Expert: China turns tanks into combat systems

Defence affairs - Def-Geopolitics

At Defence affairs magazine, 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.

Thus, India is now emerging as China’s main strategic adversary. The only land section of the China–India border is located in the high-altitude Ladakh region. Consequently, a tank concept originally designed for extensive operations on plains is not particularly suited to mountainous terrain.

The Chinese carefully studied the experience of tank warfare in Afghanistan. The T-62 tank could not be effectively used in the mountains because bridges and narrow mountain roads often collapsed under its weight, and once disabled, it typically blocked the entire passage. Lighter T-55 tanks and even the antiquated T-34 performed much better in mountainous environments, while the T-62 was mostly used in the deserts of eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Let us take a closer look at the Chinese concept. The Type 100 is envisioned as part of a combined combat system, which also includes the ZBD-100 fire support vehicle. The reasoning behind this symbiosis is the belief that the level of situational awareness and firepower provided by a single vehicle is no longer sufficient on the modern battlefield. Combining two combat vehicles into a single system ensures not only constant data exchange but also mutual fire support. Both vehicles are built on a common chassis, which reduces cost and simplifies crew training, maintenance, and logistics.

The design of these vehicles is strikingly different from previous generations. The Type 100 features an unmanned turret. Russian media rushed to label this solution as the “Armata syndrome,” conveniently forgetting (or, more likely, never knowing) that the creators of the Russian “Armata” borrowed the idea from the Kharkiv Object 477 tank, which was under development in the mid-1980s.