The tight cost constraints forced on Soviet designers also affect the durability of their tanks. Soviet tanks (and many other Soviet weapons) are not as durable as their Western counterparts. For example, Soviet tank engines have a much lower life expectancy than American or British engines. Soviet tank gun barrels have about a quarter the life expectancy of American tank gun barrels, about 120 rounds versus 400 rounds. This lack of durability has little effect in wartime, since tanks have a great likelihood of being knocked out long before their parts wear out. But it does have a major impact on Soviet training.
The lack of equipment durability, and the high costs of fuel and ammunition, conspire against rigorous training in Soviet tank units. In peacetime, Soviet tank units do not have all their vehicles operating at one time. There are strict limits set on the number of hours a Soviet tank can be used in order not to prematurely wear it out. So a unit will keep a portion of its tanks in mothballs for part of the year, operating only a fraction of them at any one given time. Then the tanks that had been in use will be put in storage and the other tanks drawn out for several months of use. This means that on a day-to-day basis, Soviet tankers are less likely to get hands-on experience with their vehicles.
Funding constraints also limit the amount of ammunition fired in peacetime training. An American tanker will typically fire more than a hundred rounds of ammunition annually. Soviet tankers, depending on the priority of their unit, will fire as little as a tenth of this amount. The relative lack of training with live ammunition does not foster critical combat skills, such as the need for speed in battle engagements. The usual training standard for Soviet crews is sixty seconds to engage and destroy a target at a range of 2,000 meters. This consists often seconds for the commander to identify and designate the target to his gunner; twenty seconds for the gunner to lay the gun on target, perform the necessary gun adjustments, load the gun, and fire the first round; then fifteen seconds each for two more rounds of ammunition to ensure the destruction of the target. The NATO norm is closer to fifteen seconds, about a quarter the time. The reasons for this enormous discrepancy are both better training and better equipment, and more experienced crews.
The NATO crews tend to receive more training than comparable Soviet crews, as discussed above. The NATO tanks also have decided advantages in equipment. The new generation of fire control equipment is more automated on NATO tanks than Warsaw Pact tanks, making it simpler to use. Where the Soviet fire control system requires multiple manual input to adjust gun elevation, the NATO system, like that on the Ml, requires very few. This is evident in the biannual Canadian Army Trophy (CAT) competition held in Germany among NATO tank crews. The tanks are expected to engage a variety of targets, at various ranges, both from a halt and on the move. Over the past decade, scores have continued to rise as the new generation of tanks, such as the Leopard 2, Ml Abrams, and Challenger, have entered service. In the case of the Ml Abrams, crews have consistently scored hits more than 90 percent of the time, firing in less than twelve seconds after the target popped up. Certainly the CAT competition tends to involve specially selected "Olympic" teams, and it might be expected that ordinary teams are a good deal less proficient. Yet NATO has found that the new generation tanks have been so well designed that the disparity in scores between CAT teams and ordinary teams is not that great. While the better CAT teams might engage and destroy targets in less than twelve seconds, normal crews average about fifteen seconds.
Another factor benefiting NATO tank crews compared to their Soviet counterparts is the matter of experience. The Soviet Ground Forces are a conscript force, and unlike NATO armies, the Soviets do not have a professional NCO core in their army. Soviet soldiers serve their two-year hitch and are back to "civvy street." As mentioned in the previous chapter, very few enlisted men remain in service beyond their two-year hitch. As a result, skills built up during this time are lost when the tanker returns to civilian life.
The NATO armies, on the other hand, especially the U.S., German, and British armies, encourage senior enlisted men to remain in service as sergeants. These armies have a tradition of strong NCO roles, with the NCOs performing many functions that in the Soviet Army would be done by low-ranking officers. In a technical field such as tanks, long-term experience has important effects in ensuring continuity and quality in crew performance. Tanks are usually commanded by sergeants, and experienced sergeants will perform better in critical battle skills than inexperienced tankers like the Soviets who, at the most, have been in tanks for eighteen months.
The Soviets are not unaware of this problem. In 1988, Marshal Akhromeyev visited U.S. army bases, including Fort Hood, the largest American tank base. The American officers who accompanied him were surprised to see that Akhromeyev showed little interest in the equipment, even the spanking new Ml Abrams tanks. What Akhromeyev was curious about was the details of service life for the enlisted men. He seemed surprised to meet sergeants with nineteen years of duty. The Soviets appreciate the limitations of their enlistment system, especially these days when weapons are becoming more and more complex. Akhromeyev's interest was probably sparked by Soviet plans to reinstate the critical institution of professional NCOs.
Although Soviet tanks have a good many technical drawbacks, Soviet armored vehicle designers have been remarkably ingenious over the years. The Soviets were the first army to employ infentry fighting vehicles (the BMP), the first with smooth-bore tank guns (T-62), the first with fin-stabilized armor piercing ammunition, and the first with tank autoloaders. Shortcomings in Soviet tanks are seldom the result of a lack of technological ability; they are more often the result of tight economic restraints. A good example is the matter of thermal imaging sights. As suggested in the fictional scenario, thermal imaging sights can have a dramatic effect on the modern battlefield, especially when one side lacks them.
It is surprising to find that the Soviets do not currently use thermal imaging sights, especially since they pioneered night fighting equipment. The Soviets were the first army to make widespread use of active imaging night searchlights in the 1950s. But by the time the next generation of night fighting equipment came into being, the Soviets were already falling behind.
In the late 1960s, the U.S. began fielding the second generation of night fighting equipment, called image intensification, or passive nightscopes. The first generation systems used searchlights with infrared beams, invisible to the human eye. But they were not invisible to simple detection devices. So a tank using an active infrared searchlight was very visible to an enemy tank equipped with an infrared viewer. The second generation passive sights avoided this problem. Instead of relying on a searchlight for illumination, they depended on the faint natural light that exists on all but the darkest nights. By amplifying the slight illumination of the stars and moonlight, they enabled tanks to see at night. They are sometimes called "Starlight" scopes for this reason. With passive sights, the tank didn't give away its position.
The U.S. developed this technology, but eventually Soviet tanks came to be equipped with these sights. Indeed, Soviet tanks to this day rely on passive image intensification sights for night fighting. The T-80M uses a passive night gunner's sight. The main drawback of passive starlight sights is that they do require some ambient natural light. On evenings that are completely overcast, there is often not enough light for these sights to work. And unfortunately in Europe, there are many overcast nights.