It was based on the design of the Carden Loyd tankette, bought under license from the United Kingdom in 1930.

Compared with the British original, the hull was larger, the running gear was improved and the weapon mount was modified to take a Soviet 7.62 mm DT machine gun.

The Red Army found them reliable and simple to operate, but the T-27 coped poorly with swampy and snowy terrain due to the narrowness of its tracks.

[4] Some experiments were also made to equip T-27s with more advanced weapons, such as flamethrowers and recoilless guns, but these did not prove successful.

It was also the first Soviet tracked vehicle transported by plane (a single tankette could be mounted below the fuselage of the TB-3 bomber).