Tank origin

The Object 477 project began in the mid-1980s at the Kharkiv Morozov Design Bureau (KMDB), with a design for a tank that would mount a 152mm 2A73 gun. Security breaches led to the project being modified and reclassified under a new code name: molot, meaning “hammer.” After the Soviet Union dissolved, development work resumed at the Ukrainian state-owned KMDB; however, the tank was never produced beyond the prototype phase.