The T-72B is Back in Action

The T-72 is a main battle tank fielded by the Soviet Army from 1972. It was developed and manufactured by the State-run firm Uralwagonsawod. Like the T-55, it featured a conventional layout with a round, dome-like turret set at the center of the tank hull. The T-72 is armed with a 120mm D81TM smoothbore cannon and two machine guns. Aside from standard ammunition that included HEAT and APFSDS rounds, this 125mm gun can also fire anti-tank missiles. Although the original T-72 was protected by conventional cast armor, with 280mm-thick plate on the turret and 200mm-thick armor on the hull glacis, the T-72M and T-72M1 variants feature advanced composite armor on the front hull and turret which can sustain direct hits from the 105mm gun of the M1 Abrams at up to 2,000 m range. This tank is powered by a V-12 diesel engine, capable of developing 780 horsepower.
The T-72 is probably one the most widely used tank in the world by the number of Third World Countries that has used it, as it has seen action in the Iraqi-Iran War (1980-1988), Sri Lankan Civil War (1983), Georgian Civil War (1988-1993), Gulf War (1991), Sierra Leone Civil War (1999-2002), etc. During Operation Storm (1991) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) the T-72M and other models could not stand direct hits from the 120mm gun of the US M1A1 Abrams and depleted-uranium rounds from the A-10 attack aircraft.