Precise, on the money and now they cant make their home grown one so have went back to the old 1PN96MT-02. Imagine the cost in losses if they had all their tanks running modern optics in Ukraine.
2 Likes
Export model T-72s BTW…
1 Like
@CAS_is_Bаlаnced Do everybody a favor and bring something constructive next time. Otherwise, stay silent.
@LegitRussianBias I’ll answer point by point, and leave out the Irbis-K introduction date last because that one has a lot to unpack.
First off, the Thales Catherine.
Yes, the Catherine FC and XP are different. The FC entered service around ~2002. The XP is as you said an updated version of it with more mature tech. It was introduced around ~2005-2006. So by the time Russia signed the import contract in 2005, both were ready. It’s impossible to say which of the two they imported the most without MoD documents but it’s safe to assume they imported both.
👍 Mea Culpa
The number increase is for sure because the commander can take over the Irbis sight to scan. Which as you also found, is better than the Agat.
Irbis:
Gonna be quite long, sorry in advance.
I know exactly where the 2012 date comes from: it comes from statements by the engineering teams at TVM 2012 saying they hoped Irbis would enter production by 2012-2013. That was an intention, not reality. At that time Irbis was still heavily dependent on imported components(microelectronics and detector technology) despite parts of the core allegedly being fully Russian, so it was never truly production-ready as wanted(100% homemade).
After the 2014 sanctions, this became a major problem. Import substitution forced a redesign of the system, which delayed the project significantly. This is precisely why Russia moved to the Sosna-U as a stopgap solution instead of Irbis. The Sosna-U was already available and tested, even if degraded after losing French Catherine cores.
Trials for Irbis were only completed around ~2016, with plans to begin serial production around 2017-18. But even then, procurement was chaotic and limited. Irbis wasn’t just a new sight, it required building a domestic detector and electronics supply chain almost from scratch. This is very complex, and requires a lot of funding. Even more complex in a country like Russia with crippling fund embezzlement.
If Irbis had really been mass-produced from 2016 onward, we would expect to see it widely installed on tanks before 2022. Instead, what we actually observed from captured and destroyed Russian tanks in Ukraine during the opening months is the opposite: the vast majority still used Sosna-U, not Irbis. Irbis only starts appearing in noticeable numbers after 2022, because full sanctions forced Russia to either deploy whatever domestic alternative it had, or go at it without thermal.
Here’s an article linked to industry sources talking about the Irbis 2016 trial, and talking about the Irbis quality. While it does say the sight can identify at 3.2km, this is absolutely a mixup from the author with recognition(or incorrect translation RU->ENG which is very, VERY common) because 3.2km ID would put it above the non-teleconverter Catherine despite having a lower resolution stated in the very same article.(320x256 px for Irbis, both Catherine FC and X are afaik 754x576.)
Sadly, many articles about it are now gone because Russia did a vast OPSEC campaign of their hardware specification posted on Russian websites after the start of the war in Ukraine. Most information I have dates from ~2020 and an industry contact I had during that time at Uralvagonzavod.
3 Likes