I am very very very sceptical about the laser thing on 99a. Its supposed to burn out seekers. Then again the PLAA have HJ-10 and HJ-12 in their inventory. Lets see if it can burn out the imager.
I think it would be fairly effective against laser guided ATGMs like original hellfire and the like.
It should also be effective against other optical sensors, but the main problem is going to be targeting.
Against laser guided weapons, it’s easy as you just direct your laser blinder back to the source of the incoming laser emitter.
With thermal and other passive guidance methods, the blinder is not going to be able to know where to direct its beam to blind incoming missiles and/or command guidance units, which I think is going to be the main issue.
I think that’s something the PLA has also realised, which is why the newer, smaller unit on the upgraded 99As have probably gone a different direction and went from power to coverage focused. This is based on the 4 windows that can be seen on higher res images of the device.
Thus, I think the new unit functions much like a laser ‘disco ball’ dazzler typically found on helicopter self defence suits where it will throw a wall of laser beams at incoming missiles to dazzle its seeker and confuse the guidance software.
If such dazzlers works on helicopters against IIR seekers, it should in theory also work against other optical sensors like thermal since no matter what wavelength it uses, if you hit the sensor with enough energy, you are going to overload it and dazzle it.
But the biggest unknown, and the key to determining if it can work in practice is going to be based on detailed operating specs we will have no way of knowing.
With helicopters, because the target is typically going to be moving at high speed, even momentary breaks in lock can be enough to defeat the missile as it may no longer have the target in its field of view to reacquire a lock after the dazzler effect passes.
With tanks, it’s obviously harder since tanks are going to be stationary or very slow moving. So even if you managed to dazzle the seeker for a second or two, odds are by the time the dazzling effect passes, your tank is still going to be within the missile seeker field of view so it can reacquire a lock. So whether you can defeat it is going to be a race between how long and how frequently your dazzler can dazzle the missile seeker and how long the seeker and software needs to re-establish lock between being dazzled and course correct.
The odds shift in the favour of the defender if the dazzler has sufficient output to permanently damage or degrade the optical sensor with each hit.
But just the fact that the PLA continue to deploy it on newly produced 99As makes me hopeful that it is effective. Or else why would the PLA bother to continue to buy it even with hard kill APS also available?