Putin Has a New Problem in Ukraine: Russia’s T-90 Tank Has a ‘Disco Head’ Glitch

Key Points – Russia’s T-90 main battle tank, initially a modernized T-72 (T-72BU) developed after the Soviet collapse, aimed to combine affordability with some T-80 advancements.

-It features a formidable 125mm gun and a three-man crew facilitated by an autoloader, giving it a lower profile and good off-road mobility at around 45-50 tons.

-However, in Ukraine, the T-90 has suffered significant losses (nearly 200 visually confirmed by Oryx), particularly to FPV drones.

-It has also exhibited a “disco head” turret malfunction, potentially due to inexperienced crews or electronic failures, raising questions about its battlefield effectiveness despite its design attributes.

-The synthesis of knowledge about Soviet tank design that would become the T-90 offers a fascinating case study of the interplay between geopolitics, logistics, and defense finances.

How the Russian T-90 Tank Was Born

As of the late 1980s, the Soviet Union’s main battle tanks ran in two parallel but slightly different streams.

On the one hand, the relatively reliable and affordable T-72 had well-established production lines. On the other hand, the T-80 was, at least on paper, the more capable, more advanced tip-of-the-spear.

It sported a gas turbine engine that offered better performance than the T-72’s diesel, it had a superior fire control system. It wasn’t perfect, however: it was decidedly fuel-inefficient, necessitating a sizeable logistical footprint compared to its counterpart, the T-72.

Following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union just a few years later, the Russian military was massive — but poor.

Defense budget cuts contributed to the need for an expedient and affordable successor to the T-72. Additionally, the T-80’s main production site was in Ukraine, now an independent country. The loss of that production facility complicated the arguments in favor of the T-80.

In tandem with the T-80’s development, the Uralvagonzavod factory that produced the T-72 experimented with T-80 fire control systems, thermal sights, updated active and reactive protection systems, and a more powerful engine to a T-70.

Dubbed the T-72BU, that platform was untimely renamed the T-90 in the early 1990s.

T-90 Tank

One of the T-90 main battle tank’s most remarkable features — particularly in comparison to its somewhat smaller NATO counterpart — is the T-90’s main gun, a 125mm seriously formidable cannon.

Unlike American tank doctrine, and indeed the tank doctrine of many NATO countries, Warsaw Pact countries operated three-man tanker crews, a typically Soviet tank design consideration and facilitated by an automatic loading mechanism in place of a dedicated loader station.

The elimination of that gunner position does offer the T-90 and the preceding T-series tanks a much lower, almost squat profile that presented adversaries with a smaller target.

The abolition of the gunner position and subsequent smaller size affords the T-90 a relatively light footprint. Paired with the relatively wide tracks characteristic of the T-series, the T-90 is a nimble off-road performer that tips the scales at 45 to 50 tons, depending on the specific model and armor packaging.

One shortcoming of the three-man design, however, is a fairly significant reduction in manpower for performing maintenance in the field and repair, increasing each individual’s workload.

But one benefit is more readily obvious from a strategic perspective: shuttling around dozens or hundreds of M1 Abrams main battle tanks — at around 70 tons each — would be a strain for rail infrastructure in Europe, not to mention bridges and roads.

The “Disco Head” Glitch

Despite the T-90’s not-insignificant attributes, some of the class have experienced a loss of control on the battlefield: in some instances, T-90 turrets have been seen endlessly rotating and seemingly completely out of control, and what one former tank commander in the British Army called “disco head.”

Though these instances involved T-90s that experienced one or more hits from various types of weapons before experiencing “disco head,” their performance in Ukraine was potentially lower than anticipated.

In the course of his interview with The Telegraph, a British daily broadsheet, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who formerly served in the British Army as a tanker — a tank commander, in fact — explained that there is a two-headed problem dogging Russian T-90 crews. Those concurrent issues are “likely be a combination between inexperienced crews and poor electronics.”

“It’s very easy for inexperienced people to become very disoriented in a tank, because a tank’s hull can move in one direction, the turret could be in another direction and the commander’s sight could be in a completely other direction,” De Bretton-Gordon explained, adding that “is why we get the term’ disco head’ because people can easily become disoriented and the tank spins out of control.”

But on the materiel side of the equation, “It could also be an electronics failure. Western tanks have a quite sophisticated fire control system,” de Bretton-Gordon said, and “the Russians don’t appear to have got it right,” he concluded.

So, is it operator error or error 404? It is unclear — but in fact, the answer to that turbid question may, in the end, perhaps find itself overshadowed by sheer mass. The losses Russia has sustained in the course of its abortive plunge through Ukraine, which this journalist reported on — are, in a word, high.

Losses in Ukraine

Russia’s losses in both men and materiel in Ukraine, in a less sanitized word, have been staggering. Though estimates vary, some estimates put the number of Russian soldiers killed at nearly 240,000. Oryx, a tracking website that uses open-source video and photo evidence to track losses in the war in Ukraine, places Russia’s T-90 losses at nearly 200. This estimate is almost certainly an undercount, as losses must be documented in order to be tallied.

Oryx also keeps tallies on Ukraine’s losses using the same methodology. Those numbers can be seen here.

Though many of those losses are attributed to mines, direct fire, or otherwise, increasingly, the losses experienced by not just the T-90 platform but virtually all categories of Russian vehicles have been increasingly sophisticated FPV (First Person View) drones. Continuously modified for better performance, one of the most recent FPV developments has been trading the traditional radio communication with a direct hardline: fiber-optic cable spooled out from the drone. Impervious to jamming and electronic warfare, these fiber-optic-directed drones also send back real-time video in significantly sharper quality.

About the Author: Caleb Larson

Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.

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