Since someone mentioned things like Russian would award a T-90, this is what Chinese team get for second place.
It's a samowar to make tea the Russian way. Might it be useful in North China?Since someone mentioned things like Russian would award a T-90, this is what Chinese team get for second place.
It's a samowar to make tea the Russian way. Might it be useful in North China?
Isn't China developing a new MBT altogether? But I wonder if they're going to keep the current format where elite units could be getting the new MBT, while normal units receive the ZTZ-96B?New info from Chinese BBS:
According to PLA Daily, the PLA's official newspaper, the ZTZ-96A that competed in the 2015 Tank Biathlon was a new variant tentatively called the ZTZ-96A1.
This new variant has an 11% increase in horsepower and this upgrade, being a minor evolutionary upgrade, can be and has been applied to standard ZTZ-96As. The tanks that competed in the 2015 Biathlon did not have appliqué armour, reducing mass by 1 tonne and had a hp-to-ton ratio of 21.6.
A quick calculation tells us that if the original 96A has an 800hp engine, then the 96A1 has a 1.11 x 800hp engine = 888hp. Now if we divide 888 by 21.6 ( = 41.1 tonnes), we get the tonnage of the competition 96A1s. After we add the extra tonne of appliqué armour a combat 96A1 will have, we get a final combat mass of 42.1 tonnes.
The article also reveals that a more advanced variant, the ZTZ-96B, is under development.
According to the Chinese themselves, the 96 series are primary for the southern regions where less than ideal road conditions, where heavyweights such as the ZTZ-99 series won't do well, thus it's more than just cost and economy at play here probably.Isn't China developing a new MBT altogether? But I wonder if they're going to keep the current format where elite units could be getting the new MBT, while normal units receive the ZTZ-96B?