See This Strange Tank? It Was Russia's Plan to Fight Tank Battles During a Nuclear War

Robert Beckhusen

Security,

Good luck with that. 

Topic: Nuclear war and tanks are not exactly a winning combo. 

In a war that never happened, formations of heavy and rather odd-looking Soviet tanks would have powered through atomic explosions in breakthrough attacks into West Germany.

Enter the Object 279 tank, a curious oddity from the late 1950s which was obsolete — despite its design principles deliberately reflecting the fear of a nuclear battlefield — by the time it was produced.

It was certainly not a success, as the Soviet Union only manufactured a handful of prototypes.

But the fact that it appeared at all is indicative of an obsession among a small number of Red Army military planners dating back to World War II. As the Nazis and Soviets battled for hegemony, both sides fielded increasingly heavier tanks — with bigger guns — which could absorb fire while destroying their heavily-armored enemies at long range.

Medium tanks, such as the legendary T-34, would ultimately pioneer the main battle tanks which armies deploy today. However, the Kremlin continued building thousands of heavy tanks into the 1960s until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev effectively put a stop to it.

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The Object 279 was part of this tradition.

The Object 279’s most visible features include the sharp, saucer-shaped chassis and four distinct, enormous tracks. The latter was to give the 60-ton tank more traction in difficult or soft terrain, always a problem for heavier tanks prone to bogging down. A 1,000-horsepower engine powered the beast.