Soldiers of the Serbian army are actively preparing for their eighth participation in the tank biathlon competition, held as part of the International War Games at the Alabino training ground near Moscow.
It is reported that three of the ten crews will be selected, and one more will be listed as a reserve.
Interestingly, for training, the Serbian team uses T-72M1 tanks, which have now become quite rare in the land forces of this state. According to reference publications, at the beginning of this year, only a little more than a dozen cars of this model were operated, which, apparently, are used only as training.
They arrived in the early 80s and, judging by a number of publications, at one time they were planned to be completely removed from service, subjected to some modernization and sold abroad. A similar situation occurred earlier with medium-sized T-55s that went to serve in Pakistan.
Only the Yugoslav-made M-84s remained in the army [...], and a program of improvement was developed for them: dynamic protection, modified sights with thermal imaging channels, and remote-controlled machine-gun installations would appear. Communications equipment and fire-fighting equipment will be updated.
Also this year, the Serbian army received from Russia the final batch of modern T-72MS "White Eagle" tanks, considered one of the best in the entire family of "seventy-second".
Alexey Moiseev