He was talking more about technological sophistication as it appears to me, and in that regard, the PLA is generally never too adventurous, so he's not really wrong there.
Chinese Military Exports (Land Systems)
- Thread starter navyreco
- Start date
He was talking more about technological sophistication as it appears to me, and in that regard, the PLA is generally never too adventurous, so he's not really wrong there.
antiterror13
Brigadier
did I say he/she was wrong?
Actually Type 15 uses a lot of technologies from Type 99 series ... so quite advanced, in my opinion
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Same concept but Chinese design.
The concept is the carousel loader which I think The PLA kept as they elected to follow the 125mm tank gun scheme as opposed to breaking away from the Russians like they did with small arms.
Because of keeping commonality with the existing 125mm gun system they couldn't break from the method of the carousel.
Remember that there are primarily two concepts of autoloaders carousel and bustle.
The bustle loader type seen Leclerc, type 90 (Japan), Type 10 (Japan) an K2 As well as the experimental type found in the Russian Object 640 were based around Unitary ammo. That is that their ammo is a single piece.
VT4 is based on the Chinese Main Battle tank concept it's something of a hybrid of type 96 and Type 99 tanks at the heart of those is the Binary ammunition type. That is the same you see in Warsaw pact designs and is similar to the British line of 120mm rifled as well. Where in the ammo is in two to three parts. The head and the powder bag.
Unitary ammo loads in the breach like a bullet nose first all at once.
Binary has to be loaded in sequence projectile then charge.
The carousel loader was designed to do this very fast and reliably and consistently well also saving space. As the loader loads the ammo it operates like an arm unfolding laying the head and bag inline to ram into the breach.
Of course the problem is that that loader sits under the turret and the powder magazine is therefore exposed into the turret. If the tank is penetrated and a fire starts the loader is a virtual powder keg.
Well the bustle loader depends on a simple system of conveyer to move the next round to the Arm that than moves it to the breach. It to is susceptible to cook off but by being external in such an event the incident is outside of the tank turret.
As such though some may see it as more short sided as it's actually one of the least protected parts of the tank.
Really there isn't any other way to load a tank gun other than manually as we see in most western tanks and the only 125mm modern type that does that is North Korean.
That would work like the British Chalanger 2 where the single loader loads the projectile then the powder closes the breach guard and hits the release. The problem with manual loading is for the first few shots it might be fast heck faster than a autoloader sometimes but by shot 5 or 6 it gets harder not just fatigue but also storage. Autoloaders move the ammo to load it. Manual have to do the same but where a carousel or conveyer do this action as part of loading. A manual loader can only do that if he feels he's got the time and isn't in battle.
