T-72M: Difference between revisions
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For historians out there, the T-72M was phased in with the Land Forces of the NVA starting in the 1970s, and the process was complete with first-line tank regiments by the late 1970s/early 1980s. The T-72M was the MBT of choice with the 7th and 9th Panzer Divisions, the two tank divisions of the East German army, but the motor rifle divisions' tank regiments, along with those in second-line and reserve divisions, often had to make do with the older T-54/T-55. | For historians out there, the T-72M was phased in with the Land Forces of the NVA starting in the 1970s, and the process was complete with first-line tank regiments by the late 1970s/early 1980s. The T-72M was the MBT of choice with the 7th and 9th Panzer Divisions, the two tank divisions of the East German army, but the motor rifle divisions' tank regiments, along with those in second-line and reserve divisions, often had to make do with the older T-54/T-55. | ||
"Volksarmee" features a T-72M company within Panzerregiment 21 "Walter Empacher" in most of its story descriptions from an East German perspective, and provides some background the 9th Panzer Division. | "Volksarmee" features a T-72M company within Panzerregiment 21 "Walter Empacher" in most of its story descriptions from an East German perspective, and provides some background on the 9th Panzer Division. | ||
{{clear}} | |||
===Poland=== | ===Poland=== | ||
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It may have the worst statline of the T-72 family with 5+ remount and courage, but who cares? With 15 frontal armor you rarely need to roll for them. What makes this unit possibly the strongest variant is 4+ skill combined with the low cost. You can run them in units of 3 to 10 tanks, and a minimum sized unit gives you a discount. Starting at 2 points per tank with a minimum sized unit and costing 3 points per additional tank. The Czech T-72M has the cheapest bang for your buck. Your individual units may be rather shit, but the discount for a minimum sized unit allows for a decent alpha strike using MSU (multiple small units) if you don't mind giving up the kill points. If one goes down, there's another to take its place and a brutal, AT21 gun is still a very dangerous weapon: scary against tanks at close, scarier against entrenched infantry (because of how many more tanks you can bring from the discount). | It may have the worst statline of the T-72 family with 5+ remount and courage, but who cares? With 15 frontal armor you rarely need to roll for them. What makes this unit possibly the strongest variant is 4+ skill combined with the low cost. You can run them in units of 3 to 10 tanks, and a minimum sized unit gives you a discount. Starting at 2 points per tank with a minimum sized unit and costing 3 points per additional tank. The Czech T-72M has the cheapest bang for your buck. Your individual units may be rather shit, but the discount for a minimum sized unit allows for a decent alpha strike using MSU (multiple small units) if you don't mind giving up the kill points. If one goes down, there's another to take its place and a brutal, AT21 gun is still a very dangerous weapon: scary against tanks at close, scarier against entrenched infantry (because of how many more tanks you can bring from the discount). | ||
Unlike your infantry, T-72Ms are squishy and are pretty unlikely to survive after being hit by ATGMs. The fact | Unlike your infantry, T-72Ms are squishy and are pretty unlikely to survive after being hit by ATGMs. The fact is they will instantly blow up when touched by dedicated anti-tank weapons like cannons or Milans. All T-72Ms suffer from this flaw, making the Czech version the best since stats like courage, morale and remount become less relevant: this unit dies too quickly to even test these stats. You are investing all your points into firepower: combined with the discount, you can bring the most tanks to the field without compromising on special rules (brutal) or firepower (T-55AM2). | ||
You start with companies of 3 tanks at 6 points, up to 10 T-72Ms for 27 points. | You start with companies of 3 tanks at 6 points, up to 10 T-72Ms for 27 points. | ||
===Iraq=== | {{clear}} | ||
===Iraq and Syrian=== | |||
[[File:IRAQT72M.jpg|300px|left|thumb|They don't wanna be here, ''and'' they don't know how to fight!]] | [[File:IRAQT72M.jpg|300px|left|thumb|They don't wanna be here, ''and'' they don't know how to fight!]] | ||
Oh, yes. Our timeline has already seen plenty of the <s>utter incompetence</s> mediocrity of Saddam Hussein's T-72M tanks. As | Oh, yes. Our timeline has already seen plenty of the <s>utter incompetence</s> mediocrity of Saddam Hussein's T-72M tanks. As was seen in the OTL's Gulf War and 2003 invasion of Iraq, the combination of poorly trained, led, and motivated men using obsolete and neglected equipment makes for a ''lot'' of death on one side. In 1985, however, the Iraqi military is more fortunate. The Americans and their well-armed allies in NATO are busy shooting at Soviet, Polish, East German and Czechoslovakian soldiers and thus in no position to bother with the brutal and authoritarian Hussein regime ''that Reagan is sorta-kinda supporting to fight the Iranians.'' | ||
However, what history shows us about the skill and motivation of Saddam's men holds true here- all the Iraqi crews get is 4's and 5's across the board. They do outrank their Czech counterparts in a few categories, however, and it doesn't much matter if your guys wanna bail and run for home if their tank is gonna explode the first time somebody scores a solid hit. | |||
The T-72M in the game so far is the Iraqi Army version, as reflected by the crew's lousy stats. Saddam never trusted his own army and, whether he was deliberately imitating Adolf Hitler or not, mimicked the German dictator by creating the Republican Guard, a direct parallel to the Waffen-SS. The Republican Guard still had to use cheap Soviet hardware, but they got the best training and leadership the Iraqi regime could offer. We'll see whether or not the Republican Guard makes an appearance using the T-72M. If you want to custom-add them into the game, using the Polish or East German stats could work, reflecting the superior motivation and discipline of the Republican Guard. | The T-72M in the game so far is the Iraqi Army version, as reflected by the crew's lousy stats. Saddam never trusted his own army and, whether he was deliberately imitating Adolf Hitler or not, mimicked the German dictator by creating the Republican Guard, a direct parallel to the Waffen-SS. The Republican Guard still had to use cheap Soviet hardware, but they got the best training and leadership the Iraqi regime could offer. We'll see whether or not the Republican Guard makes an appearance using the T-72M. If you want to custom-add them into the game, using the Polish or East German stats could work, reflecting the superior motivation and discipline of the Republican Guard. | ||
The Iraqi T-72M does have one thing going for it | <s>The Iraqi T-72M does have one thing going for it: it isn't having to take on the Americans and their much, much better tank crews this time. At least, not yet.</s> Hello M1a1. | ||
The Syrian army is also using the T-72M. These are exactly the same as those of the Iraqis, both in ratings and vehicle profile. | |||
{{clear}} | {{clear}} | ||
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==IRL== | ==IRL== | ||
[[File:T-72M Photo.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Mine plough? Nein, panzer bayonet genosse!]] | [[File:T-72M Photo.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Mine plough? Nein, panzer bayonet genosse!]] | ||
The T-72 family of tanks has a bewildering number of subvariants, including no less than three models named "T-72M". In the west it's often believed that the T-72M is a "monkey model", a cheap and downgraded variant the Soviet Union exported while keeping all the good tanks for themselves. This isn't really the case, but it always took a few years for the most modern tanks to reach export to the Warsaw Pact, and a few more years to get exported outside Europe. In Team Yankee, the Soviet Union is running around with T-72As from 1983 while the Warsaw Pact and Iraq has to make do with copies of the T-72 Ural-1 from 1978 upgraded with T-72A internals. In Team Yankee this shows up as 1 less front armour and anti tank on the main gun. (The latter from extremely strict export restrictions on ammunition, which never let anyone have anything better than late 70s ammunition.) Iraqi T-72Ms actually were downgraded, but the only change from the WaPa T-72M is having a cheaper and simpler NBC protection system. It's not like anyone's going to use NBC weapons in the Middle East, right? | |||
The T-72M, like the Soviet T- | The T-72M, like the Soviet T-72A, features an automatic loading system, reducing the crew requirement to three. By early 80s standards it has a powerful main gun, thick armour, and a not half-bad computerized gunnery system. Absolutely no internal protection whatsoever against ammunition explosions means that the crew will almost certainly be killed if a shot penetrates the armor of the main hull. This happened a ''lot'' to men of the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard during both the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the most modern US munitions could slice right through all but the best armoured tanks in the world. The soldiers of the Warsaw Pact were better-trained, better led, and ''far'' more motivated than the armored crews of Saddam Hussein's paper tiger, however, so as lethal as a T-72M could be to its own crew, it posed no small threat to its enemies in the West in the mid-1980s. Something else to remember: in 2003, the original T-72M was hopelessly obsolete. In 1985, it was in its prime and NATO soldiers had good reason to be afraid of it, especially if they weren't riding around in a 40-something-ton war machine. Anything lighter than another MBT would have gotten its clock righteously cleaned by the T-72M if they didn't manage to destroy it first. | ||
East Germany's T-72Ms were either scrapped or given away when West Germany took over in 1990, but Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia all held onto their T-72Ms and are still using them as of 2019. | East Germany's T-72Ms were either scrapped or given away when West Germany took over in 1990, but Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia all held onto their T-72Ms and are still using them as of 2019. | ||
Latest revision as of 13:27, 23 June 2023
The T-72M was the export variant of the Russian T-72, sitting somewhere between the base "T-72 Ural" variant and the first upgrade "T-72A". It lacks the turret and glacis composite armour layers of her Russian brother, instead using a form of spaced armour. The T-72M is nonetheless a formidable tank, able to punch through the armour of even an M1 Abrams or Leopard 2 with its 125mm 2A46 cannon. It forms the very best of the armored forces of the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People's Republic, and Czechoslovakia in 1985.
In Team Yankee[edit | edit source]
East Germany[edit | edit source]
The more advanced tank option for East German commanders, the T-72M is a pretty decent option for those who want to bury their enemies in steel, but also want a tank that isn't older than their Opa.
The T-72M has the exact same armament as its Soviet model, so this might get a bit repetitive. The T-72M mounts a 125mm 2A46 gun which is quite capable of brutalizing early model NATO Main Battle tanks and stands a decent chance of damaging later models with its AT value of 21, and with the FP of 2+, practically anything you penetrate you are going to blow up. It's also rather good at dealing with unarmored targets like infantry and light vehicles as the Brutal rule means that they have to re-roll their successful saves. The T-72M can fire on the move with near impunity as the stabilizer negates the negative effects of moving, and the laser range-finder negates the penalties of firing at extreme range. The only downside is the fact that the 2A46 only has a ROF of 1, both halted and on the move, which means that you must mass tanks to mass fire. Oh, there is also a pair of machine guns; one 12.7mm AA mounted on a pintle and a 7.62mm mounted coaxially.
As for the armor, well let's just say that it isn't great. The frontal armor of the T-72M is 15, one better than the T55AM2 and the exact same as the M60 Patton. The T-72M will have a very difficult time dealing with Dedicated AT Weapons, especially HEAT shells, as they don't lose penetration at extreme distances. Your okay-ish side armour of 8 does get a boost against them, with Bazooka Skirts bumping the value up to 10. Notably, however, the armor is only one worse than the composite version.
T-72M Panzer Kompanies starts out with three tanks costing a total of 7 points. After that, you may add any number of vehicles to the unit up to a grand total of 10 T-72Ms, with every extra tank costing you an additional 4 points (so a max of 35). Yes this does mean that if you were using T55AM2s you could have twice the tanks for the same price, but you sacrifice a lot for that cheapness, so think about it before you join the Zerg rushing hordes.
For historians out there, the T-72M was phased in with the Land Forces of the NVA starting in the 1970s, and the process was complete with first-line tank regiments by the late 1970s/early 1980s. The T-72M was the MBT of choice with the 7th and 9th Panzer Divisions, the two tank divisions of the East German army, but the motor rifle divisions' tank regiments, along with those in second-line and reserve divisions, often had to make do with the older T-54/T-55.
"Volksarmee" features a T-72M company within Panzerregiment 21 "Walter Empacher" in most of its story descriptions from an East German perspective, and provides some background on the 9th Panzer Division.
Poland[edit | edit source]
The best tank in the Polish People's Army arsenal, the T-72M has only 1 more point of front armor and 1 more point of side armor than the much older T-55AM2. It, too, excels at exploding. A Brutal 125mm main cannon with a Stabiliser and Laser Rangefinder mean that if the fighting men of the Polish People's Army get close enough to the imperialist swine NATO armies, even the Americans' new M1 Abrams and the West Germans' deadly Leopard 2 can be destroyed by this cheap Polish tank monument to Polish working-class brawn. It is far more capable of firing on the move than the T-55AM2 'Merida' and does not suffer under the Slow Firing rule, which is great news when the well-trained, well-equipped NATO armies are doing their best to kill you.
For a handful more points, your Polish tank company gains 3+ courage and remount over the East German version. However, the T-72M has the same problem as the T-55AM2: it does NOT survive if an enemy touches it. At 15 frontal armour, you have a chance against LRACs and RPG-17s but not much else. The T-72M serves as the most powerful offensive tool the Poles can bring to the table alongside the Mi-24W Hind. For only a handful more points than the East German version, your stats become much better suited for mine-clearing. Remount remains irrelevant since most hits will result in kills, but 3+ courage gives you some very nice utility when building an offensively-minded tank list.
A Polish T-72M company may bring 3 T-72Ms for 7 points, or up to 10 for 37 points.
Czechoslovakia[edit | edit source]
Thought an even cheaper version of the T-72M would be worse? Think again.
It may have the worst statline of the T-72 family with 5+ remount and courage, but who cares? With 15 frontal armor you rarely need to roll for them. What makes this unit possibly the strongest variant is 4+ skill combined with the low cost. You can run them in units of 3 to 10 tanks, and a minimum sized unit gives you a discount. Starting at 2 points per tank with a minimum sized unit and costing 3 points per additional tank. The Czech T-72M has the cheapest bang for your buck. Your individual units may be rather shit, but the discount for a minimum sized unit allows for a decent alpha strike using MSU (multiple small units) if you don't mind giving up the kill points. If one goes down, there's another to take its place and a brutal, AT21 gun is still a very dangerous weapon: scary against tanks at close, scarier against entrenched infantry (because of how many more tanks you can bring from the discount).
Unlike your infantry, T-72Ms are squishy and are pretty unlikely to survive after being hit by ATGMs. The fact is they will instantly blow up when touched by dedicated anti-tank weapons like cannons or Milans. All T-72Ms suffer from this flaw, making the Czech version the best since stats like courage, morale and remount become less relevant: this unit dies too quickly to even test these stats. You are investing all your points into firepower: combined with the discount, you can bring the most tanks to the field without compromising on special rules (brutal) or firepower (T-55AM2).
You start with companies of 3 tanks at 6 points, up to 10 T-72Ms for 27 points.
Iraq and Syrian[edit | edit source]
Oh, yes. Our timeline has already seen plenty of the utter incompetence mediocrity of Saddam Hussein's T-72M tanks. As was seen in the OTL's Gulf War and 2003 invasion of Iraq, the combination of poorly trained, led, and motivated men using obsolete and neglected equipment makes for a lot of death on one side. In 1985, however, the Iraqi military is more fortunate. The Americans and their well-armed allies in NATO are busy shooting at Soviet, Polish, East German and Czechoslovakian soldiers and thus in no position to bother with the brutal and authoritarian Hussein regime that Reagan is sorta-kinda supporting to fight the Iranians.
However, what history shows us about the skill and motivation of Saddam's men holds true here- all the Iraqi crews get is 4's and 5's across the board. They do outrank their Czech counterparts in a few categories, however, and it doesn't much matter if your guys wanna bail and run for home if their tank is gonna explode the first time somebody scores a solid hit.
The T-72M in the game so far is the Iraqi Army version, as reflected by the crew's lousy stats. Saddam never trusted his own army and, whether he was deliberately imitating Adolf Hitler or not, mimicked the German dictator by creating the Republican Guard, a direct parallel to the Waffen-SS. The Republican Guard still had to use cheap Soviet hardware, but they got the best training and leadership the Iraqi regime could offer. We'll see whether or not the Republican Guard makes an appearance using the T-72M. If you want to custom-add them into the game, using the Polish or East German stats could work, reflecting the superior motivation and discipline of the Republican Guard.
The Iraqi T-72M does have one thing going for it: it isn't having to take on the Americans and their much, much better tank crews this time. At least, not yet. Hello M1a1.
The Syrian army is also using the T-72M. These are exactly the same as those of the Iraqis, both in ratings and vehicle profile.
| East German Forces in Team Yankee | |
|---|---|
| Tanks: | T-55 - T55AM2 - T-72M - T-72B |
| Transports: | BTR-60 - BMP-1 - BMP-2 |
| Troops: | Mot-Schützen Kompanie - Hind Assault Landing Company |
| Artillery: | 2S1 Carnation - BM-21 Hail - RM-70 - 2S3 Acacia |
| Anti-Aircraft: | ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-13 Gopher - SA9 Gaskin - SA-8 Gecko |
| Tank Hunters: | Spandrel |
| Recon: | BMP-1 OP - BRDM-2 |
| Aircraft: | MI-24 Hind - SU-22 Fitter |
| Soviet Support: | SU-25 Frogfoot |
| Polish Forces in Team Yankee | |
|---|---|
| Tanks: | T-55 - T55AM2 - T-72M - T-72B |
| Transports: | SKOT-2A - BMP-1 - BMP-2 |
| Troops: | Zmotory Kompania - Hind Assault Landing Company |
| Artillery: | Dana SpGH - BM-21 Hail |
| Anti-Aircraft: | ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-13 Gopher -SA-8 Gecko |
| Tank Hunters: | Spandrel |
| Recon: | BMP-1 OP - BRDM-2 |
| Aircraft: | MI-24 Hind - SU-22 Fitter |
| Soviet Support: | SU-25 Frogfoot |
| Czech Forces in Team Yankee | |
|---|---|
| Tanks: | T-55 - T55AM2 - T-72M - T-72B |
| Transports: | OT-64 - BMP-1 - BMP-2 |
| Troops: | Motostrelci |
| Artillery: | 2S1 Carnation - Dana SpGH - RM-70 |
| Anti-Aircraft: | ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-8 Gecko - SA9 Gaskin - SA-13 Gopher - M53/59 Praga |
| Tank Hunters: | Spandrel |
| Recon: | BMP-1 OP - BRDM-2 |
| Aircraft: | MI-24 Hind - SU-25 Frogfoot - SU-22 Fitter |
| Iraqi Forces in Team Yankee | |
|---|---|
| Tanks: | T-55 - T-62 - T-72M |
| Transports: | BTR-60 - OT-64 - AMX-10P - BMP-1 |
| Troops: | Motor Rifle Company |
| Artillery: | 2S1 Carnation - 2S3 Acacia - AMX Auf1 - BM-21 Hail |
| Anti-Aircraft: | ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-13 Gopher - SA9 Gaskin - SA-8 Gecko - Roland AA |
| Tank Hunters: | Spandrel - VCR/TH |
| Recon: | BRDM-2 - BTR-60 OP |
| Aircraft: | MI-24 Hind - Gazelle HOT |
| US Support: | A-10 Warthog - AV-8 Harrier |
Monster Hunter International[edit | edit source]
The Polish hunting group White Eagle Military Contracting has at least two, likely more, T-72Ms under their ownership. Unlike most military vehicles retained by hunting companies, these retain their original armament.
IRL[edit | edit source]
The T-72 family of tanks has a bewildering number of subvariants, including no less than three models named "T-72M". In the west it's often believed that the T-72M is a "monkey model", a cheap and downgraded variant the Soviet Union exported while keeping all the good tanks for themselves. This isn't really the case, but it always took a few years for the most modern tanks to reach export to the Warsaw Pact, and a few more years to get exported outside Europe. In Team Yankee, the Soviet Union is running around with T-72As from 1983 while the Warsaw Pact and Iraq has to make do with copies of the T-72 Ural-1 from 1978 upgraded with T-72A internals. In Team Yankee this shows up as 1 less front armour and anti tank on the main gun. (The latter from extremely strict export restrictions on ammunition, which never let anyone have anything better than late 70s ammunition.) Iraqi T-72Ms actually were downgraded, but the only change from the WaPa T-72M is having a cheaper and simpler NBC protection system. It's not like anyone's going to use NBC weapons in the Middle East, right?
The T-72M, like the Soviet T-72A, features an automatic loading system, reducing the crew requirement to three. By early 80s standards it has a powerful main gun, thick armour, and a not half-bad computerized gunnery system. Absolutely no internal protection whatsoever against ammunition explosions means that the crew will almost certainly be killed if a shot penetrates the armor of the main hull. This happened a lot to men of the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard during both the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the most modern US munitions could slice right through all but the best armoured tanks in the world. The soldiers of the Warsaw Pact were better-trained, better led, and far more motivated than the armored crews of Saddam Hussein's paper tiger, however, so as lethal as a T-72M could be to its own crew, it posed no small threat to its enemies in the West in the mid-1980s. Something else to remember: in 2003, the original T-72M was hopelessly obsolete. In 1985, it was in its prime and NATO soldiers had good reason to be afraid of it, especially if they weren't riding around in a 40-something-ton war machine. Anything lighter than another MBT would have gotten its clock righteously cleaned by the T-72M if they didn't manage to destroy it first.
East Germany's T-72Ms were either scrapped or given away when West Germany took over in 1990, but Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia all held onto their T-72Ms and are still using them as of 2019.
The actual model of the T-72M used in Team Yankee is an East German T-72M which has been fiddled with a bit, Wiki claims with Rubber Skirts, Smoke grenades and 16 additional millimeters of armor.