History and military technology: Interview with a former M-84 commander

A former M-84 commander kindly accepted an interview for the blog. M. trained as a commander and served as a platoon leader in M-84 tank unit, spending 4 years of his career. He also trained conscripts in the use of this tank, which was considered one of the most advanced versions of the T-72. When evaluated in the Soviet Union, the FCS was judged to be comparable to that of T-80U, which was by then the most modern tank.

1. Hello M., many thanks for accepting an interview for alejandro-8en.blogspot.com. Could you provide us a brief introduction to your career in the Armed Forces of Serbia?

Hello. Thank you for this interview. I graduated Military Academy in Belgrade, specialized in Armour Units. After graduation I have been posted as a platoon leader in M-84 tank unit and later, after the dissolution of my first unit I was transferred to BVM M-80 Mechanized infantry. Overall I have spent 4 years in M-84 units and 5 years in BVP M-80 units. After that I went to be operations officer, but that’s not important for this interview

2. What do you think were the strong and weak points of the M-84 tanks?

This is a bit difficult to explain in today’s point of view. M-84 is generally a very reliable tank, pretty easy to operate and maintain. If there is something I would like to point out as a good side, it is the mobility, because there never was a slope I couldn’t traverse or obstacle I could not ford. Also, the Firing control system is excellent and really gives you an edge. It does lack thermal vision but as much I know it was corrected on the latest models. As a bad side, I would point out the crew workload and the lack of air conditioning

3. What were the typical targets/exercises (distances, speed) when practising gunnery? What was the maximum distance at which you opened fire with the M-84? What about the speed of the tank if firing from the move?

Before I answer this question, I would like to point out that I never fired a shot in anger, and all of my firing was done as a training or maneuver. Typical targets we shot were silhouettes and distance was 1800-2500 meters for main gun and 600 to 1000 meters for the coax. 12.7 mm targets were 600-1200 meters, but this varied on the properties of the terrain. Speed of the vehicle was also limited by the properties of the terrain, but it was 20-40 km/h when firing live ammo and 30-50km/h when shooting at a reduced range. My longest shot was 2800 meters and it was a first shot hit. I have fired over 50 rounds as a gunner and hundreds of rounds as a commander. As a gunner, I never missed a target, and this is not only my case, but also the majority of conscripts, because the FCS is very easy to use and weapon training is very accurate.

4. What about firing at night? What was the maximum distance at which you could open fire with sight? Did you use flares or other battlefield illumination techniques? As I understand, early M-84 had a 1st generation IR sight and later models a 2nd generation? Did you use both? How did they compare?

For night shooting both commander and gunner have light amplifier sights. I found them pretty useful for spotting targets, but then again firing was mostly done by normal sights. I trained my soldiers this way and the effects were more than satisfying. Targets were usually illuminated by a small floodlight, or a strobe which would imitate gunshots and the device would turn them off when the hit is registered. We used tracer ammo for night exercises, but never did any additional illumination. Maximum distance I was firing at night was 1600 meters.

The number of tanks with active IR sights is very small, maybe the first batch of about thirty. I never used any of them, so I have no experience with it. My tanks were M84/A first batch and M-84 3rd batch of which none had active IR device

5. What was the typical and maximum rate of fire? What was the limiting factor? What is the typical loadout for the gun (% HE/HEAT/APFSDS)? Were the rounds placed in any specific way in the carrousel?

I never found any limiting factors when it comes to firing. Autoloader is fine-tuned piece of machinery. The average time a gunner needs from acquiring a target to firing the gun is 4-6 seconds for the main gun and 3-5 seconds for coax. I never experienced any autoloader stoppage. We loaded our guns with HE M86 rounds-equivalent to OF 19 of Russian origin, so we never had to ‘’layer a cake’’ for battle. Also, we never chased speed, because there was about 80% first shot first kill rate. We thought of the main gun as a precision tool, so speed was never measured or checked

Usual loadout was 22 HE rounds in the carousel. For exercises we never used additional stowage and racks, because it was quicker to load ammo from the outside into the carousel then from stowage. Every gunner would bring his own ammo belt for coax, but for final exercises we had fully loaded ammo boxes with 250 rounds of 7,62.

I have never fired APFSDS or HEAT round because they were banned from training because of a low supply and stoppage in production due to an arms embargo. There was a plan to make an APFSDS practice round, just like for Abrams tanks, but this never came into fruition. I have seen a demonstration in firing APFSDS on a hard target, and I must say the fireball is impressive.

6. One of the most debated issues of T-72/M-84 family are the ergonomics. How did you find them? What about the automatic loader? Did you think a crew of 3 was enough to operate effectively and perform all the maintenance?

Ergonomics is, as you have said the most debated, but least understood problem in M-84/T-72 family, and it varies a lot depending on the position. Driver has a solid ergonomics, much easier than T-55, especially when it comes to gearboxes and turning levers. Gunner is a pilot, or a video game player in his seat and everything he needs is right in front of him. However commander’s station is maybe the biggest or the second biggest problem in this tank. The biggest problem is not his position being cramped, but the number of duties that he has to perform. Any stoppage on the coax MG is commander’s duty to mitigate, so he must turn around his cupola in order to reach it and fix it. This is especially a hard task if you are over 1.75 in height. ( am 188cm). In case of manual loading the main gun, it becomes a nightmare, because the gun is in a very uncomfortable position relatively to the commander. I have done this only with dummy projectiles to show my trainees how it’s done, but never had an actual stoppage on the autoloader. Next problem is the radio which is located in the height of your thighs so you need to bend in front to operate it. Besides this, commander has a duty to spot targets and train the gunner to it, which becomes impossible in case of even the slightest problem. Most problems we had were ammunition jam in the coax, due to their age and wear, which is easy to fix in theory, but very difficult in combat or live fire situation. In live fire circumstances, you must also control the gunner, who is a conscript, and sometimes scared as hell. For communicating with gunner, besides intercom, you have a wooden stick- Serbian Dzamutka- translated as BIG BLACK DONG which is nominally used for manual loading. When the gunner starts “Throwing sparks’’ you hit him in the head once or twice with Dzamutka , which is usually enough for him to get back on track

It is my belief that the designer of the tank imagined a tanker just like a pilot, pressing buttons and pulling levers, but never doing any hard manual work. This is a good idea, but in case of a slightest problem, it all comes down to the commander, and he is usually overwhelmed with duties so he doesn’t know where to turn.

As for the crew of 3, it has advantages and disadvantages. Good things are that you can also sleep on your posts but in reality it was never enough. As a commander I was always tired in these kind of events, my hands were bloody and covered with cuts and blisters and nobody else could do that job for me. Loading the carousel is commander’s duty, with gunner and driver just lifting and bringing the ammo to you. You need to lay on the floor, accept the round in laying position, move it into the cassette, program the cassette, and then repeat the process 22 times. We usually ‘’borrowed’’ mech infantry troops to perform tasks like maintenance. They would do the hard lifting; we would do the precision work. One additional man was quite enough

There is another ergonomic issue I would like to address here and that is crew safety. I personally found a lot of writing about autoloader being unsafe for the crew, decapitating and tearing of limbs of unsuspecting conscripts. This is all BS, because autoloader, although it looks and sounds pretty scary, especially the cartridge ejector, is perfectly safe. There are guards and shields that are put in position and we train our soldiers to ‘’touch the shield’’ with their elbows, which is a safety indicator. Autoloader can be stopped dead and/ or operated semiautomtically if you need to set the fuse on the HE round (another one of commander’s duties) or if the ejector frame catches something, which never happened.

7. M-84A has a more powerful V-46TK engine. How did it compare to the basic version? Was it as reliable? What about replacing it?

If you compare V46-6 of 730 HP and V46TK of 1000 HP, it’s like comparing a horse and a dragon. The tank acts accordingly. I’ve heard that TK’s had overheating issues but never happened to me, I also know that TK’s were much much more difficult to replace than original V46-6 be cause they had big intercooler and it was next to impossible to unplug all the cables and unscrew all the bolts. Putting it back was a difficult process which I watched, but never took part in it. There were some other maintenance differences, but they are too small to be noted

8. Did you train on using emergency hatch (aka heroes hatch in Russia) in the hull bottom?

Training soldiers to use emergency hatch was one of the fun classes we had. First the driver removes the seat, jumps over it and opens the hatch. He is the first one to egress, followed by gunner. Commander has the job of jumping over the main gun and autoloader and moving to gunner’s position in order to use a tunnel to the driver’s position and goes out last. This was usually a barrel of fun class, because exiting required crouching and rolling in the dirt. The most difficult part is for the driver to remove his seat and for commander to jump over the gun breech. Gunner just slides like a snake.

9. When performing exercises, what was the maximum distance you covered in a day? Were there any issues with the maintenance of the tank?

The longest distance I have covered was about 150 kilometers in a march from one town to another. We were using country roads and it was high summer so it was super-hot and dusty. During the march, one of the torsion bars broke but I didn’t even notice it until I came to the motor pool. It was still better than BTR which was spearheading was on fire twice during this time (besides that it was spitting fire on the exhaust and burning agricultural crops along the way. Nobody bugged me about a torsion bar. The speed of the march was not high, because we were driving in column and there was no opportunity to press the gas pedal as much as we wanted.

10. What was the maximum speed you achieved forward and in reverse? T-64/72/80/90 have lower speeds in reverse when compared to modern Western tanks. Did you find this to be an issue?

Speed is always limited by the terrain, Serbia is mostly mountainous and all the movement was impeded by the terrain. I once remember a professional driver from the factory came to inspect our tanks and we went for a ride. He was pushing the tank as much as it could go on a slope, downhill, something I never did with conscripts. It was a ride of the lifetime

11. Did you practice NBC scenarios? How did you prepare for them?

Tank is equipped with an automatic NBC detection and protection system. We learned how to operate it, but never used it. M-84 has a more complex and more complicated to operate NBC detector than t-72, but we were told not to turn it on because it was sensitive to dust, especially when driving in columns. Operating NBC detector is driver’s responsibility. The system would seal the tank at the moment NBC weapons are detected.

12. What about crossing rivers? If so, how long did the preparations take?

We never practiced deep crossings because 1. Serbia doesn’t have rivers that deep, and 2.Training facilities for tank evacuation were left in Bosnia-Banja Luka, including a pool. Deep wading equipment was mostly returned to the warehouses and not carried in stowage

13. The M-84 was used in combat by Kuwait and by different sides in the Balkans. Did you get any feedback on its use or lessons from combat?

We got feedback from Kuwait that the performance of M-84 tanks was exemplary, primarily because of engine reliability. The famous story is about a race between M-84 and Abrams where Abrams started coughing oil after few kilometers. This was allegedly possible because of a doubled vortex system for air filtration which was self-cleaning and there was no need for stopping and filter changing. The engines performed well without overheating in desert conditions. We had no feedback about combat use, but we know they have been used against Iraqi T-55s to avoid fratricide, which were doubtfully any kind of a problem for M-84.

Croatia was something different. At the opening stages of the war there were many tank losses, but they were not incurred by other tanks. Most losses were ambush style attacks in urban areas where they proved impenetrable from the frontal side for most weapons used- M-79 Osa, M-80 Zolja, Armbrust and AT-3 Saggers, but were vulnerable from the side. My Bn CO was a ‘’ Lollypop ‘’ Survivor, his tank was hit beneath the sideskirts directly into the autoloader. He and the gunner escaped with severe burns, but driver did not. This was mostly the result of a tactics used in the opening days of the war, which saw Mech units undermanned, but nevertheless sent into combat. With these lessons, we have changed the approach to training, especially cooperation between Mech infantry and Tanks, which resulted in 0 tank losses during Kosovo Aggression by the ground fire despite the heavy use of M-84 tanks in 1998/99 Anti-terrorist campaign and subsequent 2004 retaking of ground safety zone

14. Did you have the opportunity to examine or use other tanks? How did they compare to the M-84?

I was also trained on T-55 tanks and M-84 is a quantum leap compared to T-55. Except leg space.

15. In the last few years Serbia has developed M-84AS/AS1. What is your opinion on these upgrades?

I have seen the upgrade, but I doubt we’ll see more of it, so I won’t comment. I think all the countries in the world need a clean sheet tank design, considering the advance of top attack AT weapons. This is something that tanks that were designed in the 80’s and 90’s just cannot cope

16. In 2020 Serbia received the first batch of T-72 white Eagle. This acquisition surprised many analysts because M-84 is available in good numbers and upgrades are available. What is your opinion on this?

For me this was not surprising at all. Serbia has lost the capability to autonomously produce tanks, because most of the factories are left in former Yugoslav republics, including the finisher ‘’Djuro Djakovic’’ which did final assembly. However, there are never enough tanks, Especially in modern combat. I like the idea on White eagle that the commander’s sight has been raised on a platform. I believe it is a good solution because it will much improve the visibility especially in the shorter range, where it is mostly vulnerable. Serbia doesn’t need forty tanks, it needs 4000 but everything is welcome.

17. Russia has developed T-14 Armata, a tank with a different configuration (crew in the hull and unmanned turret. What is your opinion on this configuration?

I personally see Armata as a stopgap solution. The concept is better, especially for the crew and as far as I know, it uses most of the reliable mechanical components from T/72/90 models. However I am not a fan of unmanned turrets. Russians need a clean sheet design too.

18. Is there any anecdote/story you would like to share?

My career on M-84 was mostly uneventful. But I know a lot of people that had very interesting and adventurous careers. I ll try to contact them for you, so we can tell real war stories.

Other interviews:

I am always looking for more veterans, active members or people related with the defence industry to accept interviews. If you enjoyed reading the material and would be happy to accept an anonimous interview you can get in contact with me. My e-mail can be found in this link at the heading. Otherwise leave a message in the comment sections.

History and military technology

Thursday 22 September 2022

Interview with a former M-84 commander

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