Production History
According to Russian sources, an informal agreement was in place between the Iraqi government and a Polish company as early as 1982. The deal comprised the assembly of 250 T-72Ms from imported hulls, in order to avoid the embargo. However, the process actually consisted of final assembly of complete knock down kits, rather than a true production line. By September 1982, the Soviet Union started to provide other T-72 components covertly via Poland, to upgrade the Iraqi tanks. About 60 T-72s were lost in the war with Iran. By the time of the beginning of the production in the Taji factory, several hundred T-72s were in active service in the Iraqi Army. Nevertheless, the tanks were upgraded between 1989 and 1990.
The steel plant in Taji, built by a West German company in 1986, manufactured steel for several military uses and met the standards to retrofit and rebuild tanks already on duty in the Iraqi Army, such as the T-54/55 and T-62. The first locally-assembled T-72 came off the production line in early 1989, after a license agreement was achieved with a Polish contractor to provide essential parts.
The United Nations imposed an arms embargo following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, which soon limited the complex activity to the production of spare parts for the Lions and other tanks in the Iraqi arsenal.
In most aspects, the Lion of Babylon is physically identical to the basic T-72M1. The Iraqi T-72s were upgraded with the addition of laminated armor on the front slope and rear as protection against HEAT projectiles. A few examples featured a laser rangefinder for its 125 mm smoothbore main gun. American military intelligence believed some of them also featured Belgian-made thermal sights. These same sources claim the tank was also provided with a better track protection against sand and mud than the Soviet T-72, by reducing the original number of dampers. Some of them carried a crude detachable pipe device made by the Iraqis in order to use the exhausts to blow up sand or dust to dig-in the tank. It's widely known that the tank had some kind of electro-optical interference pods of Chinese origin. As secondary armament, the tank mounted either the NSV or the DShK 12.7 mm machinegun and the coaxial 7.62 mm PKT common to all models of T-72.
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