New Type98/99 MBT thread

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Insignius

Junior Member
Production numbers are guesswork, so I'll just quote the deployed numbers as of today.

Quick and dirty:

- ZBL09 8x8 IFV armed with 30mm turret + HJ73 ATGM:

Deployed in 2 regiments (112. Div 335. Regt and 162. Div. 485. Regt) = 186 total

- ZBD04 tracked IFV armed with 30mm + 100mm coaxial (BMP3 pattern):

Deployed in at least 11 units (from a single battalion to whole brigade) = around 500 total

- ZBD08 IFV (significantly up-armoured/modified variant of the ZBD04 with same weapons)

Deployed in at least two battalions (in the 334th regiment 112th Div, along with the new ZTZ99B/A2, making it the heaviest and strongest regiment in the entire PLA) = 62 in total

- ZBD05 Amphibious IFV armed with 30mm turret + HJ73 ATGM:

Deployed in two amphibious mech inf divisions and partly in the two PLAMC brigades = 280 total

nd is this more of an upgrade/replacement effort or more of an expansion of its mechanized forces?
Click to expand...

I think it is both.

For once, the PLA is only roughly 50% mechanized (compared to the Soviet army being 100% mechanized already in the mid 80's) and second there are still lots of obsolete gear in the PLA that needs replacement.
I do not foresee completely new mechanized units being created, but former motorized units will be converted and already mechanized units will be modernized.

All in all, we can say that there is actually an expansion of mechanization in the PLA which would mean that this is an expansion of the available mechanized forces in general.
 
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no_name

Colonel
PLA is a bit like Chinese cityscape and economic distribution. You have a number of tier one cities that can compare with any cities around the world, but you also have large number of poorer towns and villages.
 
V

Vini_Vidi_Vici

Junior Member
Hahaha, China's military organisation structure is very lose. There are a lot of countless paramilitary forces that are hard to categorize. The main reason that China is behind in development is mostly due to lack of funding in the early stages. Then when USSR collapsed and China starting to have plentiful of money, China lost the threat and motivation to drastically modernize its military. Although China is drastically modernizing its military, it is rather small scale and mostly targeted towards those elite branches. The rest are just lower tier troops, there just serving as cheap alternatives.

In the area of MBTs, China is too big and formidable for people to have a conflict with, especially in the open planes. Only possible hostile land opponent is Vietnam. The rest are either friendly or neutral neighbors. Only possible competitors/potentially hostile opponents are all from the sea, such as Taiwan, Japan, USN 7th Fleet, and the ASEAN countries. MBTs are useless in those cases, where warships and airplanes are the only weapons viable.

I still believe that tanks are important in modern warfare. It's a necessity to constantly research and upgrade in this sector, but it is becoming less important for China. The programs should be kept alive but at a small scale, like Japan. This way the available technology is always avant-garde, but at the same time, not much money is wasted into something that is barely used.
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
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Ds602.jpg


Sure, NORINCO, China’s lead military manufacturer didn’t have the real thing, but they did display a model of the Sky Dragon air defense system and Main Battle Tank 3000 in development.

The medium range surface-to-air missile system can detect up to 144 targets provided target guidance for 12 missiles simultaneously. The radar has a range of 130 km with a missile target engagement range from 30m to 20km in altitude.

The system is broken up into three elements: a fire distribution vehicle, an IBIS 130 3D target designation radar as well as up to six launching units each outfitted with four suface-to-air-missiles.

The missile is a single-stage solid propellant. It has a single-shot kill probability against a fighter aircraft of 80 percent, said Wang Cheng, the West Asia Department assistant general manager for NORINCO.

China’s North Industries Corporation (NORINCO) also displayed their Main Battle Tank 3000 the company hopes to deliver to the Chinese Army in two years, Cheng said. It’s one of the few, if not the only, company to be developing a main battle tank. The tank can reach speeds up to 42 miles per hour with a cruising range of 500 km. It has a fording depth of four to five meters and a trench of 2.7 meters. The maximum gradient is 60 percent.

Engineers mounted a 125mm smoothbore gun onto the MBT 3000. The main gun can fire APFSDS, HEAT and HE shells and gun launched missiles with a maximum missile range reaching 5,000 meters. MBT 3000 also features a 12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine gun and a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. Tankers can also fire from 8 76mm smoke grenade launchers and 4 76mm shrapnel grenade launchers.

It carries 38 rounds of main ammunition with a loading speed of eight rounds per minute with 22 rounds on the loader. An un-cooled thermal imagery is installed for the driver while a second generation cooled thermal imager is provided for gunner and the tank commander.

The engine is a water-cooled turbocharged electronic-controlled diesel engine with 1300 horsepower.The tank is fully digitized with inertial navigation and GPS. Engineers also built a new fire extinguishing and explosion suppression system.
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I

Insignius

Junior Member
Yeah, this is the VT-1A or the "MBT-2000 Gai" as called by the chinese bloggosphere.

What I find especially interersting is the quote that it has a 1300hp diesel engine with electronic control (diagnostics?), and it being fully digitized with GPS, Thermal Imagers for all crew stations and whatnot. Also the turret design and protection vectors look considerably better than earlier Chinese tanks of the MBTXX series. Still not too great all in all, but a vast improvement IMHO.

But what takes the cake IMHO is the 'explosion suppression' system. Remember that video with the APC getting blown madly after a penetrating hit in Syria? This is caused by the ammo and fuel, which is, in Chinese and Russian tanks, stored loosely everywhere in every nook and hole in the crewspace, which leads to fatal explosion in case of a penetration.
This dire problem is solvable though, as there are other western tanks who also had this kind of hazardous spare ammo storage in hull and turret, but made do with special explosion suppression techniques, while not relying on the Leopard 2 or M1-styled ammo storage design with blow-off panels. The Russians, until the T-90MS, simply never bothered to find a solution for this problem, so I dare to suggest that maybe the MBT3000 will feature such a system somehow, that may solve this problem in a similiar fashion as western tanks with loose spare ammo in hull and turret.

This would increase the survivability of the MBT3000 dramatically, making it even more survivable than the ZTZ99 series (excluded the ZTZ99B/A2) IMHO.

All in all, it also says that Norinco hopes it to introduce it for the PLA too. Let's see whether this will happen, or not. As a possible ZTZ96 replacement, I can imagine it.
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
Nevertheless, the Russian-type gun system with its separate munition-charge design makes cookoff easier than that the Western type munitions, and blown-off panel.

Still, ex-Soviet made tanks that still serves in the Middle East (like in Saddam's Iraq and today's Syria) are the so-called "monkey model", their fire suppression system are dismal by all regards.

That said, if the Chinese find improvement in this sector (their ZTZ96/99 series are still based on Soviet design doctrine), my money is on the fire suppression system.
 
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