T-Rex () was a Ukrainian

main battle tank A main battle tank (MBT), also known as a battle tank or universal tank or simply tank,Ogorkiewicz 2018 p222 is a tank that fills the role of armour-protected direct fire and maneuver in many modern armies. Cold War-era development of more po ...

announced in 2016.

Development

The vehicle was announced in 2016 and was developed by the , an engineering group belonging to the

Azov Battalion The 12th Special Forces Brigade "Azov" () is a formation of the National Guard of Ukraine formerly based in Mariupol, in the coastal region of the Sea of Azov, from which it derives its name. It was founded in May 2014 as the Azov Battalion (), ...

. It was named after ''

Tyrannosaurus rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' () is a genus of large theropoda, theropod dinosaur. The type species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' ( meaning 'king' in Latin), often shortened to ''T. rex'' or colloquially t-rex, is one of the best represented theropods. It live ...

''. Its main competitor was the

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n MBT

T-14 Armata The T-14 Armata (; industrial designation ) is a Russian fourth-generation main battle tank (MBT) based on the Armata Universal Combat Platform. The Russian Army initially planned to acquire 2,300 T-14s between 2015 and 2020. By 2018, product ...

. Sergei Stepanov, the chief designer for Arey, claimed that the tank would have a "conceptually new system of fire control and a high level of personnel protection," along with "many features include high maneuverability, 360-degree vision, and a high-bandwidth counteraction analytics system." The vehicle would be based on the

T-64 The T-64 is a Soviet tank manufactured in Kharkiv, and designed by Alexander Morozov. The tank was introduced in the early 1960s. It was a more advanced counterpart to the T-62: the T-64 served in tank divisions, while the T-62 supported i ...

and hulls of T-64 and

T-72 The T-72 is a family of Soviet Union, Soviet main battle tanks that entered production in 1973. The T-72 was a development based on the T-64 using thought and design of the previous Object 167M. About 25,000 T-72 tanks have been built, and refu ...

, inherited by the thousands from the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, would be reused in the production of the tanks. The Azov Battalion estimated that up to 20 tanks could be upgraded every month.

Design

The tank would be based on the

and would feature an unmanned turret. The three crew members would be seated in an armored capsule at the front of the hull, where they could remotely-control the cannon, the automatic loader and the machine guns T-Rex would weigh 39 tons and be equipped with a 125mm main gun with "high-power projetiles". The armor would utilize both Nizh and Duplet () explosive

reactive armor Reactive armour is a type of vehicle armour used in protecting vehicles, especially modern tanks, against shaped charges and hardened kinetic energy penetrators. The most common type is ''explosive reactive armour'' (ERA), but variants includ ...

. The combat capability was said by the Ukrainian press to be exceeding those of the Ukrainian Oplot and Bulat, while at the same time being more cost-effective than the Bulat.

References

External links

Patent for T-Rex (in Ukrainian)
{{T-64_navigation, style=wide Tanks with autoloaders Main battle tanks of Ukraine