A New T-62 MBT for the 10th Anniversary of Steel Beasts

By SimHQ on July 30, 2010 in _land3

On August 21, 2010 eSim’s Steel Beasts celebrates 10 years. To commemorate the event, a new update to Steel Beasts Professional PEis being developed that includes several new and updated features including the new T-62.

In this latest SimHQ Exclusive Preview of Steel Beasts Pro PE v2.5, eSim’s Director of Marketing, Nils “Ssnake” Hinrichsen told us about the new T-62.

“The T-62 was another tricky vehicle to add. Not that the 3D model itself is particularly complicated; it isn’t. But the T-62 has not been adopted widely, and some of the information that is of interest for us is rather hard to come by — especially the estimation of ballistic parameters of its ammunition. With the help of rather knowledgeable experts we managed to come up with firing table estimations for eight different rounds. This probably isn’t very spectacular from the end user’s perspective, but we just like to walk the extra mile to get things right where we can. The T-62 is of historical significance for its 115mm smoothbore cannon. This paved the way both in the East and West for large caliber smoothbore tank guns. Also, the T-62 was the first tank to feature armor piercing, fin stabilized, sub caliber rounds. These offer superior muzzle velocity, low drag, and vastly enhanced perforation depth in comparison to the ‘at the time standards’ of full caliber AP rounds even APDS rounds of its time. It saw action in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, especially as a part of the Syrian elite formations, but also in Egypt.

The T-62 was originally rejected by the Soviet leadership as it offered only marginal performance improvements over the T-55. However, the introduction of the brand new British 105mm L7 gun and delays in the development of the T-64 resulted in a rushed production, even though it appeared in limited numbers from 1965-1972. By Russian standards, that meant still about 20,000 of these tanks were built and about half of them exported to Soviet client states.

The T-62 still soldiers on in the Afghan National Army, in many countries of northern Africa, Angola, Syria, North Korea, and Vietnam. It will therefore assist in building semi-historical scenarios with a proper equipment mix in Steel Beasts Pro PE v2.53x.”

Here are several screenshots of the new T-62 MBT.