The T-64BM Bulat is fitted with a two-man turret mounted at the center of the hull which is armed with a 125mm smoothbore gun with an automatic loader for 28 rounds. It can fire a full range of ammunition including sub-caliber kinetic energy or shaped-charge projectiles, HEAT (high explosive anti-tank), HE-FRAG (high explosive fragmentation) rounds as well as guided missiles 9K119 (AT-11 Sniper) which has a maximum range of 4,000m. The number of rounds that T-64BM BULAT can carry is 36 two-piece (projectile and charge) rounds, of which 28 rounds are placed in the automatic loader, with the remainder being stored at the driver's station and in the fighting compartment. One round of gun ammunition takes from 7.1 s to 19.5 s to load per one turn of the carousel-type magazine. The magazine can also be loaded semi-automatically by the crew during 13-15 minutes. A 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun is mounted to the right of the main armament and one remotely operated 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun is mounted to the right of the roof turret. Remotely controlled anti-aircraft 12.7-mm machine-gun mount NSVT, which has a load of 300 ready-to-fire rounds, is capable of engaging aerial targets out to 1,500 meters and ground targets out to 2,000 meters. Additionally, the tank can disguise itself on the battlefield by laying a thermal effects protective smoke screen, in addition to a smoke screen generated by the TUCHA smoke discharging system which comprises eight 3D6 smoke grenade launchers and collective control panel. The smoke grenade launchers are mounted externally on the front turret, arranged in six on either side of the gun.

The layout of the T-64BM Bulat is conventional for a main battle tank, with the driver's compartment at the front, a two-person turret in the center, and the engine compartment at the rear. Reducing the crew from four to three persons was made possible by introducing an automatic loader, which, coupled with a more densely packed layout design, enabled the vehicle’s overall visual profile to be further reduced, and the tank’s armored surface to be cut to less than 11 m3. Mounted around the perimeter of the fighting compartment is a mechanized carousel-type round rack M3 containing 28 rounds of ammunition. The T-64BM is fitted with the 'Knife' reactive armor also called Nozh or Nizh. As with all ERA modules, they are designed to explode when impacted by a weapon. The Nozh modules differ from other ERA modules in that they are specifically designed to eliminate or minimize damage to adjacent modules, thus allowing for a 200% to 300% increased effectiveness against multiple weapon impacts, compared to other ERA module designs. The front hull, tank sides, and turret roof are protected with integral explosive reactive armor plates. The explosive reactive armor consists of nose module and side skirts installed on the tank hull, as well as modular sections placed along the outer perimeter of the front and side parts of the turret, and containers installed on the turret roof. The protection level of the T-64B tank is elevated to the BULAT capability by means of installing supplementary armor plates on the hull and the turret, enabling the tank’s battlefield survivability to be increased by 2.2 times against shaped-charge rounds and 1.9 times against kinetic-energy munitions. Fuel tanks are fitted externally on the front hull on the driver’s right and left, the right one being designed in the form of a fuel tank-ammunition rack containing seven rounds of gun ammunition.