New Type98/99 MBT thread

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I think for the PLA, 99s and 96s especially, are for homeland defence. The new 15s are meant for rapid reaction forces, and increasingly, overseas expeditionary force deployments as they are light enough to airlift in numbers rapidly, and will be much less restricted by local infrastructure and geography than western heavyweights. For deployments where they might have to face off against enemy heavyweight MBTs, they would be supplemented by 99s.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
With massive transport capability with Y-20, basically China can transport ZTQ-15 or Type 99, etc anywhere in China within 24 hours. China may not need massive number of tanks anymore

I think rail is still the way to go for Type 99. I recall hearing only two Type 99 can be transported by a Y-20 at any one time vs three ZTQ-15. I agree that China shouldn't be building and buying so many tanks. China has no Soviet strategy of overwhelming any neighbour with tanks even if they wanted to, geography does not make it that easy unless we're talking about Siberia and Mongolia. Korean peninsula is the most likely large scale tank conflict zone that can potentially heap up. Artillery can focus on choke points so even there it's not like you must have thousands of tanks.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
I think rail is still the way to go for Type 99. I recall hearing only two Type 99 can be transported by a Y-20 at any one time vs three ZTQ-15. I agree that China shouldn't be building and buying so many tanks. China has no Soviet strategy of overwhelming any neighbour with tanks even if they wanted to, geography does not make it that easy unless we're talking about Siberia and Mongolia. Korean peninsula is the most likely large scale tank conflict zone that can potentially heap up. Artillery can focus on choke points so even there it's not like you must have thousands of tanks.

one Type-99 or two ZTQ-15 for each Y-20
 

Inst

Captain
If you take out type 59 variants there is nothing abnormal for China's size.
On CDF a poster suggested developing 100mm first-rate ATGMs for that precise reason. You can easily retrofit the entire Chinese antiquated tank fleet with good ATGMs, turning them from relic garbage to threats on the level of a ATGM carrier vs modern tanks. And, of course, I'll mention, the ZTQ-15 would also benefit.
 
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