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Be sure to emphasize: modern. North Korea has much more Russian machinery, but much of it is very old. In fact, Russian tanks in South Korea are not that new either: North Korea simply doesn’t have them.
This sentence will make many people angry: the poor Soviet Union was so indebted that it did not even expect to pay its debts. Communist states are not economically sustainable; history has shown this many times. The Soviet Union was also indebted to South Korea. When the evil empire collapsed, that debt was inherited by Russia; According to Nationalinterest.org, that debt was only $ 1.5 billion. Russia and South Korea have reached an agreement: part of that debt will be paid by tanks. He paid for both parties.
Russia had yet to say goodbye to considerable wealth, but those tanks were made from Russian raw materials, collected by the citizens of that country. In other words, the money they paid was like an investment in the country’s economy, not going directly to South Korea. In addition, South Korea was pushed to buy Russian ammunition. Meanwhile, South Korea has had access to technology that will sooner or later be found in the stockpiles of its northern neighbor.
The deal covered 33 T-80U tanks (manufactured since 1985) and a pair of T-80UKs. In fact, up to 80 tanks were mentioned in the original agreement, but that number appears to have decreased somewhat.
And what do the South Korean soldiers think of those Russian tanks? Well, not quite. Reason: in the photo:
AFP / Scanpix Photo / K2 Black Panther Tank developed and manufactured in South Korea
The T-80U has a turbine engine that enables a variety of fuels to be used. This tank works well and is surprisingly maneuverable. But South Korea has this best: The K2 Black Panther main battle tank has been in service since 2014 and is incomparably more modern.
More than 1,000 K1s and several hundred K2 tanks were manufactured in South Korea in South Korea. For the T-80U tank, they can go down to acceleration, but it’s certainly not slow. In fact, the K2 and T-80U have an identical power / weight ratio of 27.2 hp / t. But the Russian tank is swallowing more fuel.
Also, since South Korea never intended to rely solely on T-80U tanks, they were not upgraded. South Korea can produce some parts of these tanks, but most of them must be purchased in foreign markets. It costs a lot of money, which simply leaves the economy. Meanwhile, K1 and K2 parts are produced locally, so buying them is like an investment in the economy.
And the soldiers have nothing good to say about the T-80U. Inaccurate barrel, time required to patch, tight interior. Even the myth about the reliability of the Russian team has been shattered: South Korea is already abandoning those old tanks. North Korea, of course, does not request them, but it certainly would like to.
When the T-80U hit the Korean peninsula, it was the most modern tank in the region. They probably contributed to the K1 and K2 projects. South Korean tanks are much younger, so their advantage is not surprising. The mere fact that South Korea has more modern Russian tanks than North Korea is quite interesting.
And the UK has T-80U tanks. Or at least he had them. In 1992, the UK acquired several of these tanks for research. Russia probably would not have agreed to sell its best tanks to a NATO state. So the UK used a trick: tanks purchased through a private company had to officially travel to Morocco. One of the UK’s T-80U tanks was later transferred to the United States.
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