PLA Next Generation Main Battle Tank

SanWenYu

Captain
Registered Member
weird considering there are ifv and engineering vehicle of the same hull, if they weren't going to replace old type 96/88s (at least for certain brigades) why go for this approach?
Perhaps it's the electronics and optics that are costing the most? And based on the photos available so far, it does not seem that the IFV shares the same hull as the tank.
 
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Tomboy

Senior Member
Registered Member
Yeah the OP likens the tank to a fighter aircraft running on ground, or more specifically, a fighter-bomber. The crew are therefore like the pilots. I'd imagine that such tanks will only be equipped in elite units as spearheads or door kickers.
That's pretty BS, what about the thousands of Type 096As and older tanks? Those things are basically death traps if deployed on any battlefield, they need to be replaced ASAP. There is no way China is going to operate what basically is a modernized second generation tank well into the 2030s, it'll be an embracement and irresponsible by quite literally sending all of their crew to certain death if ever deployed.
 

SanWenYu

Captain
Registered Member
My cope is that it is only expensive due to extensive use of novel technology. Novel tech is expensive only because of lack of scale of production, once production scale up it will "cabbage-ilize" eventually. So small scale production at first, large scale adoption a few years later
Unlike consumer products which can easily sell hundreds of thousands per model or even more, complex and expensive capital equipments can hardly reach the scale of economy though. At the best, you can produce more to amortize the cost of R&D better.
 

no_name

Colonel
instead of a "heavy tank" per say would it not make sense to develop a "assault/breakthrough tank" based on the turtle tanks in the Ukraine war?
I feel that is a hindsight-conclusion due to how the R-U war turned out, not how it should have turned out.
I feel if you let the PLA fight in place it will not have devolved to the state that it is now that you'll need turtle tanks.

So it feeds back to each other, what you eventually need depends on how well situations turned out, which depends on what you had and did with it at the start.
 

SanWenYu

Captain
Registered Member
Would rather not, otherwise they'll practically not perform as tanks. Tank is assault vehicle(box with gun), it's meant to be lost by default. Not land battleship, not sensor node, not spg.

Furthermore, making medium tank elite assault spearhead is equally strange. Why medium then, add weight, do your job better. It's quite clear that the tank we see is vulnerable outside main projections, at a time when battlefield calls for literal turtles.

All this makes sense if China can afford them at scale. If not, it's peacetime vanity project.
I don't think this logic will be lost on decision makers; example of T-14 is right here. I.e. count me sceptical it's inside and not just an opinion.
Well, according to that Chinese OP, this DA by design is indeed a sensor node first and foremost.
 

SanWenYu

Captain
Registered Member
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just read through the article
"它的威力不在于它的炮,而是在于它身后看不到的各种远程火力"
the author is arguing that the new 4th gen mbt will co-exist with 3rd gen mbt by providing Enhanced Situational Awareness and provide recon for long range artillery.
the thing is, why does this need to be a tank? if it is supposed to be alongside other 3rd gens, why even give it a gun? just make a dedicated command/ recon tank. we already saw mengshi jeeps with such capabilities
Because PLAGF needs new tanks. They just made this new tank very good at intelligence gathering to fit in their future land warfare doctrine.

"双离谱的两名坦克车组就是地上的飞行员"
also, the "fighter-bomber" analogy came from the assumption that there are only 2 crew. this, to my knowledge, was not confirmed.
Yes this is unconfirmed. Take it as the OP own opinion. But IIRC Mao Ming the chief designer of 99G once said that the next generation tanks will likely be crewed by only two members.
 

Gloire_bb

Major
Registered Member
Well, according to that Chinese OP, this DA by design is indeed a sensor node first and foremost.
Yep, I can see he thinks this way. It's the way everything develops nowadays, be it military or not.

But I don't see it this way; it's sensor suit is normal/within modern trends. Yes, it is sensor node, but in the same way t-14 or euro prototypes are meant to be, just better (it's outright newer than 10-yrs old T-14, and relies on a competitive electronic ecosystem, unlike German/french prototypes...plus there is more than one).
In a way, you can compare it with actual modern attempts at making light maneuver warfare vehicles, they have visibly larger optical heads.
Doesn't mean they're better, but it does mean that designers compromised more to fit them.

It has full frontal armor - quite possibly the best armor bar none for this weight class, and very likely above it, too. Moreover, armor is spread 270 degrees, which is modern trend unlike that was norm for East Asian tanks until recently.

Finally, it goes hard on active intercept. It seems to me this is very much a normal tank for tank coes. Not a "support node"(like bmpt), not "protected control node"(like shturm OMV assault tank platoon). Not sensory node for open/dispersed order of battle node like Ajax the sneaky elephant.
It's normal. Just overall combining them, better(overall) due to being higher tech.
 

dawnstar091

Just Hatched
Registered Member
instead of a "heavy tank" per say would it not make sense to develop a "assault/breakthrough tank" based on the turtle tanks in the Ukraine war?

frankly any armored vehicle light or heavy can be taken out the same by a single drone and even with aps systems they can run out or fail to shoot down every incoming drone.
while turtle tanks have been seen to take dozens of drone strikes and continue. a modern version with aps would be pretty much invincible able to shoot down the majority of drones while shrugging off any strikes from ones that do hit. it wont even need a main gun to fulfill its task. and it it does it can have low velocity large caliber guns to lob high explosives at fortifications or something similar.

edit:
and here's a crazy idea that likely will never happen but what if the spaced armor used to tank drone hits also acted as pontoons? making the vehicle amphibious as well?
I consider this quite difficult. Firstly, the emergence of "turtle tanks" has distinct local characteristics—Ukrainians lacked direct-fire anti-tank weapons and had severely insufficient access to large-caliber artillery support for the frontlines. These shortcomings were compensated for by using FPV loitering munitions and drop drones. This is why "turtle tanks" retrofitted with mere "WWII-level add-on armor" managed to survive for extended periods.

However, simultaneously, this add-on armor fundamentally conflicts with Active Protection Systems (APS). It blocks the firing arcs and detection fields of APS components. I would argue that add-on armor and APS are mutually exclusive at the same physical locations—installing APS precludes adding extensive armor there, and vice versa. Furthermore, the add-on armor severely degrades the crew's situational awareness, making assault operations far more intelligence-dependent. Worse still, it critically compromises the tank's own targeting systems, which is why most "turtle tanks" carry no ammunition and often lack a dedicated gunner.

Based on these two points, I believe directly copying the "turtle tank" concept is likely not the optimal development path. A more probable evolution would be a vehicle analogous to the Centurion AVRE or Sturmgeschütz III (StuH variant). Such a vehicle would feature:

  • Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) on the hull with supplemental add-on armor (since hulls are often concealed by terrain undulations, and hull sides are difficult for drones to hit during movement).
  • No overhead add-on armor, relying instead on an APS system with ample countermeasure capacity to protect vulnerable observation equipment.
  • A minimized crew or even optionally manned configurations operated via radio/cable link.
One point I fully agree with: this specialized breakthrough vehicle requires a larger-caliber main gun. Perhaps the best historical example I can recall is the XM150E2 gun proposed for the MBT-70—its barrel length was sufficient to avoid excessive shell arc while the caliber allowed larger high-explosive payloads. Note: Both China and Russia maintain battalion-level 122mm howitzers to bridge the gap between mortars and brigade/division-level fire support. Therefore, this breakthrough vehicle need not prioritize indirect fire capability.

As for amphibious capability—I consider this utterly impossible. Even infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) with much lower density struggle with amphibious design. For instance, the BMP-2 requires buoyancy materials in specific compartments to float, and the up-armored BMP-2D variant completely lost this capability. Attempting amphibious operation with this level of armor and weapon weight would likely result in solutions akin to the Japanese Type 2 Ka-Mi's detachable pontoons or the US Sherman's inflatable flotation screen—oh, and I believe a similar concept existed in very early Bradley IFV designs.
 
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