[DRG]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...h=663b1cc26677

The 1980s-vintage tanks will come from the inventory of the Czech defense industry, according to the three governments. They aren’t Czech army tanks, the defense ministry in Prague stressed. The Czech army uses upgraded versions of the T-72M, which is the downgraded version of the basic Soviet-era T-72A.

The enhanced T-72Bs the Americans and Dutch are paying for are T-72As with a better fire-control system, thicker armor, a new stabilization system for the 125-millimeter main gun and an uprated, 840-horsepower engine.

In 1985, the 42-ton, three-crew T-72B was state-of-the-art. In 2022, it’s still one of the better tanks Ukraine has access to—especially with the improved optics Czech technicians are set to install.

The tanks Kyiv has received from its foreign allies, in order to make good these losses, generally have been less sophisticated than the tanks it already had. The donations have included at least 270 T-72Ms—from Poland, mostly—as well as 28 even older M-55Ss from Slovenia.

The 90 T-72Bs the Americans, Dutch and Czechs are providing should raise the overall quality of the armor the Ukrainians are acquiring from foreign sources.

Non-Russian foreign sources, that is. Russia is by far Ukraine’s biggest tank donor. The Ukrainians have captured nearly 500 T-62, T-72, T-80 and T-90 tanks that Russian crews have abandoned on the battlefield.