There are two T-90M's.One is the variant which we are producing at Avadi as of now.This has Kaktus ERA and a welded steel turret similar to the T-90A Vladimir of the Russian Ground Forces but without the Shtora.The original T-90S Bhisma we got in the late 90's were cast turret and had Kontakt-5 ERA.
The HVF T-90M looks like this
The original Russian T-90S we got in knocked down kits looks somewhat like this.
You can spot the differences in the placement of ERA tiles.The newer variant having much more neater and no spaced placement of the ERA tiles.
The HVF Avadi license produced T-90M is similar to the T-90S(Welded Steel, Kaktus ERA) and T-90SA which was offered to Algeria without the Shtora-1.
There is another variant called T-90M (Object 188M) which was made specifically for export and was revealed in late 2009 at Nizhny Tagil.It is a completely new design incorporating a different turret.Older T-90's cannot be upgraded to this variant, even if they can it's not practical and economical.It seems it was designed in direct response to the Ukrainian T-84 Oplot M.Here are some features of it.
- New bigger turret without weakened frontal areas and with the all-aspect ERA covering.
- ERA 'Relict'
- Additional roof protection against atop attacking munition.
- New additional autoloader, placed on the aft part of the turret and able using the new longer sub-caliber rods.
- Aft ammo storage.(A turret bustle like western tanks)
- Panoramic 3-channel IR commander site with improved anti-split/rounds protection.
- 7.62 mm automatic turret instead of 12.7mm.
- Totally new 2A82 125 mm Main Gun (2A46M5 - optional).
- FCS with the net-centric module.
- New radio.
- New navigation system.
- New anti-split kevlar layer instead of the standard Russian anti-neutron layer.
- new anti-fire system.
Here are some photos.
In my opinion we should let HVF complete the order for the 1330 or so T-90M Bhisma(Welded Steel Turret) tanks and order the T-90M/Object 188M tanks directly from Russia.We should also upgrade the monkey model T-72M's to T-72M1M variant.