Mark Urban

If we can blunt the Red Army coming westwards with our shield, we're then going to need a sword to retake lost ground or to bring about their final defeat.

So you end up reinvesting in tanks.

And of course, you get the great British tank of the Cold War, I think in certain ways, emblematic of the Cold War, the Centurion.

from the late 40s, steadily improved in service for an extraordinarily long time, bought by loads of different armies, a real mark of quality.

So what are the technologies that distinguish that?

Well, everything advances, really.

The science of building engines that can produce more and more horsepower.

The science of armour itself.

By the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union is developing what you call composite or laminate armour, in other words, a sandwich of different substances that

That rather than the just solid cast steel or rolled steel will disrupt incoming fire by using the different physical characteristics of different materials.

And they use different types of metal.

They use ceramics.

They use various types of things.

So that happens on the armor front.

And on the gun front, well, you get more advanced propellants.

You get what I call thin, stabilized, discarding sabot rounds, which is a shell that comes out of the gun and various bits fly off and you're left with something a bit like a dart.

that has enormous penetrative power.

So all of this comes along.

And so, for example, when the Soviet army produces the T-64, which in certain ways is the most revolutionary tank of the Cold War, it's the first tank in the world with composite armor.

It's the first tank in the world to have an automatic loading system.