T-80 Standard Tank: The Soviet Army’s Last Armored Champion (New Vanguard, 152)

This book has an interesting title: The Soviet Army's Last Armored Champion. Actually, upon reading Steven Zaloga's description of the development of the T-80, a more fitting title would be: The Soviet Army's Overpriced and Troubled Tank.Zaloga is able to explain clearly (in a mere 46 pages of text), the troubled development of the T80. In his intro, Zaloga sums it up: The T80 was the Soviet's answer to the M1 Abrams, British Challenger, and the German Leopard 2 tank. However, the T80 costs 3 times as much as the T72 (due to its usage of the powerful but gas thirsty turbine engine) yet is only marginally more effective than the T72B. Moreover, the T80 gained a bad reputation in its disastrous deployment by the Russian army during the 1994 assault on the Chechen capital of Grozniy. As Zaloga points out, 70% of the 200 tanks deployed by the Russians in the conflict were knocked out. (The Chechen soldiers, familiar with Soviet tanks, knew that the armor housing the engine was vulnerable to a well-placed rocket strike from above. The result would be a catastrophic explosion which would blow the turret off the tank.) In a different book on the T80, written by Mikhail Baryatinskiy, it was also revealed that the T80 did not have reactive armor during the assault, thus making it more vulnerable to rocket attacks.As Zaloga points out, the fault of the T80's performance in the conflict lies with the poor training of the tank crew, the incompetent tactics, and the poor operational leadership of the senior Russian Army leadership. However, the T80 tank and its designers were blamed for the disastrous combat performance.Some of the features of the armor which were supposed to protect the T80 didn't work as well as it was supposed to. The reactive armor (the Kontact) was not popular and only offered marginal protection from APFSDS rounds of modern Western MBTs (e.g. Abrams, Leopard). The unique active protection armor (the Drozd) which was supposed to protect the tank from active guided missiles, did not work that well either.The troublesome turbine engine was replaced in later versions of the T80 with a gas-diesel engine (e.g. T80U). And finally, the T80 was not an export success. Ironically, the Ukrainian copy of the T80, the T84 was better built and was more successful in the export market than the original.Zaloga again does a masterful and comprehensive job of describing the development history and the performance of the T80 in 46 pages. The colored plates by Tony Bryan were very good, but on other volumes by Zaloga, the colored plates by Jim Laurier looked even better. I felt that Zaloga could have written more on the Black Eagle and the T90 tank, but he was constrained by the 48 page limitation.If you're willing to pay a little more, I would highly recommend you purchase the Russian Armor Vol. 3 series of the Main Battle Tank T80 by Mikhail Baryatinskiy, which I also own. Baryatinskiy's volume is thicker (81 pages) and offers excellent colored photos of the T80. It also describes the Black Eagle in fuller detail.Zaloga's treatment of the T80 does not disappoint; it offers a brief yet comprehensive treatment of an important Soviet AFV. I highly recommend it for tank buffs and military history enthusiasts.

In his work on the T-64 Zaloga made much of the controversies afflicting tank development in the Soviet Union during the cold war decades. Much of this story is retold in this volume as well and it shows that while to the outsider the Soviet system may have looked like a monolithic monster in reality it was still riven by divisions, not so much based around politics but around regional and personal allegiances.The T-80, being the last tank with which the Soviet tank industry sallied forth prior to the Soviet collapse was an object of great interest when it initially appeared. In this work Zaloga takes the reader through the various developmental trials and tribulations surrounding this project. The book benefits from the usual 'New Vanguard' format whereby the text is leavened with a range of black and white photographs and a series of colour plate illustrations.Military nomenclature buffs will enjoy this work, as will fans of modern AFV's. Modellers are well catered for by the photographs and illustrations and therefore it is hard not to imagine this book easily making its money back for Osprey.

I ordered this when I realized that I couldn't, at a glance, tell a T-64 from a T-72 or a T-80. This slim volume is standard fare for this Osprey format. You have a number of useful photos and illustrations, and Mr. Zaloga's concise but informative description of the development history of these vehicles. This was quite tangled, as the Soviet weapons production bureaucracy rivaled or exceeded the US military industrial complex in the area of intrigue and political infighting. Soviet MBTs all seemed to evolve through a bewildering sequence of variants, and you can't tell the players without a program, so to speak, which this book provides.The T-80 seems to have been something of a white elephant. Its turbine engine made it overly complex and expensive, and the Soviet army had many reservations with it. It had powerful backers, though, so they were stuck with it. Something about the strains of this melody seem familiar...Recommended.

The T-80 was a good tank, but don't worth the cost in money , a modernized T-72 was enough......the succesor, the T-90 was in fact a very upgraded T-72!!!!

Another interesting book by Steven Zaloga, probably the best English language author on Russian armor. The T-80 follows from the T-64 with an almost as hard to follow history, made somewhat more clear with this book. It's too bad these New Vanguard armor books aren't a bit longer, you feel like they are cut off too soon.

Another good book by Steve Zaloga. Excellent as always and very informative. The only problem is I would to have more info, but the.New Vanguard format is restrictive. I like the series very much, but wish they could add another 16 or 20 pages.

I highly recommended this book to any armor enthusiast .Osprey's T-80 New Vanguard has color pictures throughout and the text is concise and accurate in content.

Good reference material for this tank from this author.

The T-80 was the last Soviet MBT seeing service and as a replacement for the 'first line' but somewhat flawed T-64 of significant importance. As usual for the series, one gets the development history, all the variants, a list of operators, excellent colour plates and detailed descriptions on the later upgrades. The models covered being the T-80, T-80B, T-80BV (both also with the K command versions), the T-80U, UD and UDK, as well as the various Ukrainian T-84 derivatives.One of the really interesting bits is the politics surrounding the tank's life and especially its gas turbine. Similarly to Zaloga's work on the  T-62 Main Battle Tank 1965-2005 , this aspect is covered fairly well and gives an important insight into Soviet tank design and competition for orders on the top political level.A brief mention of the operational experience in the Chechen wars is also given, partly explaining the less than stellar performance (less to do with the design than its use), seemingly the only theatre, where the tank has been used in anger.Another interesting aspect was the development of the gas turbines and the operational difficulties associated with them. The fact that the design mushroomed in cost as a result (and by how much - the author providing costs both for complete tanks (T-80 vs. T-72B & T-90) and separately for powerpacks).Some further details such as the gun launched ATGMs employed with the design, various generations of ERA (from Kontakt 1, via Kontakt 5 to Kaktus and Nozh) and of active protection suites are also included.Finally all the post Soviet attempts at selling the tank abroad, the versions offered for export, and the difficulties of both the Omsk and the Kharkov plants in surviving are captured, along with a couple of sentences of the 'next generation' of designs in the developemnt stage in the 1980s, which never came to fruition. The last one vaguely based on the T-80 to be covered being the 'Black Eagle'.The book would definitely benefit from some more technical details, potentially some comparisons to its contemporaries and a slightly more comprehensive coverage of the use in combat. Still, it is a very solid attempt at squeezing the most possible information into the limited 48 page format, at which Zaloga has largely succeeded. T-62 Main Battle Tank 1965-2005

This is as per the usual osprey format and is the usual good value. My only quibble would be some user comments would be interesting

Could do with more operational history but still quite good read

Steven Zaloga scrive, come sempre, con una non comune perfezione e dovizia di dettagli sui carri sovietici. Sin' ora io avevo letto i suoi zcritti sui carri della secona guerra mondiale. Qui, loscritto è molto attraente dato che si parla diun MBT moderno.Galland5:-):-):-):-):-):-)

I am sure 30 years ago it would have been a highly classified and very much sought after document in the 'West'. And although this is a thin publication it contains some useful information both for anyone interested and scale modellers alike.