Following the revealing of a brand new class of Chinese language most important battle tank, the Kind 100, on September 3, state media shops have offered new particulars on its capabilities and the way in which its design incorporates classes from the Ukrainian theatre to organize for a wholly new period of armoured warfare. This follows rising questions being raised amongst Western analysts relating to whether or not ongoing tank packages such because the Challenger 3 and AbramsX shall be out of date earlier than they even enter service, with future designs seen overseas extensively anticipated to comply with the instance set by the Kind 100. The brand new Chinese language tank was revealed to combine optical, infrared, and radar sensors with networked communications, which join it to aviation, artillery, and digital warfare property. These network-centric warfare capabilities had been examined in current combined-arms workouts, throughout which crews used augmented actuality interfaces to interact targets at past visible ranges.
The Kind 100 locations a very excessive emphasis on knowledge connectivity, energetic safety, and multi-domain coordination, with Chinese language army commentators having described this as a part of a broader development in direction of networked joint operations, during which tanks function nodes inside an built-in fight construction reasonably than appearing as remoted platforms. Throughout current combined-arms battalion workouts one tank commander, Solar Yongming, notably burdened the benefits offered by tank crews’ capacity understand and have interaction the battlefield from all instructions and over for much longer distances. This has remodeled armoured warfare from close-proximity fight to engagements over better distances, he noticed. One other commander, recognized solely by his surname Yuan, mentioned the brand new tank’s capabilities allowed him to coordinate with each his battalion and with supporting models from different branches.
New mixed arms workouts involving the Kind 100 have seen the tanks function intently alongside new rocket artillery techniques, digital warfare groups, and reconnaissance drones. The tank has maintained a comparatively gentle and extremely cell design, albeit at expense of armour mass and gun dimension. The demonstration within the Ukrainian theatre that fashionable warfare will hardly ever see tanks have interaction each other with their most important weapons has strengthened arguments in favour of a shift from 125mm to much less highly effective 105mm weapons, which not solely makes the autos a lot lighter, but additionally permits them to hold considerably extra ammunition. Advances within the capabilities of anti-tank missile and APFSDS rounds could permit the Kind 100 to nonetheless frontally penetrate closely armoured enemy tanks regardless of utilizing a smaller gun, though its community centric warfare capabilities imply it might as a substitute use its sensors and knowledge hyperlinks to name in strikes by precision guided artillery or loitering munitions if going through superior enemy autos.
The Kind 100 makes use of each energetic and multi-spectral defence techniques, with Two GL-6 energetic safety techniques managed by 4 phased-array radar panels offering 360-degree risk detection towards anti-tank missiles, rockets, and top-attack munitions. The tank’s laser warning receivers, ultraviolet sensors, and multi-band optical detection arrays present additional safety towards guided weapons. The usage of irregular polygonal shapes on the hull and turret additionally scale back hit chance. Not like Western, Russian and Korean tanks, the crew of the Kind 100 is enclosed in armoured capsules throughout the hull, capitalising on advances in autoloader and distant turret applied sciences to attain a a lot better diploma of safety. The unmanned turret configuration additionally permits for extra ammunition storage whereas making the automobile significantly lighter, a lot as was beforehand completed on the unrealised Russian T-14 tank design. The Kind 100’s improvement follows a broader development in direction of China’s defence sector attaining more and more distinct world management in a rising variety of fields, with no different nation being near operationalising a equally superior tank design or possible to take action earlier than the subsequent decade.
