Obviously we can ignore some of the 'fluff' put out by the Pakistani army
and certain Pakistani's or children of pakistani parents about the Al-khalid
being the best tank in the world
The advantages at the moment seem to be
1. It is 'mostly' indigenous, which will help in the development of the
Pakistani tank industry as well as provide revenue
2. It fits the environmental requirements of the PA in the desert.
The weaknesses as compared to the T-98 are
1. T98 has heavier armour,
2. T-98 has a more powerful armament(it has a gun launched atgm)
3. T-98 has laser countermeasures
So essentially the Al-Khalid needs better armour but the Pakistani army
does not want armour at the expense of speed possibly because they
don't have the sort of air umbrella provided to the M1A1 ?
However I believe that Pakistan may already be thinking of some serious
upgrades to the tank via co-operation with Turkey which has had
several failed attempts to start it's own tank-2000
Mr Erdogan said the two sides also had the potential “to take many steps” to increase cooperation in defence industry, but did not elaborate what projects they discussed. An aide to Mr Erdogan said later that the two countries were considering joint production of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and patrol boats, while Turkish company Aselsan was willing to sell the Pakistani army electronic warfare equipment.
Tank-2000 (New generation Main Battle Tank) project: Status: The tender to co-produce 1000 new generation MBTs has been cancelled in May 2004. It is likely that a new request for proposal will be issued during the upcoming months to include more foreign companies in the competition. On a seperate agenda, three Turkish companies (BMC, FNSS and Otokar) were asked to join their efforts to carry-out indeginous research and studies for the purpose of manufacturing the shell and sub-systems (excluding navigation and fire control) of a new-generation MBT.
So how could the Al-Khalid be improved specifically ?