The Black Eagle tank was a presumed prototype main battle tank

Main battle tank

A main battle tank , also known as a battle tank or universal tank, is a tank that fills the heavy direct fire role of many modern armies. They were originally conceived to replace the light, medium, heavy and super-heavy tanks. Development was spurred onwards in the Cold War with the development...

 produced in the Russian Federation. It was thought to have been developed by the KBTM design bureau in Omsk

Omsk

-History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...

 in the late 1990s. A production version of this tank has never been publicly demonstrated. The Black Eagle tank has been cancelled, and all production and development halted. The company that was developing the tank, Omsk Transmash, has gone bankrupt. Design and projects have been absorbed into Uralvagonzavod

Uralvagonzavod

Uralvagonzavod is a Russian machine building company located in Nizhny Tagil, Russia. It is one of the largest scientific and industrial complexes in Russia and the largest main battle tank manufacturer in the world....

 and state owned services. Uralvagonzavod was developing the T-95 competitor for the Black Eagle, and now owns the rights to both projects, but the Russian government has withdrawn all support and funding for the project. This may be because due to its age, it will be outdated if it is even ever completed.

Development

Development started during the 1980s, when the design bureau of the Leningrad Kirov Plant

Kirov Plant

The Kirov Plant Kirov Factory or Leningrad Kirov Plant is a major Russian machine-building plant in St. Petersburg, Russia....

 (LKZ) developed a new design based upon the stretched T-80

T-80

The T-80 is a main battle tank designed and manufactured in the former Soviet Union. A development of the T-64, it entered service in 1976 and was the first production tank to be equipped with a gas turbine engine for main propulsion.the Swedish Stridsvagn 103 of 1971 used a gas turbine alongside...

U chassis. Later, when the bureau closed, the documentation was transferred to KBTM in Omsk.

A mock-up of the Black Eagle was first demonstrated at the VTTV arms exposition in Omsk, in September 1997, making a single brief pass, far from the reviewing stands. The tank appeared to be a standard T-80U hull, topped by a very large turret and gun, obscured by camouflage netting and canvas. The turret

Gun turret

A gun turret is a weapon mount that protects the crew or mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon and at the same time lets the weapon be aimed and fired in many directions.The turret is also a rotating weapon platform...

 later turned out to be a crude mock-up.

An early prototype was shown at an arms exposition in Siberia, in June 1999. This tank had an elongated hull with seven pairs of road wheels instead of the T-80's six, and a turret still mostly obscured by camouflage netting.

The tank was based on a lengthened T-80U hull, with an extra pair of road wheels and a brand new turret. It appeared to have had very thick front armour and new-generation Kaktus explosive reactive armour on the hull and turret. The turret had a very large, box-shaped turret bustle instead of the traditional dome shape of previous Soviet and Russian main battle tanks. According to Russian reports, the Black Eagle design had abandoned the carousel-style autoloader in the fighting compartment for an autoloader mounted in the large western-style turret bustle, which incorporates a blow-out armoured ammunition compartment for crew safety, like the U.S. M1 Abrams

M1 Abrams

The M1 Abrams is a third-generation main battle tank produced in the United States. It is named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army Chief of Staff and Commander of US military forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972. The M1 is a well armed, heavily armored, and highly mobile tank designed for...

 tank. The prototype had a 125 mm tank gun

Tank gun

A tank gun is the main armament of a tank. Modern tank guns are large-caliber high-velocity guns, capable of firing kinetic energy penetrators, high explosive anti-tank rounds, and in some cases guided missiles. Anti-aircraft guns can also be mounted to tanks.-Overview:Tank guns are a specific...

, but it was stated that it may have accommodated a larger 152 mm gun (compared to the 120 and 125 mm-calibre guns of main battle tanks in service). There was debate about whether the Black Eagle would incorporate the Drozd

Drozd

Drozd is an active protection system developed in the Soviet Union, designed for increasing tanks' protection against anti-tank missiles and RPGs. It is considered the world's first operational active protection system, created in 1977–78 by A...

 or Arena Active Protection System

Arena Active Protection System

The Arena is an active protection system developed at Russia's Kolomna-based Engineering Design Bureau for the purpose of protecting armoured fighting vehicles from destruction by light anti-tank weapons, anti-tank guided missiles , and missiles with top attack warheads. It uses a Doppler radar...

.

Cancellation

The Black eagle project was formally cancelled in 2001. Development of the Black Eagle was halted due to budgetary constraints, questions about the reliability of the design, and most importantly the terrible performance of the T-80, upon which the tank was modelled, in the second Chechen war

Second Chechen War

The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....

. The T-80 performed so poorly that General-Lieutenant A. Galkin, the head of the Armor Directorate, convinced the Minister of Defence after the conflict to never again procure tanks with gas-turbine engines. This included the Black Eagle, which was promptly cancelled. The manufacturers, Omsk Transmash, attempted to appeal the decision, but were unable to pursue the appeal after filing for bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

 in 2002. As of July 2008, the Russian army planned to adopt a new Uralvagonzavod tank after 2010, possibly designated T-95

T-95

T-95 is the common informal designation of a Russian fifth generation tank that was under development at Uralvagonzavod before being cancelled in May 2011.-History:...

. However, development of the T-95

T-95

T-95 is the common informal designation of a Russian fifth generation tank that was under development at Uralvagonzavod before being cancelled in May 2011.-History:...

tank was also cancelled, in May 2010.

Col. Vladimir Voitov, head of research at the Main Directorate of the Armored Troops, denied the existence of the tank in an interview with the Echo Moskvy radio in September 2009. "There was no such project...and those 20-year-old pictures show a mock-up of a futuristic tank which remained just a product of someone's imagination," ... "the turret of the vehicle did not have anything inside."

External links

• Vasiliy Fofanov's Modern Russian Armour - click "Black Eagle MBT" in the links in the left-hand frame.
• Black Eagle MBT - at Eugene Yanko in association with Omsk VTTV Arms Exhibition and Military Parade JSC