PLA tank doctrine is similar to the old soviet style of overwhelming the enemy with greater numbers. Any tanks knocked out are to be replaced rather than salvaged and repaired. The greater numbers are to out-maneuver and flank the enemy so hunter-killer is completely unnecessary when you have decent intel and support from infantry, artillery, and air power. All of which the PLA will absolutely have if fighting a defensive war inside China or borders. Reason 99 and 96 looks so similar is partly to confuse the enemy so correct identification in the heat of battle will be near impossible. 99s offer the high end of abilities all while PLA has a useful distribution of tank weight classes for different combat arenas.
Chinese 96-A
- Thread starter Agonizing Bliss
- Start date
Everything you just said make absolutely no sense. For starter, you would be surprised how many passion soviet put in recycling their tanks. Some tanks even get destroyed and repaired multiple times. Saying soviet don't salvaged their destroyed equipment is just like that two man one rifle hollywood bullshit.
Greater number is neither necessary nor sufficient to out-maneuver the enemy now and was never what PLA relied on to do so.
For now the kind of intel support that's enough to neglect the need of hunter-killer only exist in video games sorry.
Also no engineer in his right mind would compromise other things just to make a weapon look like another weapon so they can "confuse" enemy.
And that's exactly the issue I always raise concerning the proposed Rafale-licence production and the same for the new single-engined fighter.
How can they expect that a foreign manufactur will guarantee for the building-quality of a licenced product build in India esp. if they will have no right to interfere with the process in India???
It's beyond my imagination ... but maybe just India.
Deino
antiterror13
Brigadier
Do you know how much one Type 99A cost and how much a Type 96 cost? Do you actually think that China is so rich now that they could afford their tanks to be knocked out and replaced rather than salvage and repaired? Seriously, do you actually think that China is still in the 50s and 60s? China is more and more leaning towards western countries in tank design, doctrines, strategies and tactics rather than still staying behind in old Soviet tactics. That is so apparent in their weapon design, more reliance in air forces and navies and fielding lesser but high tech tanks.
I see little evidence that PLA is equiping their 99s and 96s to the level of western tanks. What I do see is them fielding over a thousand 96 variants and close to 1000 type 99s. This shows they want to keep the numbers high while making small sacrifices in high end equipment that they consider unnecessary. These include RWS and optics in the level of western tanks. PLA is certainly geared towards quantity.
I'm not saying they will never repair tanks. You guys are all jumping to conclusions and assuming much from what i've said. All i'm saying is PLA seems to prefer fielding huge numbers over arming elite tanks. 99s are still cheaper than western tanks and MUCH cheaper than K2s, T-14s and Type 10s. It's just an interesting observation that they will prefer to overwhelm the battlefield with huge numbers of tanks that can perform well enough to get the job done.
vesicles
Colonel
The bold sentence there seems to go against the entire philosophy of the PLA modernization. They have been saying for the past 30 years that they wanted to build a small, modern, elite force to fight a short, limited but high intensity war.
They have moved away from the number game long time ago. The "human wave", or in this case the tank wave, has long gone.
All evidence points to the PLA's intention to build a lean mean and elite force. If you look at virtually any weapon systems that they have, you will see that they choose elite and advanced systems over a large number of average systems. Even with training, they prefer focusing on small elite fast reaction forces.
When you want to deduce their doctrine, you want to look at the trend, not any single system. Keep in mind that the PLA is still evolving and still developing. They haven't fielded some systems yet possibly because they are still developing / testing such systems. Not because they don't want to field it.
Take for example their jet engines. Most of their fighters are still equipped with Russian engines. Do you want to conclude that they choose less advanced Russian engines on purpose because of some new weird doctrines that they just came up with? The fact of matter is that they simply don't have a good alternative yet. And they are working hard on it.
You cited 1000 type 99's and 1000 type 96's as your evidence of the PLA going for the numbers. A thousand tanks may sound like a lot to you, but China is a huge country. A thousand tanks may be the bare minimum for them. They still need to replace all their old tanks. How many type 59's do they still have? It may be in the thousands. So in other words, they may have decreased their total number of tanks dramatically if you look at the trend.
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PiSigma
"the engineer"
Don't know where you are from, but 2k modern tanks for China is too little. We are not talking amount france or germany with smaller land areas where 2k would be more than enough. For continental sized countries like Russia and US have 5x the amount of modern tanks.