Uralvagonzavod Employee Reveals Characteristics of the \"Doomsday Tank\"

Uralvagonzavod began work on the \"Object 279\" tank 70 years ago. The vehicle received an unusual body shape, a four-track chassis, a powerful 130 mm caliber gun, and armor that had no analogues in the world at that time.

The ambitious project had to be closed due to the decision of the first Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev. The characteristics of the tank were publicly named by a research associate of the All-Russian Research Institute of Transport Engineering (part of the Uralvagonzavod concern of the Rostec State Corporation) Dmitry Ignatov.

According to him, the chassis of \"Object 279\" consisted of four caterpillar tracks, each of which included 81 tracks with a width of 580 mm. The average pressure of a 60-ton tank on the ground with this configuration was only 0.6 kg/cm², which is comparable to the parameters of the PT-76 light tank weighing 14.5 t.

Also \"279\" calmly overcame a peat bog with a depth of 1.5 m and at the same time could still tow another stuck tank. The concern emphasized that Object 279, built during the Cold War, was designed to perform tasks in the epicenter of a nuclear strike.

However, the four-track scheme also had certain disadvantages. During the tank tests at the training ground, unreliable suspension operation and large power losses in the caterpillar propulsion unit were noted, especially in rashoditsa.

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