Why The Iranian Hybrid Tank Tiam Looks So Strange
Iran is known for using United States military hardware well past the expiration date. Take, for instance, their continued use (to this day) of outdated F-14 Tomcats the U.S. sold them (when they were still allies) back in the 70s. Ironically, this is why the Defense Department destroyed hundreds of retired F-14 fighters in and around 2007.
So it shouldn't have come as a massive shock to anyone when, in April 2016, Iran's defense ministry rolled out — in a very public ceremony, mind you — a "new" main battle tank (MBT) that at first glance likely shocked some folks. Aside from the obvious light-colored bricks that coat the hull and turret, we mean.
While these bricks look like a hodge-podge of Tetris pieces, they are reactive armor bricks known as Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA). It's an effective defense system developed by the Israelis in 1982 using shaped charges to blow up high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warheads before impact.
Most countries that use them paint the bricks the same color as the tank (for obvious reasons), but not Iran. One reason might be that it wanted to highlight the ERA, but a secondary reason might have been to hide other details about the armored fighting vehicle (AFV) itself.
If the Tiam, which reportedly is a Persian word that translates to "darling" or "most loved," appears as though it was cobbled together like some armored-plated Frankenstein — you're not wrong.
[Featured image by Mehrdad Esfahani via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED]
Waste not want not
The Tiam is a hybrid AFV that uses designs poached from the Chinese and Americans, not of modern-era tanks, mind you, but ones from the mid-20th century.
According to reports, the Tiam sported what looked like the hull of an M47M Patton, a tank built by the U.S. and used by both the Army and the Marines in the 1950s and early 1960s. During that period, Iran purchased 400 M47 tanks from the U.S. government. In the 70s, they built similar tanks under license.
Just a few years before the Tiam's unveiling (April 2014), Iran was building modified versions of the M47A equipped with a 105mm Royal Ordnance L7-type gun. The Tiam retained the 105 mm gun, but instead of a Patton turret, it had what appeared to be one from a Chinese Type 59/69 tank, which was originally built in the late 1950s. Iran purchased 300 of these tanks from China in the early 1980s and another 1,500 before the '91 Gulf War.
Some reports speculated the main gun was an M68 105 mm rifled weapon. It was also packing a 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun and a swivel-mounted 12.7 mm DShK (aka "Dashka") heavy machine gun attached to the front of the tank commander hatch.
Clearly, Iran has a "waste not want not" mentality, but one of its other tanks — the Sabalan — is considered one of the worst military tanks ever built. So, they also have a modus operandi.
[Featured image by Majid Haghdoust via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED]