Watch: Trainload of 28 Slovenian M55S tanks on its way to Ukraine
LJUBLJANA ($1=1.01 Euros) — 28 Slovenian tanks sent Ljubljana to Kyiv as military aid to the Ukrainian armed forces. Video cameras in a Slovenian railway station have recorded the night crossing of the tank on its way to Ukraine.
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It is not clear when exactly the video was recorded, but it may be an old recording. BulgarianMilitary.com learned that already at the end of September it became clear that Slovenia would send the tanks. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the recording was made very recently. If we assume that it took the Slovenian Ministry of Defense a little time to clean, reset and restore the combat capability of the tanks, it makes perfect sense.
Old tanks
The war in Ukraine is depleting old weapons. Let’s recall that not long ago, Russia sent rather outdated T-62 tanks to Ukraine to replenish the inventory of the Russian armed forces.
Sending M55S tanks to Ukraine shows that we should not “mockery” the Russian decision to send T-62. The M55S is a derivative tank of the first tank of the Cold War, the T-55. Slovenia modernized these tanks in the 1990s.
More about the M55S
Interestingly, the M55S weighs only 38 tons. It is not even considered the main battle tank, although more than 100,000 tanks have been produced from the T-55 series – the most produced tank is this one.
The M55S gun is a 105mm Royal Ordnance L7 with a heat-insulating shroud. Logically, part of the modernization in the 1990s involved putting reactive armor on much of the tank’s hull and turret.
The M-55S received a digital ballistic computer and gun stabilization, a Fotona SGS-55 sight with a laser rangefinder, a Fotona-55 commander’s sight, an improved engine, and new rubber-metal tracks, and even a LIRD-1A laser radiation detector linked to the smoke grenade launcher IS-6.
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