T-62M

Dedushka has told me stories, such stories...

What's this? A preview for oil wars? ALL RIGHT THEN!

Like the T55AM2 the T-62M is an old tank dug up from the endless Soviet inventory of old war machines and upgraded to stand an actual chance on the modern battlefield (but not from deep within the inventory, that would be T34s). With bolt on BDD armor panels on the turret and hull, new side skirts, and improved fire control systems It can still hold its own against all but the latest models of main battle tanks. Armed with a 115mm 2A20 smooth bore gun, this old girl can still dish out the damage weather it be traditional munitions or even ATGMs.

In Team Yankee

Da Stats, Comrade!

If you some how wanted to cram even more tanks into a Soviet armored list, buddy have I got the tank for you.

The T-62M shares the armor values of T-55AM2, with a front armor of 14,side of 9 and a top armor of 2, and should be played in a similar manner. If anything serious notices you, you are most likely going to lose a tank or three. You do get the benefits of bazooka skirts though so light man portable anti tank weapons will have a slightly harder time trying to kill you.

The primary difference between the T-62M and the T-55AM2 is the gun. While the T-55 struggles how to deal with modern tanks, T-62M's 115mm 2A20 gun has an AT of 21, just enough to deal with those pesky 18 front armor tanks, and will punch right through the sides. The 2+ firepower rating guarantees that you will be demolishing your targets with almost every penetrating hit. You also get the AT-10 Stabber missile which has an extra 16 inches of range over conventional munitions but has of Firepower Rating of 3+ but you do get the Guided and HEAT rules. Unlike the other Soviet guns though, you don't get the Brutal rule so you probably would be better off using your MGs against infantry and unarmored vehicles.

T-62M battalions start at 3 tanks for 8 points and for every tank you then add tack on another 3 points to a limit of 10 tanks which tops out at 32 points. ATGMs will cost you 2 points to equip you battalion, which means that they get proportionally less expensive the more tanks in your battalion.

IRL

The Russians were still using this in 2008

If the T-55 is the GLORIOUS WORKERS TANK, the T-62 is it's lesser known peasant cousin nobody likes to talk about. Its record in Soviet and Russian service is rather patchy (they lost over 300 of these tanks in Afghanistan), it didn't sell well to foreign nations, and it's notable as the last Soviet MBT design to not include an autoloader. The T-62 is really the forgotten tank, never reaching the numbers of the T-55 and not as advanced or notable as the T-64. What's really interesting about it however, isn't what the Soviets did with it (Which is make a bazillion different T-62M variants with wildly differing amounts of modernizing), but what everyone else did with it. That said, some of the soviet variants are pretty crazy, ranging from firefighting vehicles to a tank destroyer model that ditched the gun for a shitload of ATGMs.

The Russian firefighting variant, better known as the Impuls-2M. It's basically an MLRS that launches firefighting chemicals

The Egyptians bought it, and in the 80's took out the 115mm gun for a 105mm L7. The Israelis did similar modifications around the same time to captured T-62's and 62M's. Every Warsaw Pact country but Bulgaria ignored it, as the improvements the T-62 offered over the T-54/55 were rather marginal for double the cost. Bulgaria also created a firefighting vehicle variant. Angola, some middle eastern nations like Syria, and a some communist nations in Asia and Africa bought them as well as Cuba. The Chinese stole tech out of the T-62 for their own Type-69 MBT, based on a captured vehicle they got during the Sino-Soviet Border Skirmishes. The Type-69 is interestingly enough a small improvement on the Type-59 which is a copy of the T-54A, but that's a long story you should look up on your own. But the really really crazy stuff comes from the North Koreans.

The North Koreans have what I can only describe as a fetish for the T-62. Such a fetish in fact, that they christened it the Chonma-ho II when they imported it. Why II? Because they already had a Chonma-ho I. The Chonma-ho I is the T-62, but with thinner armor. It's an exact copy in almost every way, except somehow worse. Just to make things more confusing, there's two different Chonma-ho II's, with the second (I'll call it the 'II 2') being an upgrade of the I, so there's that. The III is just a II 2 with a barrel heat shroud and sideskirts, so it's a T-62M but still worse. The IV, V, and VI models are basically just I's and II 2's with modernized fire control, ERA and Applique armor (IV,) a IV with a 125mm gun from the T-72 (V), and the V with rubber all over it to deal with tandem warheads somehow (VI). The North Koreans also like to put Strela-2's and Strela-3's on the turrets of these things, and even have another variant for a command tank that doesn't even have a main gun. All in all, they have something like 1,500 T-62 and T-62 derivatives, all together.

If Battlefront ever adds North Koreans, expect a load of upgrade sprues.