Takom T-14 Armata Russian MBT 1:35

[Mike]

T-14 Armata Russian MBT
1:35 Takom

First seen at the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade, with its turret and gun shrouded for secrecy, but it has now emerged from the shadows, although some aspects of its performance are necessarily unclear at this time. It is based upon the Armata chassis that is to be a common base for Russian armour, which simplified maintenance, spares and familiarity of the crew, as well as saving on development costs.

The turret is unmanned, which obviates the need for a fume extractor on the barrel, as the crew are salted away in an armoured compartment in the forward hull. They are connected electronically to the auto-loading 125mm smooth bore cannon, sighting equipment and even a remotely operated 12.7mm Kord machine gun, so the turret can be that much smaller. The gun can fire quicker than it could be manually loaded, although barrel heating would mean that the maximum rate of 10-12 round per minute couldn't be sustained for long, even if shells continued to be available. A new discarding Sabot round of almost 1m in length is being developed for the gun, which has a horrific penetrating power over long distances, and it can also fire guided missiles, making it a true fifth generation tank.

It is in its early service days, so likely to undergo many changes before it reaches the definitive variant, but even without the planned upgrade to a 152mm gun, it looks to be a formidable opponent on any battlefield.


The Kit
Takom must have friends in high places, spies in Russia or some serious crystal ball technology, as we only saw the initial vehicles in the summer of 2015, and it's still autumn as I write this. However they did it, the kits were flying off the shelves at Telford this year, which is a good sign for all involved. The kit arrives in a by now familiar white themed box with an attractive painting of the T-14 on the front. Inside are eleven sprues in mid-grey styrene, plus two hull parts, turret top & skirts in the same colour. There is also a small clear sprue, a run of six poly-caps, a sheet of Photo-Etch (PE) brass, and a small decal sheet.

The first thing that strikes is the size of the hull. It is a substantial vehicle, although it doesn't look that large from a distance, which is perhaps down to the smaller turret. Detail throughout is crisp and nicely done, with a fairly straight forward build process that naturally starts with the lower hull and suspension arms, onto which fourteen paired wheels are added, plus the three part drive sprockets (2 of) and three-part idler wheels (2 of). If you don't like painting rubber tyres, you'll be groaning when I tell you that all the road wheels (28 of them) have rubber tyres to paint, unless you go down the heavy mud route. An appliqué armour panel is added to the rear bulkhead onto which extra track links and tow rope are added, plus a pair of short mudguards and some pioneer tools.

Tracks! You'll be making two runs of ninety-five links each, and they're all individual links with separate guide-horns, so you will need to nip each of the five sprue gates off the links, and two from the guide-horns, clean them up and then glue them together into a long run using liquid glue. Drape them around the wheels while the glue is still curing, and hold them in place with whatever you have to hand until they're dry. If you leave a link unglued, you could paint them off the hull if you prefer.

With the tracks on and hopefully dealt with, the upper hull can be added, after the exhaust port is pushed through from the inside of the lower hull wall. Mud guards, vision blocks, light clusters and hatches are added to the upper surfaces, with the ERA block encrusted side-skirts attached to slots and pins on the sides of the hull. At the rear a set of slat-armour panels protect the engine compartment, which fix to the sides on hinging brackets on the real thing, but these look to be non-functional on the kit. Gaps in the slats allow the baffled exhaust to exit the sides of the vehicle.

The turret is a mass of angles to reduce observability and accommodate ERA armour to protect the delicate mechanisms inside, so the turret top has a number of small sections added before it can be joined with the lower turret, which has a separate turret ring, and houses ten Afghanit hard-kill dispensers for the self-protection system low down in a recess on each cheek of the turret. It also has the 125mm gun installed, which splits vertically and has a separate hollow muzzle and two shroud parts at the rear, which link to the simple breech part that hinges on two poly-caps to give you a poseable gun. This is enclosed in a sharply angles mantlet and dropped into the lower turret, which the upper turret traps in place. With no hatches to add, sensors and aerials are added to the turret roof, plus the two NII Stali upper hemisphere protection turrets, which house twelve missiles each. Two more packs are set into the roof with only the tubes showing. The main sensor bin looks one-part Dalek, one-part upturned waste-paper basket, and sits right of centre to the rear of the turret, and can be left to rotate by the use of a poly-cap. The 12.7mm machine gun with covered ammo stowage sits on a ledge to the rear of the sensor bin, and turns in unison, without blocking the view of the crew. The turret bustle has an integrated stowage basket that has hard sides, and a tubular rear frame that is covered with a PE mesh panel, with a couple of spare track-links stowed inside in a semi-folded position. Add a rearward facing searchlight to the back corner, and twist the turret into place to lock it on the bayonet fitting.


Markings
Mig Jimenez's AMMO have provided the colour profiles and paint codes for this release, as is becoming the norm for Takom, and due to the newness of this vehicle, Only one of the four markings options are factual. From the box you can build one of the following:

• WWII Victory Day Parade, 9th May 2015 – Russian Green with the new dynamic red star and orange/black stripes on the side skirts.
• What-if Desert pattern – Sand, mid brown and dark brown splinter camouflage.
• What-if T-90 pattern – Sand, mid green & dark green camouflage.
• What-if pattern – sand, mid green and mid brown camouflage.
  

The paint codes are from the AMMO range as you'd expect, and the decal sheet caters for three of the schemes, including that of the May parade, with 143 and 623 turret codes in white, and the outline red star with black/orange stripes to the sides. Registration is good, but the orange seems to suffer from a little bleeding at the edges on my review sample, but that can be cured by either a sharp scalpel or not getting too close to the model when finished! There are also a pair of decals labelled (5), which aren't mentioned in the instructions, but I suspect are there to depict LED lamps inside the headlamp lenses.


Conclusion
It's difficult to know at this stage just how accurate this kit is, or will be when the vehicle reaches service units in large volumes, but if you want a T-14 Armata, this is a good-looking kit with plenty of external detail, and a certain appeal to it (to me at least). No doubt we'll see some of the sprues being used in other Armata based vehicles down the line.

If Takom are listening, I'd also like to see them keeping pace with the development of the T-14, updating with new parts where appropriate.

Highly recommended.

Review sample courtesy of
UK Distributors for

[nick32]

Thanks Mike, look's a very interesting kit. Might have to add one to the stash at some point.

Nick

[Shar2]

Bought one at Telford and it is a super kit.

[Mick4350]

Good thing you mention that the turret is unmanned as it appears to have a shot trap on the front of the turret for opposing enemy gunners to aim at.

[Mike]

The mantlet is quite similar to the Abrams in that respect, but if you mean the area around those self-defence pots, I guess hitting the pots first would reduce the penetrating power of the projectile and/or trigger some ERA blocks. The designers have probably thought it all through, but they're hardly about to tell us of any weaknesses or strengths

[tsepajev]

New Voyager aftermarket parts are coming for Takom T-14 (PE set, 135 mm barrel etc).

http://www.voyagermodel.com/productdetails.asp?itemid=PE35814