Dylan Malyasov
At Defence Blog, we asked armored vehicle expert and lead analyst Serhiy Berezutskiy, an analyst at the Ukrainian Strategic Initiative Center, to share his view on China’s newest tank concept and the future of armored warfare.
The Russian-Ukrainian war has convincingly shown that the classical tank paradigm, which has dominated military thought since the Second World War, is coming to an end. We are now witnessing attempts by several countries to develop a new concept of the tank of the future. German projects such as the EMBT (Enhanced Main Battle Tank), KF51U Panther Evo Upgrade, Leopard-2 A-RC 3.0, the British Challenger 3 (CR3) and MODIFIER (Mobile Direct Fire Equipment Requirement), as well as the American M10 Booker and Abrams M-1A3 — all of them, to varying degrees of innovation, are attempts to break out of the rigid framework of traditional tank design.
China is not standing aside either — at a grand parade in Beijing, it unveiled a tank designated Type 100 (ZTZ-100). It should be noted that in terms of innovation, the Chinese design is far ahead of its Western counterparts.
Type 100 differs radically from its predecessors, which evolved iteratively from the Type 59 medium tank (a copy of the Soviet T-55) to the Type 99 main battle tank (MBT). The first thing that stands out is its weight and size. One of the latest Chinese MBTs — the Type 99A2 — depending on configuration, has a combat weight of 54 to 58 tons. The Type 100, depending on the level of modular protection, weighs between 35 and 40 tons, thus returning to the medium tank weight class.
The most likely reason for this transformation is a shift in China’s expected main adversary — and thus the theater of operations where this new combat vehicle is intended to be used. All previous Chinese tanks were designed to counter the Soviet Union, meaning they were built for operations in the steppes of Mongolia and Transbaikal. Today, the USSR’s successor — Russia — is not only rapidly losing the capability to confront China militarily but is becoming increasingly dependent on Beijing. Chinese strategic planning is characterized by a long horizon, so regaining the territories seized by Russia under the Treaty of Aigun and the Peking Conventions may eventually be achieved without the use of military force (and without tanks). China only needs to patiently wait for Russia’s eventual decline.
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