The Chinese language Folks’s Liberation Army Floor Forces 71st Group Army have deployed Kind 96 foremost battle tanks for driving coaching workout routines within the nation’s jap areas, drawing consideration to the capabilities of the automobiles which type the spine of the nation’s fleet fleet. Subordinated to the Japanese Theatre Command, the 71st Group Army is comprised of six combined-arms manoeuvre brigades, 4 of that are outfitted with heavy armour. Every brigade leads 4 combined-arms battalions. The 2nd, thirty fifth and 178th Mixed Arms Brigades all discipline Kind 96 tanks, with the automobiles estimated to have begun to be introduced into service from round 1997. The design benefitted from vital expertise transfers that decade from post-Soviet states’ defence sectors, with over 2000 having been constructed. The tank have been broadly modernised to the Kind 96A commonplace with extra modular armour and improved hearth controls, together with fashionable thermal imaging methods.
The Chinese language Floor Forces have introduced a number of extra fashionable tank varieties into service because the Kind 96’s service entry, with manufacturing of the older tank design reported to have contracted within the mid-2000s, and to have ended close to the tip of the last decade. However, the newer Kind 99 foremost battle tank has not been produced or introduced into service in comparable numbers, and whereas having had an unprecedentedly formidable standing for a Chinese language tank design, its greater procurement and operational prices restricted the numbers that had been introduced into service. A main issue on this has been the restricted perceived want for big numbers of innovative foremost battle tanks, as China faces main threats from the air and sea. With the Kind 99 fleet having lately been introduced as much as the Kind 99B commonplace, it has been broadly speculated {that a} portion of the Kind 96 fleet may additionally profit from a brand new spherical of upgrades.
Whereas the Kind 99 was lengthy purported to have a world main standing amongst foremost battle tanks, China’s defence sector has lately gained a way more decisive world lead with the confirmed service entry of the Kind 100 design in September 2025. The brand new tank integrates optical, infrared, and radar sensors with networked communications, which join it to aviation, artillery, and digital warfare property, and locations a very excessive emphasis on knowledge connectivity, lively safety, and multi-domain coordination. It was designed to function a node inside an built-in fight construction, fairly than performing as an remoted platform, and permits crews’ means understand and interact the battlefield from all instructions and over for much longer distances. The Kind 100 tank’s gentle weight and better emphasis on lively safety methods fairly than heavy armour, and its distinctive format which supplies outstandingly excessive crew safety ranges, are thought-about optimum for the period of drone warfare.
Whereas Kind 96A tank brigades working beneath Japanese Theatre Command have beforehand repeatedly been deployed for workout routines simulating operations on Taiwan Island, the place Beijing stays in a state of civil warfare with the Republic of China authorities based mostly in Taipei, it’s doubtless that these older automobiles will probably be changed by Kind 100 tanks in such delicate frontline roles. The Kind 100’s decreased weight and dimension have made it seem doubtless that its operational prices could also be extra aggressive than these of the Kind 99, whereas its weight may permit the automobiles to be transported to Taiwan to participate in operations in ways in which could be harder for the Kind 99. The tanks are anticipated to have overwhelming superiority over the M1A2, M60 and M48 tanks of the Republic of China Army. Kind 96 tanks are anticipated to be reallocated to reequip decrease precedence items that at present deploy out of date Kind 59 tanks.
