For those who say VT-4 is better than Al- Khalid Tank need to change their thoughts again:
The VT-4 is China’s premier export tank, built on technology and designs behind the earlier Al-Khalid tank that was built with cooperation from Pakistan and Ukraine
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-selling-its-new-ztz-99-tank-anyone-buying-84876
The VT-4’s roots are in the Al-Khalid tank developed in the 1990s. The Al-Khalid tank was largely built with mostly Chinese and Pakistani technology, but a
sore spot for the Chinese designers was their lack of ability to provide a power plant for the tank. The engines for the tank had to be sourced from Germany or Ukraine. Ukraine ended up providing the production run for the Al-Khalid tank. As a result, the VT-4 program’s primary objective when it began in 2009 was to build an indigenous power plant for future domestic and export tanks. Due to the success of this engine development program, many VT-4 marketing materials tout the reliability and performance of its engine.
While the capabilities of the VT-4 are not revolutionary in any way (unlike some claims from Norinco), it is a solid tank for its price, that will likely have good support from the manufacturing base in China. Survivability wise, it has the same potential issues of the T-72 and T-90 series due to the same ammo layout. While the gun performance is unlikely to be on the same level as the latest American, Chinese or Russian guns, due to being based on last-generation round technology, it should be enough to counter most armored threats that aren’t top tier. As such, the VT-4 is likely to be a popular export to nations without the budget or political connections to Russia, Europe or the United States, as a “good enough” tank. Then again, similar things were said about the Stingray light tank, for which the Royal Thai Army is also the only user.
