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‘Steel Coffins’: Russia’s T-90M Tanks Are ‘Blowing Their Tops’ in Ukraine
(nationalsecurityjournal.org)
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Yes, the reason being that T models have an autoloading mechanism that needs direct access to the ammo. They don't really care, since their soldiers seem to be cheap (to them) and the explosive failure requires a direct hit on the tank. Basically, Western tanks are designed with the safety of the crew in mind, Russian tanks with the safety of the tank in mind.
Is it really "safety of the tank" or is it that they'd rather a faster fire rate at the expense of a possible cook off?
It's not just a faster rate of fire; the autoloader saves you an entire crew member, which means the tank can be smaller, lighter, faster, and has a smaller profile, making it harder to hit, for the same armour and firepower.
It's a very smart trade-off on paper. But it does make them spectacular death traps.
Safety of the tank in terms of evading capture. If the tank explodes instead of just being disabled, it’s useless to capture.
You can build an autoloading mechanism that doesn't require the ammo to be stored this way. They chose to do it anyways to make the tanks smaller, specifically to reduce the height. If you store all the ammo in the turret where you can have blowout panels, the turret will be much larger and the tank higher.
Fair enough. I think part of the design choices specifically included a lower profile to make the tank harder to hit, which goes to tank safety.
This is the correct answer. The autoloader also enabled them to remove one crew member, thus reducing interior space and increasing armor thickness for the same weight. Contemporary western tanks like the M60 didn't have blowout panels either, so the argument that 'the Bolshevik hordes have no regard for the lives of their peasant conscripts, while the enlightened west spares no expense to protect its precious troops' holds no water