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After world war two, and the grand enterence of the atomic weapons used in japan, the world realised that warfare would never be the same. These new powerful bombs would allow conventional forces to be wiped away instantly, and front lines to shift dramatically.

Thus any new military land vehicle would need to be fast, able to traverse inhospitable terrian and even whistant a distant nuclear blast.

Russia being russia, they were quick to come up with a solution. Developed in secret at the Kirov Planet in Leningrad in 1957, this new heavy tank would act much like the heavy tanks of world war two, German Tiger I and II, and the Soviet JSII and III models destined to fill the ranks of the supreme command reserve . The project would remain unnamed, only appearing in files as Object 279

this is what it was like.

Object 279 would be a super heavy tank, weighing over 60 metric tons and be 6.77 meters long, 22.3 feet, and 3.4 meters wide, 11.1 feet. It was also 2.6 meters tall, 8.7 feet, making it not very stealthy.

it would have a crew of four, a driver, loadered, gunner and a commander.

Lets talk about those quad tracks. It featured fourtrack running gear mounted on two longitudinal, rectangular hollow beams, which were also used as fuel tanks. this design would actually spread the weight of the tank over a larger surface area, resulting 0.6 kg/cm2 (~8.5psi).
This made it perfect for crosscountry capabilities on swampy terrain, soft soils and area full of cut trees, Czech hedgehogs, antitank obstacles many areas that other tanks would fail to traverse.

Its weapon system was advanced for the time, featuring a 130mm cannon with a semiautomatic loader with 24 rounds, infrared sights and even a radar rangefinder. It also had a machine gun with 800 rounds.

Frontal armor protection was as thick as eleven inches (its contemporary, the American M60, was closer to six inches). Its uqnuie oval shape was designed to protect it agaisnt blast shockwaves, such as a nuclear weapon, preventing the tank from flipping over. The whole crew compartment had full chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protection, as well as heaters and air conditioning.

The whole tank had a powerful 1000 horse power 2dg8m diesel engine, giving the 60 ton tank a top speed of 55 km per hour, or 34 miles per hour, and range of 300 km, or 186 miles on a single tank.

With the prototype finished by 1959, and tested on the firing range, it seemed like the tank of the future had arrived.

So why was it never put into service?

One of the key reasons why the heavy tank project was abandonded, and why the object 279 never made it past the prototype stage was that the soviet military in 1960 chose to stop operating any tanks over 37 tons. As this type was over 60 tons, it didn't stand a chance.

This was because there was a push from Nikita Krushchev himself to adopt alternative land military vehicles, such as guided missile tanks like the IT1.

There was also another drawback with the weight of the object 279. While its surface area was greater and it would be able to operate easily on anything from sand to snow, it would have one limit bridges. Notably, bridges that were throughout regional Russia that could not hold such a large tank. If the Russians found themselves in a war and had to retreat, they would struggle to get their tanks over their own rivers.

And lastly, and this might be the real killer, object 279 was too darn expensive. The tank burned through fuel when moving through swampy areas, it cost a ton to build, repair and maintain, and it was impossible to make it shorter making its turret stick out over the landscape. Today, there is still one nonfunctional prototype in Russia.