History
In the late 1980s the Polish Army modernized all of its obsolete T-55 tanks to the T-55AM Mérida standard. The successful conversion convinced the General Staff that similar modernization could also be applied to other Soviet-designed tanks made in Poland and used by the Polish Armed Forces. In late 1988 it was decided to prepare a project of modernization for the T-72M1 design - using the experience from production of licenced T-72M (obiekt 172M-E3 - Polish army designation T-72), T-72M1 (obiekt 172M-E5), T-72M1K (Polish army designation T-72M1D).
The Gliwice-based Research and Development Centre of Mechanical Systems OBRUM (Polish: Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechanicznych) was chosen as the main design bureau. However, initially the work progressed at a very slow pace, mainly because the Polish General Staff was also considering the purchase of a newer version of T-72 (T-72S) or the modern T-80.
After the political changes of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, Polish-Soviet talks on purchase of modern tanks came to a halt and the design of a new Polish tank gained momentum. The first design proposed by the bureau was code-named Wilk (Polish for wolf), but the project was cancelled. Instead, the priority was shifted to a different project named Twardy. The basic aim of the conversion of T-72 was to adapt it to the reality of modern warfare and fix its most visible deficiencies. Among those were low mobility, insufficient armour, lack of a fire control system and poor stabilisation of the main gun, which resulted in poor firing accuracy. An additional problem was lack of passive night vision aiming systems.
Read more about this topic: PT-91 Twardy
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