"We are not intimidated by the size of the armies, or the type of hardware the US has brought."
- Saddam Hussein, commenting on the build up of Coalition Forces in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield, November 12th, 1990

The T-72, which entered production in 1971, was first seen in public in 1977. The T-72, introduced in the early 1970s, is not a further development of the T-64, but rather a parallel design chosen as a high-production tank complementing the T-64. The T-72 retains the low silhouette of the T-54/55/62 series, featuring a conventional layout with integrated fuel cells and stowage containers which give a streamlined appearance to the fenders. While the T-64 was deployed only in forward-deployed Soviet units, the T-72 was deployed within the USSR and exported to non-Soviet Warsaw Pact armies and several other countries. In addition to production in the USSR it has been built under license in Czechoslovakia, India, Poland and former Yugoslavia.

Pictured here is a 1:72 scale replica of an Iraqi T-72M1 main battle tank that served with the revitalized Iraqi Army in 2012. Now in stock!

Dimensions:
Length: 4-inches
Width: 2-1/4-inches

Release Date: April 2014

Historical Account: "The Lion of Babylon" - During the early stages of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein imported a number of T-72 tanks from the Soviet Union and Poland. The tanks saw service in both the Gulf War and the Iraq War. In the late 1970s, Iraq also established a factory to retrofit and repair T-72s, and started the Lion of Babylon project (named after the Babylonian historical symbol of the same name) with the intent to assemble T-72s locally.

Weapons exported by the Soviet Union, including T-72s, are known to have been significantly inferior to full-specification models in Soviet use.

In the 1970s and 80s, Iraq purchased a hundred T-72 from the Soviet Union. Iraq utilized these tanks during the Iran-Iraq War, which temporarily put T-72 exports to Iraq to a halt. However, Poland started delivering T-72s in January of 1982, and in September of the same year, Soviet exports resumed as well. Overall, Iraq received about 1,038 T-72 tanks, primarily produced in Poland. Some of these were destroyed during the Iran-Iraq War, or captured by the Iranians. As of 1996, Iraq had 776 T-72 tanks in service.

Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the new Iraqi Government acquired dozens of refitted T-72M1s from Hungary, in order to equip an armored brigade. The headquarters of this new Iraqi Army unit is located in Taji, where Iraq had attempted to assemble T-72s locally in the late 1980s. Some surviving T-72s are used for training, and the experience of Iraqi Army officers and crews with the T-72 was one of the reasons behind the choice of Hungarian T-72M1s.