>>63986648>it was a pilot program. So it was never meant to make more than a few prototypes.They obviously intended to arrive at some sort of mass-production tank after the conclusion of the pilot program.
Now any hopes they had of replacing their aging T-64 and T-72 derivatives have been completely dashed by the T-14 being a hopeless pile of shit and a massive waste of time, money, and resources.
The T-14 was supposed to have real advantages over their older tanks. Primarily a modern unmanned turret with a Leclerc-style autoloader, a modern engine, and a shitload of advanced electronics.
The T-14 ended up having none of these things.
A safe and reliable autoloader was deemed to expensive, so after spending years and countless millions trying to develop one, they just stuck a regular turret-toss carousel from a T-80 into it. This turned out to be a terrible idea, in combination with the unmanned turret. The T-80 autoloader isn't particularly reliable and regularly needs crewmen to unfuck it when it jams, they can't do that if there aren't any men in the turret and it's semi-impossible to access the mechanism, requiring partial disassembly of the turret at a repair depot.
The engine turned out to be a massive failure too. It's an old unreliable POS that they tried to turbo-boost up meet modern power requirements. That only made it more unreliable.
To add insult to injury, it's the only engine they have with an adequate power output remotely compact enough to fit into the T-14 chassis.
And the advanced electronics and sensors? Killed by sanctions. Simply copying advanced western tech, China-style, is beyond russia's current technical and industrial capacity, at least if they're intending to mass produce such systems domestically. It's not looking likely that their technical abilities will improve greatly in the forseeable future either, now that they're being technologically surpassed by countries like Turkey, Iran, and India.
