(Dan Tri) – The Tank Museum in Dorset county, in the southwest of the UK, opened an archive to retrieve drawings and documents to help manufacture Soviet-era armored vehicle chains for Ukraine.
Armor storage center at the Tank Museum at Bovington camp, Dorset county, UK (Photo: Alamy).
Since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022, the United Kingdom has delivered to Ukraine 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks. But the majority of the Ukrainian army’s armored fleet was built during the Soviet era, including
In recent years, many of these vehicles suffered broken chains due to mine hits, and Ukraine was unable to repair them due to lack of manpower.
After tinkering with how to build armored tracks, Cook contacted the Tank Museum in Dorset to ask if the museum’s archives contained diagrams and documents to support the production of tracked tracks.
Late last year, the museum rediscovered many long-forgotten manuals, diagrams and documents in its archives on how to repair Soviet-era tanks.
Drawing of the T-72 crawler in the archives of the Tank Museum (Photo: Tank Museum).
`British defense companies are happy to assist but in some cases the engineers from the Cold War era are no longer alive and their knowledge is lost,` said David Willey, Curator of the Tank Museum,
`They needed details like angle, slope, or track tension. Our archive was able to provide them with manuals and old blueprints for the tank,` Mr. Willey said.
`We also found prototypes of the parts they needed, such as T-72 chains and bolts removed from the warehouse. The new parts could then be manufactured accurately in the UK.`
T-72 tank crawler produced by the UK (Photo: Telegraph).
Even with the support of the Tank Museum, Cook Defense System’s production process was difficult.
`The major challenges of the project included developing new steel alloys to match the original Russian specifications, and converting the design of parts that were originally forged and welded to manufactured using the
`While some of the vehicles supported by Cook Defense Systems are of Soviet design, the manufacturing techniques the company uses could not be more different, including laser scanning technology and digital X-ray inspection
Ultimately, Cook overcame these challenges and sprockets produced by the company were gradually sent to Ukraine.
According to the company website, it is producing tracked systems for Soviet-era BMP-1 and BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as the ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery.
