Russia plans to resume production of Soviet T-80 tanks from scratch

Director General of the defense concern Alexander Potapov said this on a Russian propaganda show, RBC-Russia and Vesti report.

"This is the task. At least the military gave it to us," Potapov said when asked about the resumption of T-80 production.

Uralvagonzavod is cooperating on the issue with the Russian Ministry of Industry, as it requires new facilities.

The ministry plans to upgrade the tanks to the T-80BVM level. This Russian vehicle is reportedly adapted for operations in low temperatures, equipped with a multi-channel gunner's sight, 125-mm cannon, a modified 1250 hp gas turbine engine, a weapon stabilizer, and a driver monitoring device.

The T-80 was produced at the Omsk Plant of Transport Engineering in the second half of the 20th century. After the collapse of the USSR, the company stopped receiving state defense orders and turned into a so-called tank repair plant. Since 2017, the company has been overhauling tanks returned from storage and modernizing them to the T-80BVM version.

• On August 22, ISW reported that Russian troops, especially the 20th and 2nd Combined Arms Armies operating in eastern Ukraine, lack light transport vehicles. This prevents them from operating effectively and lowers their morale.

• Reuters also cited a Western official as saying that Russia could probably increase its artillery production in the next few years to about 2 million shells a year, almost double previous Western expectations, but that this still falls short of Moscow's needs for the war in Ukraine.