What is this obsession with trying to make the Type15 a super star destroyer of a tank that can kill all and sundry?
Design is as much about compromise and prioritisation as it is about refinement and improvements. Moreover, just how much more advanced do you expect Chinese tech to be, to have a light tank able to take on the best heavyweights of the tank world and win?
The 15 is the low part of the PLA tank hi-lo mix. If they are operating in theatres where they might realistically expect to encounter hostile T90s, M1s, Leo’s and the like, then they will be backed up by PLA 99s to go toe to toe with the enemy big boys, because that’s not what the 15 is for.
Also, it is a little one-dimensional to think of tank combat purely in terms of raw armour penetration figures. Heavy MBTs might be able to survive a direct hit from the 15s 105, but they are hardly going to shrug it off like nothing has happened, much like while there are armour plates rated for 50 BMG, you have to be a fool to think you will be able to continue fighting if you did take a 50BMG round to the chest while wearing such a plate.
The only way that happens is with APS, and there again is the value of having 15s, as with them, you can outnumber an enemy force made up solely of heavy MBTs, and just spam their APS away through volume of fire.
I have a suspicion that much of the focus on fire control and communications improvements mentioned with the 15 might be designed with defeating APS in mind.
With datalink and advanced fire control systems, you could feasibly design a battlefield network whereby multiple 15s can automatically co-ordinate fire to defeat enemy APS by timing multiple rounds to arrive on target within a window shorter than the re-engagement cycle of enemy APS.
If you factor in APS, than having more guns on station trumps having fewer bigger guns any day of the week.
Think of a 15 and 99 partnership, where the 15 effectively takes command of its 99 partner’s gun, and syncs the two guns to fire at the precise moment such that the 15’s 105 triggers enemy APS, while the 99’s 125 slams home before the enemy APS can cycle to re-engage.
It might sound like sci-fi, but the technology is easily already available. With GPS/Beidou, you can precisely geo-locate your tanks to get relative positioning, with laser range finder, wind gauge and all the other standard tank targeting aids as well as GPS/Beidou, you can precisely range and geo-locate your target. Then it’s just basic maths to calculate round flight times, and hence precise trigger times to get the desired result.
The Americans already battlefield tested a version of such a system in Gulf war two, so it is easily within China’s capabilities now. Hell, a decent engineering university student should be able to put such a system together provided he/she had access to the suitable hardware component parts.
