New power pack for Indian Army's T 72 Ajeya

New power pack for Indian Army's T 72 Ajeya

Indian army looks to upgrade the T 72 engine from initial 680 horse power to 1000 horse power engine. Which improves the tank's mobility and speed. T 72 M1 recently upgraded with new fire control systems and night vision devices. Nimda is the known Israeli company who leads in the contract who already upgraded the Czech army T 72 tanks by 1000 hp CV 12 engines.

Nimda uses the British engine Condor developed by Perkins, who is the known supplier of engines to British Challenger MBT and Warrior APC. The 1000 hp engine known as CV 12 is a water cooled electronically controlled four stroke 12 cylinder engine rated at 736 kW. It has a direct fuel injection, two turbochargers, air to air charge cooled, with electronic monitoring and control, protection and diagnostic system.

It's unique design and specification features provides reliable and durable operation, as well as exceptional power to weight ratio, easier maintainability and excellent overall performance.

The Engines transmission is developed by the known American company Allison who is a world leader in automatic transmission.  The CV 12 will be controlled by the XTG 411-6-N electronic controlled automatic transmission system. The transmission has four forward speeds and two reverse speeds with fully automatic range selection with electronically adoptable programmed shift logic.

With the new upgrades the T 72's performance gradually increase, as main advantages of

• Almost twice shorter time needed for acceleration from stop to 32 km/h
• Substantially increased mobility and maneuvering capability on terrain
• Substantial reduction of routine drivers work load and fatigue
• Eliminating human factor mistakes ( Gear selection and Relevant cooling issue )
• Substantially higher reliability and durability as well as increased mission duration 
• Lower vehicle downtime ( 2hr required for Engine replacement )
• Easier maintenance
• Improved performance in extreme ambient temperature

The T 72's were bought in a emergency situation in the early 1978, as initial India bought nearly 500 Tanks directly from the Soviet, They used the opportunity and given the T 72 M to Indian army. M designates the monkey version. which have poor quality of armour, fire control system also comes without having the proper fire control system.

However the Russian lobby pushed the Indian government to keep buying the Tank. who allows the HVF in Avadi to build the T 72 M1 variant. which makes India among one of the largest T 72 operator. Currently India operates nearly 2000 T 72 Tanks. where most of them modernized only after 2000.

Help from the Israeli's is known survivability of Indian T 72 M1. which were upgraded by numerous Israeli systems. Israeli company Elbit systems offered the night vision devices to the T 72 M1. even with transfer of technology. Indian private player Alpha systems secured the deal with Israeli Elbit systems to upgrade the T 72 with modern night vision devices, whose range upto 300 meters. It's believed more than 1000 T 72 M1 already upgraded with NVD systems.

The Russians also helped in the T 72 M1 fire control systems. which include multi channel vision devices, gunners sight etc. The upgraded variants are called as T 72 M2 Ajeya Tanks. which is more prominent tanks when compared to it's predecessor.