The Black Eagle tank, was a presumed prototype main battle tank produced in the Russian Federation. It was thought to have been developed by the KBTM design bureau in Omsk in the late 1990s. A production version of this tank has never been publicly demonstrated. The Black Eagle has been cancelled, with all production and development halted. The company that was developing the tank, Omsktransmash, has gone bankrupt, and its designs and projects have been absorbed into Uralvagonzavod and state owned services. Uralvagonzavod was developing the T-95 in competition to the Black Eagle, and now owns the rights to both projects, but the Russian government has withdrawn all support and funding for the project.
Development
Development started during the 1980s, when the design bureau of the Leningrad Kirov Plant developed a new design based on the stretched T-80U chassis. Later, when the bureau closed, the documentation was transferred to KBTM in Omsk. A mock-up of the Black Eagle was first demonstrated at the VTTV arms exposition in Omsk, in September 1997, making a single brief pass, far from the reviewing stands. The tank appeared to be a standard T-80U hull, topped by a very large turret and gun, obscured by camouflage netting and canvas. The turret later turned out to be a crude mock-up. An early prototype was shown at an arms exposition in Siberia, in June 1999. This tank had an elongated hull with seven pairs of road wheels instead of the T-80's six, and a turret still mostly obscured by camouflage netting. The tank was based on a lengthened T-80U hull, with an extra pair of road wheels and a brand new turret. It appeared to have had very thick front armour and new-generation Kaktusexplosive reactive armour on the hull and turret. The turret had a very large, box-shaped turret bustle instead of the traditional dome shape of previous Soviet and Russian main battle tanks. According to Russian reports, the Black Eagle design had abandoned the carousel-style autoloader in the fighting compartment for an autoloader mounted in the large western-style turret bustle, which incorporates a blow-out armoured ammunition compartment for crew safety, like the U.S. M1 Abrams, the German Leopard 2, British Challenger 2, French Leclerc and several other modern western tanks. The prototype had a 125 mm tank gun, but it was stated that it may have accommodated a larger 152 mm gun. There was debate about whether the Black Eagle would incorporate the Drozd or Arena.
Cancellation
The Black Eagle project was formally cancelled in 2001. Development of the Black Eagle was stopped due to financial problems, questions about the reliability of the design and, most importantly, the terrible performance of the T-80, upon which it was modeled, in the first Chechen war. The T-80 performed so poorly that after the conflict General-Lieutenant A. Galkin, the head of the Armor Directorate, convinced the Minister of Defence to never again procure tanks with gas-turbine engines. This included the Black Eagle, which was promptly cancelled. The manufacturers, Omsk Transmash, attempted to appeal the decision, but were unable to pursue the appeal after filing for bankruptcy in 2002. As of July 2008, the Russian army planned to adopt a new Uralvagonzavod tank after 2010, possibly designated T-95. However, development of the T-95 tank was also cancelled, in May 2010. Colonel Vladimir Voitov, head of research at the Main Directorate of the Armored Troops, denied the existence of the tank in an interview with the Echo Moskvy radio in September 2009. "There was no such project...and those 20-year-old pictures show a mock-up of a futuristic tank which remained just a product of someone's imagination,"... "the turret of the vehicle did not have anything inside." It was announced that some technical solutions developed for the Black Eagle tank will be incorporated into the Armata Universal Combat Platform which is currently in production.
