Monday, April 18, 2016

Iran Unveils Their Own Home-Made Tank

The Tiam tank unveiled on 13 April along with the Bahman seen in background. Source: IRNA

IHS Jane's 360: Iran unveils Tiam tank

The Iranian Ground Forces revealed new vehicles on 13 April including the Tiam tank, which appears to be a fusion of US and Chinese tanks.

The Tiam's hull is that of a M47M, a variant of the US M47 that uses the engine from the M60A1 tank. The M47M was produced in Iran from the early 1970s and Iran unveiled a modified version called the Sabalan in April 2014. The Sabalan was armed with what looked like a 105 mm L7-type rifled gun instead of the original 90 mm.

The Tiam also has a 105 mm, but it is mounted in what appears to be the turret from a Chinese Type 59/69 tank. Although based on the T-55, some versions of the Type 59 and Type 69 were armed with an L7-type 105 mm gun instead of the 100 mm fitted to the Soviet tank.

The superstructure of the M47M hull appears to have been raised to accommodate the larger turret basket of the Type 59.

Also unveiled were a self-propelled 57 mm air defence system called the Bahman and a nuclear, biological, and chemical detection (NBC) vehicle called the Shahram.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: It does not look like much .... but I suspect that it is cheap to produce, effective, and it suits the needs of the Iranian miltary.

3 comments:

TWN said...

You can use any tank platform, add a modern gun and Thermal, you could up grade old Sherman's used right could sure ruin someones day. The Russians are up grading the T72's with a new Gun and Thermal for $250,000 each, they have thousands of them. This new Iranian tank if build in numbers can be effective. But the future of the a tanks will be determined by the Anti Tank Drone coming to a battlefield near you soon. The Anti Tank Drone will do to Tanks, what Modern Small Arms and the Machine Guns did to the Cavalry.

Caecus said...

lmao @ the 2 ERA bricks on the commanders hatch

fazman said...

Maybe not a bad idea considering the top down attack of javelin and new gen drones etc