Chinese ATGM discussion

Bltizo said:

Where did you read that?

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Insignius said:

HJ-73, HJ-8 etc arent even battalion assets.
They are divisional/brigade artillery assets. Yes, sounds stupid, and is stupid.
PLA uses them as direct replacement of the bad old towed AT-guns from WWII era, including their Orbat organization within the tube artillery units. Not to mention that the HJ-8 is heavy as hell and couldnt be transported by a foot-mobile based maneuvering infantry unit for very long.

Which means, a PLA company or even battalion being engaged by tanks is completely helpless beyond 200m, unless the commander was so farsighted as to attach a HJ-8 ATGM platoon to that unit before the operation.

It was no joke when foreign military observers and PLA enthusiasts alike deemed the PLA's organizational structure as being completely outdated and based on ancient, obsolete systems - until now.

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plawolf said:

At 25KG, even the Javalin isn't all that man portable. Realistically, you need a dedicated 4 man team to carry a worthwhile ammo load for ATGMs.

A US company will typically have 2-4 such ATGM teams, enough to kill a few enemy tanks, but now enough to dent, never mind stop, a full armoured charge.

If your infantry find themselves fighting massed enemy armour and mech infantry without any friendly armour, artillery or air support, a few ATGMs won't likely make much difference.

The PLA's structure and organisation may not be as nimble as western armies, but that's more to do with the fact that the PLA has always been gearing up to fight and win land battles on a massive scale.

The US and western armed forces are geared up to let their Air Force do the heavy lifting at that level, with their own armour, artillery and infantry moving in to mop up afterwards.

The Chinese Air Force's primary mission is to neutralise or at least keep enemy air power so pre-occupied it cannt mount effective ground attack operations so its land forces can win the day.

They are geared up to do different things, so its unreasonable to make direct comparisons at an arbitrary level and disregard the bigger strategic role and rationale in both the ORBAT and R&D funding prioritisation.

As I touched upon before, systems like sensor fused weapons (SFW) are a far more comprehensive and cost effect hard counter to enemy armour than man portable ATGMs. They are both useful, but one is like a sniper rifle while the other a heavy machine gun. Both are useful for different things, their roles may overlap somewhat, but for stopping a massed enemy advance, the HMG is more effective than the sniper rifle.

That is why China developed SFWs and give it higher priority and funding than man portable ATGMs.

Advanced ATGMs like the Javalin falls firmly into the 'things that are nice to have but not absolutely essential', category. Their role and function in a typical company is to give it the company the ability to mop up the odd enemy tank that might have slipped through or been missed by friendly armour and air power.

It will save lives and is a massive boost for the company, but such encounters are extremely unlikely to have much overall strategic impact, and so won't change the overall outcome of engagements much if at all.

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plawolf said:

At 25KG, even the Javalin isn't all that man portable. Realistically, you need a dedicated 4 man team to carry a worthwhile ammo load for ATGMs.

A US company will typically have 2-4 such ATGM teams, enough to kill a few enemy tanks, but now enough to dent, never mind stop, a full armoured charge.

If your infantry find themselves fighting massed enemy armour and mech infantry without any friendly armour, artillery or air support, a few ATGMs won't likely make much difference.

The PLA's structure and organisation may not be as nimble as western armies, but that's more to do with the fact that the PLA has always been gearing up to fight and win land battles on a massive scale.

The US and western armed forces are geared up to let their Air Force do the heavy lifting at that level, with their own armour, artillery and infantry moving in to mop up afterwards.

The Chinese Air Force's primary mission is to neutralise or at least keep enemy air power so pre-occupied it cannt mount effective ground attack operations so its land forces can win the day.

They are geared up to do different things, so its unreasonable to make direct comparisons at an arbitrary level and disregard the bigger strategic role and rationale in both the ORBAT and R&D funding prioritisation.

As I touched upon before, systems like sensor fused weapons (SFW) are a far more comprehensive and cost effect hard counter to enemy armour than man portable ATGMs. They are both useful, but one is like a sniper rifle while the other a heavy machine gun. Both are useful for different things, their roles may overlap somewhat, but for stopping a massed enemy advance, the HMG is more effective than the sniper rifle.

That is why China developed SFWs and give it higher priority and funding than man portable ATGMs.

Advanced ATGMs like the Javalin falls firmly into the 'things that are nice to have but not absolutely essential', category. Their role and function in a typical company is to give it the company the ability to mop up the odd enemy tank that might have slipped through or been missed by friendly armour and air power.

It will save lives and is a massive boost for the company, but such encounters are extremely unlikely to have much overall strategic impact, and so won't change the overall outcome of engagements much if at all.

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Insignius said:

Partly this reasoning is correct, but it was mainly a cost issue.

Traditionally, the PLA company and battalion based firepower relied on massed numbers of recoilless rifles at that Orbat level to provide direct and organic fire-support. ATGMs were always an asset exclusively reserved to the far detached anti-tank artillery units of the divisional artillery regiment. And those were very few in number (like, 18 systems for an entire division IIRC) and noone could expect them to be attached to every maneuvering regiment, let alone maneuvering battalion to give all of them the AT power they need to confront modern heavy armored main battle tanks at ranges exceeding the 200m of the RPGs and 500-800m of their Recoilless Rifles. Anti-tank warfare at these ranges are either suicidal acts of desperation, or ambushing actions - not something one should be reliant on in a conventional war.

The infantry battalion, no matter if foot-based, motorized or even mechanized was never suppossed to have ATGMs (aside of the HJ-73s mounted on their ZBD-86 IFVs etc), but only armed with recoilless rifles. The PF-98 120mm Recoilless Rocket Launcher that was introduced in the early 2000s was similiarily just a modernized recoilless rifle, this time with fancier computerized optics, that was meant to give the PLA company and battalion the direct AT firesupport they so desperately needed.

And all of that was mainly due to cost. The PLA was simply too cheap to hand out expensive guided weapon systems to the lower echelons, and also because the extreme weight of a HJ-8 system (60kg complete system, -without- the spare missiles), made it completely unsuitable for a maneuvering unit to carry around and set up in the heat of battle. The PF-98 complete system, for comparisson, weights less than 30kg and could be carried around by a standard 9 man infantry squad with six to eight spare rockets. The setup time is also quite lower, and, as recently seen, it can also be fired directly from the shoulder like a Carl Gustav equivalent.

Now, the HJ-12 changes everything. This is a system the PLA has always waited for. 22kg is pretty much the lightest ever self-contained major AT system (excluding the PF-89 LAWs and RPGs) that the PLA has ever fielded, and it can be operated by a fire-team sized group of soldiers (3-5 men), with a good amount of spare missiles. And its mobile, fire and forget nature allows it to quickly keep pace with the moving infantry and even use those in buildings and under cover.

If anything, the introduction of the HJ-12 indicates that the PLA has finally realized that being cheap isnt always good - especially when that cheapness prevents your fighting men from accessing vital capabilities that will make a difference between life and death.

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no_name said:

From here:

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-First presented at european arms fair in Paris June 2014.

-First fire and forget infantry anti-tank missile from China

-Works similar to Javelin, Spike, type 01 and Hyun-Gung.

-Can also be mounted on vehicles.

-Total weight 22kg, missile 17kg.

-Tube for missile is 1.25m long and 0.17m in diameter

-Uses non-cooled active infrared seeker works both day and night

-Also comed with daylight version that works with electro-optics seeker.

-Longest ranger for daylight version is 4km. 2km with infrared seeker.

-Lock before launch.

-Can be fired 'cold' against buildings and fortifications.

-Can travel overhead or direct path to target.

-tandem warheads provides 1100mm penetration capability.

-Can be used against armour, underground bunker, buildings, underwater targets and slow flying helicopters.

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