These “mobile coffins” suffer from a catastrophic design flaw—the “jack-in-the-box” effect—where ammunition carousels ignite, launching turrets stories into the air.
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The flaws aren’t limited to older T-72 tanks; the newer T-80 and T-90 series also have a similar autoloading system in which ammunition is stored inside the turret. While the armor surrounding the tanks has been improved, this flaw persists, and Western analysts point to the Russian military’s refusal to learn from the hard lessons of the Gulf War.
Sort of. They use an auto loader system for their tanks so they need less crew. For this to work, there is carousel with ammo just below the turret, instead of having the ammo deeper down. Quick loaded and firing, lower profile, but also one good hit that sets of the ammo in the carousel, and pop goes the turret.
It also wasn’t a major problem of course before drones and their cheap air capability, it’s a hard target ground to ground, and naturally proper infantry support could mitigate it quite well even now.
One of Russia’s failures is that the Cold War skirmishes trained them to ignore the realities of large scale ground warfare against and organized opponent, while their western neighbours have given it as much thought as an existential threat deserves.