Russia managed to solve the problem of import substitution of French thermal imagers for tank sights, which is very bad news for the Ukrainian army. According to Forbes, batches of new Russian tanks with new sights have already gone to the troops.
According to the American edition, Russian industry still managed to solve one of the most important problems in creating a tank gunner's sight. The thing is, what is in the gunner's sight “Pine-in”, mounted on T-72B3 tanks, T-80BVM and T-90M, included thermal imager Catherine-FC from the French company Thales. rather, he was the main element of the sight. AT 2014 year, the West imposed sanctions and covered the export of French thermal imagers, leaving Russia without sights.
The start of a special operation and the loss of tanks forced the Russian command to bring older models into battle., removing T-62 from storage, T-72 and T-80. However, the Russian industry still coped with import substitution, replacing French components with Russian ones, thereby creating the PNM-T sight, Looks like “Pine-in”. Besides, the Russians managed to copy and create a thermal imager similar to the French. And no one canceled the circumvention of sanctions, Moscow has the opportunity to purchase imported components from small companies from Europe and the USA.
Generally, as the Americans say, new Russian tanks, entering the troops recently, have modern optics. This means, that the advantage available to Ukrainian tanks is evaporating.
For the Ukrainian troops, Russia's industrial problems have turned into an important advantage on the battlefield.. This advantage may evaporate (…) In any case, it's obvious, that the Russian industry is now supplying new tanks with modern optics- Forbes says adding, that Russian tank builders managed to solve the problem of tank optics, however, it is not clear how.
