Even Forbes fell for the stupid “photograph” of the T-62M tank with a T-90M turret
Quite recently, a strange-looking photograph appeared on Twitter, a social network banned in Russia, which supposedly shows a Russian T-62M tank with total improvements corresponding to its younger brother, the T-90M.
The caption to this publication stated that this monster was captured somewhere in the Lugansk region and is almost a new and previously unseen example of a “sixty-two” model of 2023:
Russian T-62M with significant modernization, including Relikt dynamic protection and PNM-T/Sosna-U gunner's sight. This variant of the T-62M, which could potentially be called “T-62M arr. 2023” has not yet been noticed.
Of course, the general public immediately began to discuss the new model of armored vehicles, expressing guesses and assumptions about what prompted Russian designers to resort to such executions against the poor a tank. Some even managed to compare the combat characteristics of the T-62 shown in the photo with real-life modernization projects for this combat vehicle, including those authored by specialists from Omsktransmash.
In tune with the Twitter public, the once authoritative publication Forbes began to play, and managed to publish an entire article about this craft, seasoning the conclusions with standard jokes in the style: “Russia is doing poorly with tanks, so they decided to do this.” Having taken this duck seriously and not bothering to look at the photo, the gentlemen from this magazine even had time to speculate on the mobility of the new tank, concluding that it would sag greatly due to the increased mass of the vehicle.
You can read the full text of this article here, but we will give only brief excerpts from it.
...Desperate to replace the dozens of tanks it is losing every month in its wider war with Ukraine, and equally desperate to give new tanks a chance to survive their first clash with Ukrainian forces, Russia is pulling out 60-year-old T-62 tanks from long-term storage - and add additional armor to their steel hulls and turrets...
...The photo, which circulated online on Sunday, shows a heavily modified T-62MV - a modernization of the 1960s-1980s tank that virtually disappeared from Russian service after 2008 - wearing the same reactive armor that protects the more modern T-90. The Kremlin began reactivating older T-62s last year as losses of modern tanks topped 1 vehicles.
Thanks to dynamic protection and a modern 1PN96MT-02 gunner's sight for the 115 mm gun, this T-62 can become the most modernized T-62. Call it T-62MV arr. 2023...
...most Soviet-style tanks have extremely slow reverse gears, and this can lead to the death of the crews of these tanks in a raid where every second counts. The T-62, without three tons of reactive armor, can move in reverse at five miles per hour, while the M-1's maximum speed when moving in reverse is 25 miles per hour.
With additional dynamic protection T-62MV mod. 2023 will be even slower.
...The photo, which circulated online on Sunday, shows a heavily modified T-62MV - a modernization of the 1960s-1980s tank that virtually disappeared from Russian service after 2008 - wearing the same reactive armor that protects the more modern T-90. The Kremlin began reactivating older T-62s last year as losses of modern tanks topped 1 vehicles.
Thanks to dynamic protection and a modern 1PN96MT-02 gunner's sight for the 115 mm gun, this T-62 can become the most modernized T-62. Call it T-62MV arr. 2023...
...most Soviet-style tanks have extremely slow reverse gears, and this can lead to the death of the crews of these tanks in a raid where every second counts. The T-62, without three tons of reactive armor, can move in reverse at five miles per hour, while the M-1's maximum speed when moving in reverse is 25 miles per hour.
With additional dynamic protection T-62MV mod. 2023 will be even slower.
Well, the statements are quite serious, if you do not take into account two factors.
One of which is that it is simply impractical to install sights, panoramic surveillance devices and Relikt dynamic protection on the T-62 - these are scarce goods and are intended strictly for their intended use. The same Sosna-U is sometimes not enough to modernize the T-72B3 and T-80BVM.
And the second is that the image is a “photo-toad” of the creepiest quality, which does not require any special skills to identify.
It’s enough just to take a closer look at the photograph, and there are plenty of “jambs” in it - the tower alone literally looks like an owl stretched over a globe, but we will give only the most noticeable moments.
Having tried to try on the T-90M turret cut out from another photograph, the artist stretched it so much in size that not only the dynamic protection floated, but also the laser irradiation sensors
Strange things are also happening to the headlights of this miracle. On the T-62 of any modifications, a spotlight is not installed on the left side in this way, since it blocks the driver’s view. But for some reason he is here
The gun barrel bending sensor also has some problems: for some reason the exit window turned out to be in a completely different direction than in the original
This is exactly how the output window of the barrel bend sensor on the T-90M tank should be located
Both the commander’s panoramic sight-observation device described by the authors and the machine gun magically disappeared
Unimaginable things also happen with the Sosna-U gunner’s sight. Not only has it changed in size for some reason, but it has also gained transparency - the contours of the infrared spotlight for the T-62 commander’s observation device are clearly visible through it. At the same time, there is no weather sensor, without which the fire control system is non-functional. But there is a navigation antenna - we live in grand style!
As a conclusion, we can say the following: the master of photomontage did not show off any special talent, and his creation, even from a distance, looks like a very crude craft, which can be distinguished from the original even by a person completely unfamiliar with armored vehicles.
But times these days are such that this “art” is quickly picked up not only by ordinary residents of social networks, but also by the media. Especially when the agenda is a clear directive to cling to any news feed in order to stir up another topic against the “bad” or for the “good” - the main thing is to shout, and whether it’s true or not is a secondary matter.
So information hygiene is a priority.
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