Object 279: Russia’s (Almost) Heavy Tank That NATO Would Have Dreaded Fighting

By Michael Peck, The National Interest

The tank was known only as Object 279, one of those opaque Soviet designations that could mean just about anything.

But just looking at the experimental Soviet heavy tank from the 1950s is enough to give one chills.

There are the quadruple tracks, four sets of treads as if the tank had tried to multiply through cell division. And there is that long, long cannon like a poke in the face.

Object 279 was born in 1957, at a time when heavy tanks were still in vogue, instead of the one-size-fits-all main battle tank concept of today. Heavy tanks had garnered a prominent—perhaps disproportionate—reputation during World War II, notably the German Tiger I and II, and the Soviet JS-II and III models, which dwarfed Western medium tanks like the U.S. M4 Sherman.

Object 279 was the brainchild of the Kirov Plant in Leningrad. Designed in 1957, the sixty-ton vehicle would have been assigned an assault role typical of World War II heavy tanks, which was to break through enemy fortified lines. But strangely for such a heavy vehicle, it was also intended to operate in terrain too rough for lighter tanks to operate in, according to one Russian military history site (Google translation here [3]).

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