Today we present an article from the July-August 1998 issue of ARMOR titled “Why Three Tanks” by Stephen “Cookie” Sewell. This article gives a nice overview of Soviet tank development from WW2 through the cold war seeking to explain why the USSR ended up with three similar main battle tanks, the T-64, T-72 and T-80. Mr. Sewell wrote several articles for Armor and is an avid model builder, being the founder and first president of the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society.
I can answer the question posed by the title of the article without having to read the article.
1) To have more tanks than NATO
2) To keep employment up and hooliganism down
3) to make for glorious admiration of peoples of Soviet Socialist Republics
All the rest is commentary.
LikeLike