Beny Karachun
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There are above 1000 T-90A/M/T-72B3s/T-80BVM/BMD-4/BMP-3 etc destroyed, all equipped with thermal optics.yes and no....
The Chieftain made a great interview about his view of russian tanks and tanks on modern battlefield...
What we see is, many destroyed russian tanks without thermal nigth vision... outperfromed by western ATGM and Ukraine tanks with thermal view... a tank with thermal view a well trained crew and good connection to combinied arms like infantry Arty and Air support and protection from drones is a much harder target for ATGM crews ... thermal views on modern tanks can detect infantry and ATGM crews deep inside a forrest miles away ... portable thermal view for the infantry makes the screen that can detec atgm crews even bigger.
The tank is called dead since ww1.... now we are at the doors to 2023 and the tank is the primary weapon in Ukraine
According to Chieftain any "old" tank has a place on battlefield the moment he get thermal view ...
A ATGM Team hiding at the treeline of a forrest is invisible for normal view if you are on the other side of a field 1.5miles away from the treeline... the moment you have thermal view they shine like candels in the dark...and are easy pray for a Arty strike or direct fire.
Hard Kill systems like Trophy increase the protection, but are not as needed as many belive.
The key is see first, react fast, shoot first = survive
Not to forget that like the old Leo2 used by turkey, most of the russian tank units are terrible lead, have untrained unmotivated crew, badly supplyed
An APS would have saved almost all of them. Tank on tank engagements are rare. Thermal cameras are a very useful asset that the Russians don't lack, this doesn't contribute jack shit to the tanks survivability, especially in urban environments the Russians found themselves in many times, even with modern optics the field of view out of tanks optics are not good, situational awareness isn't either.
Also people only shine like candles if they're hotter than their surrounding, in very cold or very hot weather this is problematic. Also simply having transparent glass in front of you makes you completely invisible to thermal sights.
Trophy system doesn't only increase the protection, it decreases the survivability of the ATGM operator, the system can point the tanks turret towards the launcher automatically, shoot at him and because the tank shell flies faster than an ATGM it can hit the operators and disrupt the guidance without even using the Trophy interceptors.