Comments by "Reecom98" (@reecom9884) on "Ukrainian general takes captured Russian tank for a test run" video.

It’s an old Soviet era T-72 with the outdated Luna 2 infrared searchlight in front of the commander’s hatch on the turret on the right side. They had poor night vision capability so they had to shine an IR searchlight to locate the enemy at night.
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@Mark-lj1dj In the Yom Kippur war in 1973 the Syrians’ T-72 had a night advantage with the IR searchlights. The Israeli tank commanders had to use their binoculars with IR, to direct the gunners where the Syrian T-72 IR searchlights were. The Israeli tank gunners were basically shooting blind using verbal instruction for direction and range since the gunners had no IR aiming scope. The mistake the Syrians made were keeping their IR searchlights on constantly instead of cycling them on/off and moving, given the Israelis a chance to fight back at night.
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