Case in point, here's a M1-Abrams (USA's main-battle-tank) cooking off test. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7bOG2nD6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7bOG

Case in point, here's a M1-Abrams (USA's main-battle-tank) cooking off test. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7bOG2nD6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7bOG2nD6k You can see them purposefully light the tank's ammunition bay on fire. No damage to the internal components or the crew. I'm sure the crew is sweating and feeling "a bit warm", but they'll survive. Its just that Russian tanks are hilariously vulnerable to this problem. ------ Russia's doctrine / theory for their tanks is to make them *smaller* instead. Russian tanks weigh the same but have no compartmentalization. This means that Russian tanks can navigate smaller roads, and also that Russian tanks can hide in ditches (or other terrain) too small for M1 Abrams to hide in. In effect, Russians "accepted" the cook-off problem, but hoped that a competent crew could hide from the enemy better. Hard to say if it works, because it looks like the Russian crews are horribly trained and have low morale in this fight. I think I can agree with the theory, or at least see that there's a beneficial tradeoff here. https://i.redd.it/mtwtamct1t821.jpg https://i.redd.it/mtwtamct1t821.jpg That's a lot smaller for the T72 compared to the M1 Abrams. If the crew could take advantage of the T72's smaller size, the crew very well could be more survivable on the modern battlefield.