New Type98/99 MBT thread

[ougoah]

VT-4's export price is of course much higher. This does not reflect price for home army. Leopard 2a7s are like $20M each or more for export orders as well. If VT-4's price to Thailand is around $4M, then the PLA's Type 99A price must be considerably lower. They have economies of scale and some cheaper components at the moment. e.g. VT-4 is fitted with RWS and GL-5 APS. 99A usually is not spotted with either but of course can be modded to fit both. Just doesn't make financial sense to do so unless big drawn out wars are eminent.

Further, how can any 99A expert be a good judge of Type 10's performance? Sounds like nationalist propaganda to me, not different to the "our fighter is better than China's because the other one is China's". How did this guy get a chance to carefully examine Type 10, experiment on it, and get his hands on engineering documents? Please don't believe this garbage. About as accurate as the Japanese claiming each Type 10 can destroy eight Type 99s in a fight. LOL Who's right here? Do you believe the Chinese guy because he's Chinese?

 

[Lethe]

PLA has gone with the smarter choice of not ordering $8M USD tanks that will get knocked out in their hundreds by artillery, airstrikes, gunships, drones, and infantry. They've decided to invest that money in drones and gunships that don't need to worry about terrain. Following the tried and true US military method of air superiority and attacking from air being King.

US has never taken attack helicopters up against a peer adversary in the modern era -- and nor has anyone else -- and nobody knows what the results would be. It is entirely possible that attack helicopters are useless death traps in peer conflict scenarios.

Using America's record of beating up on weaklings (with, it must be added, only mixed success) as a guide to how China should structure its forces is silly -- unless you think that beating up on weaker nations is China's future calling as well.

 

[SteelBird]

Has this been posted before? It shows some internal parts of the 99A like the driving wheel and transmission lever.

 

[ougoah]

US has never taken attack helicopters up against a peer adversary in the modern era -- and nor has anyone else -- and nobody knows what the results would be. It is entirely possible that attack helicopters are useless death traps in peer conflict scenarios.

Using America's record of beating up on weaklings (with, it must be added, only mixed success) as a guide to how China should structure its forces is silly -- unless you think that beating up on weaker nations is China's future calling as well.

I think you misunderstood my point. When we are talking about tank vs tank and then the conversation begins to evolve and involve supporting assets and prices of tanks, it must be mentioned that there are other methods of countering a threatening and capable tank. These include attack helicopters and drones. Dominating the air so your airborne assets are less often engaged by enemy aircrafts and SAMs (SAMs because the next step after air superiority is knocking out SAMs) means you can easily take out super tanks. Tanks are not effective against attack helicopters no matter what situation. Attack helicopters can knock out multiple tanks in one go. Won't even mention drones. Also no one even mentioned beating up weaker nations. Don't put words in my mouth. All I stated was air beats ground every single time. Don't bother explaining the few exceptions. You know what I mean. Even then, there's no denying that US method is being copied by China for good reason. It works. I think Dessert storm was the first wake up call. I bet China is watching Russia vs USA in Syria quite closely and amending doctrine. One would have to be an idiot to ignore their enemy's strengths.

 

[Lethe]

Tanks are not effective against attack helicopters no matter what situation. Attack helicopters can knock out multiple tanks in one go. Won't even mention drones.

Also no one even mentioned beating up weaker nations. Don't put words in my mouth.

The point is that the vaunted modern superiority of airborne over ground-based forces has only been demonstrated against comically weaker adversaries, and the record is unimpressive even there. The 1991 Gulf War is the sole occasion in which modern airpower has confronted even second-rate air defence systems.

I don't know how attack helicopters would fare against a modern mechanized division with SHORADs like the Pantsir series, let alone medium-range IADS and organic air cover ... but I certainly know I wouldn't want to be in one of the Apaches tasked with finding out.

 

[ougoah]

Attack helicopters themselves will not fare well against point defence systems. The assumption here is that drones and SEAD fighters will knock them all out and fighters will stay around before more vulnerable assets are used. A $15-$20M attack helicopter is more effective against a super tank (and actually pretty much all tank targets) than another tank can be, therefore it makes sense to diversify spending to also include things like drones and attack helicopters for the army than just relying on $8M tanks. Yes I know JSDF and Korean army has all of these as well but they also invested in stupidly expensive MBTs. I know you're not denying the above, but US importance placed on air superiority and attacking targets from the air is a tried and true method. Yes it has so far only been tested against weaker opponents which doesn't prove its effectiveness against all defensive measures, but having SHORADs does not ensure safety of ground forces at all.

I'm also trying to say that tanks like K2 and Type 10 have little significance in modern warfare despite their "superiority" in a more limited singular assessment of the tank's abilities in comparison with other tanks.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

I'm also trying to say that tanks like K2 and Type 10 have no place at all in modern warfare despite their "superiority" in a more limited singular assessment of the tank's abilities in comparison with other tanks.

First and foremost K2 and Type 10 are not "Super Tanks" what they are is Modern main battle tanks tailored to the needs of there mother Nation. The K2 is built to take on masses of enemy be armor as North Korea has spent decades building massive formations of armor. The Type 10 is optimized for a national response reaction to allow a tank force to be deployed rapidly across conventional roads and bridges to react to potential national emergency. They are however a part of a system in combined arms. To be supported by Manouvering Infantry, air power and artillery.

Historical fact is that even as far back as the First world war when the first tanks lumbered across the feilds of war. Without support of other arms they failed often catastrophicly. Employment of any one single asset of a military base system without the others is doomed. What set the mark of modern warfare was when someone combined artillery, Armor, Infantry and air power.
K2, ZTZ99A2, Armata, Abrams, Type 10 they are components of a system of a military. They interlock to work.

Now again this claim that 8 million USD is somehow a impediment. Fact is for military hardware that's be pretty cheap, and what it gets a nation is normally a pretty long service life. The claim of 2.1million for the ZTZ99 was made in 1999, and just adjusting for inflation will bring it to 3-4 Million today. Add in advances in armor and equipment for the tank and it's likely to be higher. A tank is nothing without the support chain and accessories.

Attack Choppers hunt Tanks and armor that is one of there key jobs that is why they have long range Anti tank missiles. To snipe Tanks. They are modern tank killers they hide sight the target take there shot and bug out. Shorad hunts attack Choppers that's it's job it watches and waits for them to pop up and show themselves to take a shot. And if the shorad fails it's often the first kill. And if it succeeds then it kills the chopper but neither is a absolute to win.
And for the record in the first Gulf the Iraqis army was not commically weaker they had the top of the line Russian war load out of the time and fairly substantial air defense to. What happened was that the US had designed it's doctrine to fight exactly that. The Iraqis had planned everything right out of the same play book as the Soviet be advisors of old and the US military had planned there play by play to destroy everything in that play book. Resulting in in the Iraqis army's dismemberment.

 

[ougoah]

I should have iterated K2 Type 10 etc as "super expensive" rather than just super. $8M represents a serious opportunity cost to spend on a platform many think is a dying breed. Opinions on this vary and situations too. No doubt all military hardware are part of a bigger system which changes according to missions. Thereby making all observations on comparisons between different platforms within a type of hardware, to be completely pointless. In this case, I just made a go and expressed my opinion on spending a lot on a tank. That's the equivalent of spending 10% of your income on a nice watch. Could be useful and worth it for all we know but any discussion can be brought far from reality. We can all agree that K2 and Type 10 are engineered for the requirements of their respective armies, similarly Type 99 is as well for PLA. That is all there is to it. Wished to point out that just because PLA does not field a highly advanced and expensive tank, certainly does not mean Norinco or others cannot deliver, rather it does seem to indicate that PLA does not need or even want a highly expensive and advanced tank. Therefore a comparison between Type 99 and K2, while doable, is rather pointless.

 

[Lethe]

And for the record in the first Gulf the Iraqis army was not commically weaker they had the top of the line Russian war load out of the time and fairly substantial air defense to. What happened was that the US had designed it's doctrine to fight exactly that. The Iraqis had planned everything right out of the same play book as the Soviet be advisors of old and the US military had planned there play by play to destroy everything in that play book. Resulting in in the Iraqis army's dismemberment.

The Iraqis had 1970s equipment with no double digit SAMs, they operated it incompetently, and most importantly they were facing the armed forces of a superpower and several other nations combined.

Give the Iraqis and US forces equivalent resources and US losses would've been magnified at least tenfold. Give them equivalent training and multiply losses by threefold again. Give them equivalent i.e. late-Soviet technology and multiply losses threefold again, i.e. 90-100x the losses that were actually sustained.

That's what a "modern peer conflict" looks like, and the modern American military has about as much experience with it as it has with Martians.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

In some ways though I beg to differ abbit. Although the Type 99 series is very conservative it is the higher end tank when partnered with the Type 96. Now some may try and argue that the PLA could have tried to go and build a tank more like the Armata that tries to be revolutionary. But that's a not the PLA's style. They seem to prefer to evolve and play it safe rather then change the rules.

Tanks aren't going anywhere. I have heard the claims before. Oh the tank is obsolete, normally pointing to either ATGMs or Low Intencity Warfare yet reality is that tanks find ways around those issues and still offer more against those threats.
Attack Choppers are obsolete... Normally pointing to drones and SHORAD. Neither is really anything new. The Attack Chopper is just the current holder of a mission close air support that happens to be a helicopter.

3million (adjusted for inflation)
4 million (Vt4)
5-6 million
8 million
Not a big deal. A Tank is always going to have a heavy price point and often there are misleading elements in this. Sputnik news ( as if) ran a story a couple years back claiming that the K2s price was to high and quoting prices for the Abrams at 2.7million, ZTZ99 at 2.1 million, T90 at about 4 million and T14 Armata at 3.1 million. Now adjusted for inflation Abrams and K2 are the same price, the writer never bothered to check. The same for the type 99 price point at about equal to that of the T90. And the Armata actually cost over 6million because they were using the objective price not the actual unit cost. And that is something that had to be figured here. So I don't read into price points as a argument.