New Chinese light tank: for what is its purpose?
Collage: The Voice of Russia
More and more photos of the Chinese light tank of a new generation, released in the recent months, indicate that it has already being inducted into active service of the PLA in significant quantities for deployment in the mountainous areas in western China.
Expert at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, Vasily Kashin sees one of the reasons for development of a new combat vehicle as Beijing's craving to respond to India's plans of reinforcing its mountain troops.
So far, specialists know very little about the new Chinese vehicle. Not known is even the official name of the new light tank. According to one version, this is the “light tank type 99A”, which makes it easy to confuse it with the latest modification of the Chinese main battle tank type 99. It is assumed that the tank is equipped with a 105 mm gun and has a powerful combination of frontal armor of the hull and the turret, partly borrowed from the main tank type 99 and has a mass of 30 tons.
This is possibly the only model in modern world of a serially manufactured non-floating light tank, which is designed to perform the role of a main battle tank in areas of complex terrain conditions. The new tank is supposed to replace the old Chinese non-floating type 62 light tanks, which were not complicated and cheap tanks having a weak armor and weapons. The new Chinese light tank, in contrast, is of a very complex and original design. For example, its chassis is of a completely original design that is not found in other models of Chinese combat vehicles. It has a variable clearance and probably is quite complicated and expensive. In general, cost of this combat vehicle may well be comparable with the cost of the full-fledged main battle tank. Substantial resources and time must have been spent for its development and trials.
The question that arises is: why has China gone on with such a project, with no analogous model being produced in the world. The light tank, more or less, in essence, is superior in armaments to the infantry fighting vehicle WZ502G. For sure, it has strong armor defense, but the question remains open whether this gain is large enough to justify the cost of creation of a whole new model of combat vehicles. With a mass of about 30 tons versus an average of about 50 tons of the main battle tanks, it will still be inferior to them in terms of protection. Threats of attack by infantry antitank missiles, artillery guns and aircraft weapons will affect it in the same way as the main battle tanks, operating on the plains. It should be remembered that an attempt of mass deployment of tanks of type 62 in the war with Vietnam in 1979 led to huge losses, after which China, for some time, discontinued with the development of new models of light tanks.
On the other hand, it is known that India is also considering purchase of light tanks for its mountain troops and in the past has unsuccessfully attempted to develop such tanks based on the chassis of the BMP-1. Perhaps this served as one of the reasons for development of a new combat vehicle by Chinese designers.
In Russia, the closest and analogous model of the Chinese tank is 125 mm self-propelled anti-tank gun “Sprut-SD”, which is being produced in small quantities since 2005 (about 40 units have been manufactured). Compared to the Chinese analogous model, the self-propelled gun “Sprut-SD” has more powerful weapons and is of a less weight (18 tons). It is capable of overcoming water obstacles and can be transported by air. Of course, armor protection of “Sprut-SD” is much weaker than that of the Chinese tank and the classification “self-propelled anti-tank gun”, implies that its tactical application will be different. The “Sprut-SD” uses a modified chassis of the BMD.
China has previously used the chassis of a light tank of Type 62 and of Type 63 for manufacturing a wide range of special equipments - engineering and recovery vehicles, artillery, armored personnel carriers, etc. Development of a fundamentally new chassis requires immense efforts and creation, on its base, of only one sample of a highly specialized combat vehicle was unanticipated for. In any case, it will b
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