SSTF

Kind of sort of, but I was thinking more along the lines of the U.S. Army’s “MFP” M10. Essentially reviving the light tank but adding some Science on top.

BMDs were still made along the trajectory of IFVs where they can hold troops, and like you mentioned the lighter armor from the airborne desire for use makes them vulnerable even to smaller diameter HEAT rounds.

My vague vision would be something more like a light tank (by the modern definition of “light” which is more like 50ish tons bare and 60 with all the fixins), with enough armor to survive side hits from low 80ish-mm rounds, and very importantly investment in active protection. Thermal signature reduction like a lot of new showcase vehicles are adding. Maybe even something like the new KF Panther where they have a dedicated drone operator to control a drone that shadows the tank. This all is kind of “if I were king of the world” thought experimenting since of course Russia clearly doesn’t have the resources to even make proper upgrades to T90Ms to bring them up to a 2020s standard.

Can you clarify.

I don’t think there was a good option that was also realistic. The T-90M is itself a long in the tooth design that hasn’t gotten the kinds of modernizations that tanks like the Abrams have to keep it relevant (and even then the Abrams is already being retired by the U.S.) Russian tanks needed an overhaul from the T-90M.

The T-14 on paper had a lot of good upgrades. The problem of course being that it’s much easier to draw something than make it work.

So the two options were keep building obsolete “modern” tanks or build a next gen tank that doesn’t work.

What Russian tanks needed was an overhaul to their fire control and ideally their protection to keep up and shift into active protection. The ancient curtain system is not cutting it.

Part of my wonders if maybe they should have invested in something scaled back and novel. Make a lightweight vehicle like the totally-not-a-tank-we-swear M10 Booker. Something lightweight, with a smaller caliber main gun to focus on taking out structures and infantry targets. Stick some active protection on it, and some missiles and you’ve got a vehicle that bridges that gap between IFV and MBT.

155mm, and the U.S. has about 1500 of its M109 self propelled guns in service.

Russia has spent up enough of of their mainline modern vehicles like T-90Ms to a point where the refurbishments have long ago stopped keeping up. Similarly IFVs are lost, especially many of their airborne models which were misused early in the war.

The war has become much more static, with Russian vehicle losses slowing them down. The final assault on Avdiivka for example was completely brutal, lasting a month and consisting of a lot of unsupported infantry charges over an open field. The Russians did eventually win, taking the fortified position they were assaulting, but the tactics used and amount of losses to do them are not something that would have happened if they’d had the vehicles to spare.

The shear scale of the war has had Russia brute force it from being a maneuver fight to an attrition fight, and Russia appears to be banking on having the higher population to win. How that will resolve is up in the air, Ukraine wants to turn it back into a maneuver war I think and I don’t know if they can. The propaganda from the war by both sides can make it difficult to get a clear up to date picture.

Also, pretty sure modern warfare has learned heavily that tanks are completely obsolete against drones. Or even less modern warfare tells us how useless they are in cities against [guerrilla] fighters.

Tanks are one tool in the box, and like any other tool they are adapting to drones. Drones are not a silver bullet, and they especially are not as useful in supporting or spearheading fast moving offensives, which is still an important role tanks will fill. Active protection systems, electronic warfare (both jamming and signal detection to track down enemy drone operators), and tank based drones are all in play to figure out how to best do things now.

As for cities, tanks have always had trouble in cities. This isn’t a revelation of this war. Militaries tend to be skiddish of putting tanks in city fights unless they really have to. Russia particularly still has memories of Chechnya in this regard.

It never really existed in production, of course. It is like the early builds of the AK-12 where one offs were made and shown off as if they were going into full scale production soon.

The more real BMPT was at least fielded in double digit numbers, although conceptually it seems more suited to being a terror weapon supporting a shock & awe type advance rather than something used in a prolonged war.