Can you please re-upload these photos if you have them?Top-side view of Type-99A's turret.
(2048 x 1361)
(2048 x 1361)
(2048 x 1361)
New Type98/99 MBT thread
- Thread starter Dongfeng
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I wouldn't be surprised if the hard kill APS is just installed for feasibility rather than intending to be used as a regular subsystem for the ZTZ99A fleet.
AFVs and ground conflict just isn't that high on the PLA's priorities, understandably so.
AFVs and ground conflict just isn't that high on the PLA's priorities, understandably so.
Lower priority doesn't mean that this capability should be behind the curve.
Chinese axes of interest aren't land - sure, but number of potential ground conflicts is more than enough.
From Korea going hot and warm, to larger scale Pacific warfare(fighting on Islands is fighting on land), to, I don't know, collapse of Russia under the weight of western pressure.
Technologically the military is probably incentivizing industry to stay up with modern demands, with development, trials and limited production runs being done.
However at-scale procurement is very much another matter, and is far from the wholesale service wide uplift that is seen in other domains.
If the CMC wanted the PLAGF to be modernizing faster than it was, then we'd be seeing it done so already, but they know that opportunity cost exists so the PLAGF will have to get by with certain platform categories not being as high end at scale, as others.
(Incidentally there are however some PLAGF platform categories and systems that are very much both quite modern and also being pursued at scale, such as truck mounted tube artillery across 122mm and 155mm calibres, as well as large rocket artillery, high mobility units, and of course PLAGF organic ISR capability, and networking as well, which goes to show the types of capabilities the PLAGF wants to maintain very competitively and at scale while being on a budget)
Is there any info on how are the charges on that system reloaded? Are they even reloaded? The fact there are two tubes per side might indicate there is no reload? Or it may indicate that there was a requirement for 2 shots fired in quick succession. Unlike with the Trophy which needs a few seconds of reload before another charge is in place.
There are quite a variety of APS in the world, some of which have similar configurations to this one (two charges on a rotating mount).
Not all of them have an automatic reload system.
Which is to say, the details of how this system works is unknown but it looks fairly standard compared to other known dual tube systems in the world.