New Type98/99 MBT thread
- Thread starter Dongfeng
- Start date
Considering the street signs in first picture,these seem to be taken in Inner Mongolia,and neither northern ningxia nor northern shaanxi is faraway from this place.VIA pdf @YuChen
Brand new 99A heading to army.
Do we know how many type 099a are produced by a year?
Are they still producing a type 96a?
Pretty sure you got companies and battalions mixed up. One company of tanks in the PLA (and USSR) consisted of ten vehicles, nine belonging to three platoons of three vehicles each, plus a single commander's vehicle. A battalion consisted of three companies and a battalion commander's vehicle, totally 31 vehicles.
Annual production of MBTs at 617th Plant is definitely more than 30 ZTZ-96As and 10 ZTZ-99s.
Also, something I've noticed a while ago but haven't brought up; do you hold a grudge against capital letters?
antiterror13
Brigadier
yeapp, 100 ZTZ-96A/B and 30 ZTZ-99A a year seems reasonable .. not too many as every year or so there are some improvements
Yeah, good catch. I meant battalions. I've no idea why I wrote companies. 
But still, we had no news in recent times about production. There may have been changes in the pace but we don't know about it. I mean, if there WERE 90 ztz96 and 30 ztz99 produced each year from 1997 and 2001 respectively, then there would be just 1800 96s and 480 99s produced. And fairly imprecise sources such as IISS military balance 2017 projected more than that. (2500 96s and 850 99s) So who really knows, there may be more tanks out there and production rate may be greater. Keep in mind IISS collects data from the previous year, so in reality those are their projections for 2016.
If correct, it'd really mean PLA was getting on average 4 battalions worth of 96s and 2 battalions worth of 99s each year, for the past two decades.
And current tally might thus be around 2600-2700 96s and 900-ish 99s. But all this is heavy conjecture and guesstimation. I'd really prefer a half decent source on current inventory...
But still, we had no news in recent times about production. There may have been changes in the pace but we don't know about it. I mean, if there WERE 90 ztz96 and 30 ztz99 produced each year from 1997 and 2001 respectively, then there would be just 1800 96s and 480 99s produced. And fairly imprecise sources such as IISS military balance 2017 projected more than that. (2500 96s and 850 99s) So who really knows, there may be more tanks out there and production rate may be greater. Keep in mind IISS collects data from the previous year, so in reality those are their projections for 2016.
If correct, it'd really mean PLA was getting on average 4 battalions worth of 96s and 2 battalions worth of 99s each year, for the past two decades.
And current tally might thus be around 2600-2700 96s and 900-ish 99s. But all this is heavy conjecture and guesstimation. I'd really prefer a half decent source on current inventory...
Yeah, good catch. I meant battalions. I've no idea why I wrote companies.
But still, we had no news in recent times about production. There may have been changes in the pace but we don't know about it. I mean, if there WERE 90 ztz96 and 30 ztz99 produced each year from 1997 and 2001 respectively, then there would be just 1800 96s and 480 99s produced. And fairly imprecise sources such as IISS military balance 2017 projected more than that. (2500 96s and 850 99s) So who really knows, there may be more tanks out there and production rate may be greater. Keep in mind IISS collects data from the previous year, so in reality those are their projections for 2016.
If correct, it'd really mean PLA was getting on average 4 battalions worth of 96s and 2 battalions worth of 99s each year, for the past two decades.
And current tally might thus be around 2600-2700 96s and 900-ish 99s. But all this is heavy conjecture and guesstimation. I'd really prefer a half decent source on current inventory...
Production figures are given as averages over a certain amount of time. It doesn't take into account production surges or production pauses.
When the factory changed to producing ZTZ-99As, production stopped for some time. Then the ZTZ-99As suffered reliability issues which necessitated a redesign, which took another three years during which no 99s were produced. It's only in 2016 that the reliability issues got rectified and production resumed as normal.
There hasn't seem to be new ZTZ-96As for quite some time which probably means the factory is transitioning to ZTZ-96Bs. I'd expect serial production 96Bs to begin proliferation to combat units starting this year.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Brand new 99A heading to army. via Yusheng
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
ZTZ-99A
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
That's probably one the least likely battles. Relations between the PRC and ROC are fairly good. If the K2 was to get into a fight it would be against North Korean thanks where K2 would dominate, because North Korean tanks are heavily based on older Designs.