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 "View of the gunner's sights MBT T-80BVM - laser sight-rangefinder 1G42 (left) and combined thermal imaging sight "Sosna-U" (right)"


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"AGAVA" - "AGAVA-2" and its confusing history

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When covering Soviet sight technology there are always some interesting designs and approaches to solving an issue. It is a common fact that the Soviet Union in the 1980s-1990s was quite behind in thermal sight technology. Only in the 1990s, but to be specific in 1992, the Soviet Union now Russia started to field small batches of thermal sights on their tanks, primarily T-80Us and some of the early T-90 variants, which just recently entered service. Russia's journey through creating its own domestic thermal sight traces back to 1982.  The 1980s were quite an important time for the 'Krasnogorsk Factory named after S.A Zverev', which is still to date an Optical Engineering and Optoelectronics factory. The factory is primarily known for making domestic Soviet cameras back in the day. However, that's not the only thing that the factory has produced back then.  Close to the mid-1980s, the facility was contracted to develop new thermal sight technology for the Soviet Ministry...
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A new sight for the modernized T-90

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  Back in 2018, a new programme was started. This programme's focus is to create domestic equipment for Russian armoured vehicles, specifically optics. This is so that the Russian army can stop depending on the french company "Thales" and their Catherine technology. T-72B3 received new internal components for the Sosna-U sight, phasing out any foreign components. As for the T-90M/T-90MS, something else was done. Previously, the T-90M/T-90MS employed the Sosna-U sight, which featured french components from Thales. However, the internals of the sight was not simply replaced. This time, a completely new domestic sight was created under the name PNM-T. The sight was reportedly made by the PJSC ANPP TEMP-AVIA in 2018 or 2019. The first appearance was in the Telekanal Zvezda show, during the episode about the Proryv-3 (T-90M). In this episode, a new plaque can be seen with the name of the sight. Its first public physical appearance, however, was at the Army-2019 event. The doo...
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T-80 rubber flaps - Part 3

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