T-62: The Soviet Tank Still at War 60 Years Later

There are tanks that retire with honors to a museum and tanks that, decades after they stopped being manufactured, still appear on the front lines of combat. The Soviet T-62 clearly belongs to the second group. Designed in the late 1950s and entering service in 1961, this armored vehicle was once a small technical revolution — and, to the surprise of many, in 2022 it made headlines again because Russia took it out of storage to send it to the front in Ukraine. Few military vehicles can boast such a long operational career.

The world's first tank with a smoothbore gun

The T-62 was born as a direct evolution of the T-55, from which it inherited a large part of the chassis and mechanics. But its great technical leap was in the turret: it was the world's first mass-produced tank equipped with a smoothbore gun, the 115 mm U-5TS. Unlike traditional rifled guns, a smoothbore allows firing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectiles at much higher speeds, with a penetration capability that rendered much of the Western anti-tank artillery of the time obsolete.

That gun made the T-62 the most powerful armored vehicle in the world at the time of its introduction — at least on paper. In practice, the price of that firepower was a slower rate of fire and a crew that had to contend with one of the most curious — and most feared — peculiarities of the vehicle.

The tank that ejected the shell casing by itself

The T-62 incorporated an automatic shell casing ejection system: after each shot, a hatch at the rear of the turret would open automatically to expel the spent casing outwards, preventing the interior of the tank from filling with smoke and toxic gases. On paper, an ingenious solution. In practice, it created a real problem: if the loader did not remove their hand or an object in time from the ejection area, the mechanism could trap or hit them hard. It is no coincidence that, among the crews who operated it, the T-62 earned a reputation for demanding great discipline inside the tank.

Another little-known curiosity: since it did not have an autoloader — that technology would come later, with the T-64 and T-72 — the T-62 still relied on a human loader, which limited its rate of fire to a few rounds per minute. A revolutionary gun, yes, but served by a four-person crew working at their limit.

A tank exported worldwide

Few Soviet vehicles of the Cold War had such widespread distribution. More than 20 countries operated the T-62 at some point: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, Ethiopia, Algeria, and North Korea, among others. This massive distribution led it to play a leading role in some of the most intense conflicts of the second half of the 20th century.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egyptian and Syrian T-62s faced Israeli Centurions and M60s, with mixed results — the lack of experience of some crews and that limited rate of fire worked against them compared to Western tanks that were faster to reload. During the Iran-Iraq War of the 80s, both sides came to operate T-62s, sometimes even facing each other with the same tank model. And in the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989), the T-62 had to adapt to hostile mountainous terrain, very vulnerable to mines and RPG attacks from the Mujahideen, which forced the development of variants with additional armor and reinforced underbody protection.

From the Cold War to Ukraine, not quite retired

The most surprising thing about the T-62 is that its history did not end with the fall of the USSR. Updated over the years in variants such as the T-62M — with improvements in the fire control system and explosive reactive armor (ERA) added to the hull and turret — the tank remained in service in reserves and second-line units of several armies for decades.

In 2022, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine consuming armored vehicles at a much higher rate than expected, Russia began to pull T-62 units from its strategic storage depots to send them to the front, in some cases with improvised "cage" armor added to the turret as protection against drones and guided anti-tank projectiles. A tank designed in the Khrushchev era, still firing more than sixty years later — probably the clearest example of how long the operational life of a well-built armored vehicle can be extended when necessity dictates.

Why it's an interesting project for the modeler

Beyond the historical anecdote, the T-62 is a rewarding vehicle for modelers: its silhouette shares DNA with the T-55 and T-34, so if you already have experience with Soviet armored vehicles, the assembly will be familiar, but the turret and larger caliber gun give it its own personality. And as for the finish, it offers two very different paths depending on the era you want to represent: a classic 60s-70s T-62 in uniform Russian green, ideal for working camouflage and combat wear in the style of our T-34 projects, or a modern T-62M variant with reactive armor blocks, cage armor and chipping on much more heterogeneous surfaces — a completely different weathering exercise.

For either approach, the starting point remains the same: a good precision airbrush base like the Gaahleri GHPM-Mobius 0.2mm to control the application of the base green, and a good set of fine brushes like the 30-piece Nicpro kit for all subsequent detail work, washes, and screws.

You can see more content related to this project in the video above.