. The tank was testing the new generation 125 mm 2A82 smoot ...
in the late 1970s.


History

One of the reasons that this tank project was abandoned, as with other heavy tank projects, was that the Soviet military ceased to operate such heavy fighting vehicles in 1960. Since then, the heaviest ones are kept at about 50 metric tons of weight, not counting extra equipment such as additional reactive armor or mine clearing devices. On July 22, 1960, at the demonstration of new technology on the range of
Kapustin Yar Kapustin Yar (russian: Капустин Яр) is a Russian rocket launch complex in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100 km east of Volgograd. It was established by the Soviet Union on 13 May 1946. In the beginning, Kapustin Yar used technology, material ...
,
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
strictly forbade any tanks with a weight of more than 37 metric tons to be adopted by the military, having thus written off the entire program of heavy tanks that had proven to be so successful. Adding to this decision was that Nikita Khrushchev himself was a supporter of an alternative – guided missile tanks, the most prominent of which was
IT-1 The IT-1 (russian: Истребитель танков–1 - 'Istrebitel tankov–1', lit. 'tank destroyer-1') was a Soviet cold war missile tank based on the hull of the T-62. The tank fired specially designed 3M7 Drakon missiles from a pop-up ...
. Furthermore, the Soviet military wanted tanks with a suitable weight for crossing their own bridges, in case of homeland defence situations similar to those that occurred during World War II, which at that time seemed to be unreliable for heavy vehicle crossings. Another reason was that a number of serious deficiencies of the running gear appeared during the trials. These deficiencies included low nimbleness, efficiency loss during swampy area crossings, complex and expensive production, maintenance and repair, and impossibility of reduction in the overall height of the tank.


Surviving vehicles

*: One example of the tank survives on display at the
Kubinka Tank Museum The Kubinka Tank Museum (Центральный музей бронетанкового вооружения и техники - Tsentral'nyy Muzey Bronetankovogo Vooruzheniya I Tekhniki -Central Museum of Armored Arms and Technology) is a larg ...
, and was restored to running condition in 2022.


References

{{PostWWIISovietAFVS Cold War tanks of the Soviet Union Heavy tanks of the Cold War Trial and research tanks of the Soviet Union Abandoned military projects of the Soviet Union Heavy tanks of the Soviet Union History of the tank Kirov Plant products