Superior Soviet Armor

The superior Soviet armor and the danger to NATO:

          Given the name of “The Cold War’s Most Secret Tank” by Steven J. Zaloga, the author of the T-64 Battle Tank book, The Soviet T-64 tank is “one of the most revolutionary tank designs of the Cold War”. It was the trailblazer of many technologies that were never seen before on any other tanks of the time such as advanced composite armor and guided tank projectiles. It remained its battlefield superiority all the way until the 70s when the NATO tanks finally begins to catch up with the advent of armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot rounds.

         During the early 70s, the T-64A is unrivaled in all three most important aspects (firepower, survivability, and mobility). According to multiple secondary resources and the Tank Encyclopedia, compared to the American tank of the era, the M60A1, the armor of the T64A is double the effective thickness on both the turret and hull thanks to the Textolite and Aluminum composite armor. The T-64A is able to easily defeat the M60A1 at the 2000-meter range with either the high-explosive anti-tank or armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot with that 125mm 2A46 cannon, while the M60A1 with its 105mm British-derived L7 cannon cannot defeat T-64A frontally effectively at any range. On mobility, The M60A1 is equipped with a 760-horsepower engine, more than T-64A’s 700-horsepower engine. However, the M60A1 is significantly heavier than the T-64A, resulting in a 50km/h top speed and 500km of range instead of 60km/h and 600km of range on the T-64A. The only advantage that the T-64 loses on the M60 is the reliability of the tank due to its experimental nature.