[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/fS-FnO-4CyI" width="490" height="400" wmode="transparent" /]
by DAVID AXE
China’s projected next-generation armored vehicles are looking a lot like something from the United States, circa 1999, if one official is to be believed. Mao Ming, director of the China North Vehicle Research Institute, said the follow-on to the Type 99 Main Battle Tank will be a family of vehicles plugged into a “command-and-attack network with many command systems and sensors from which the tank will receive real time useful information about the target.”
The vehicles will be modular, with different systems installed in the same lightweight chassis “for battles in the city or field battles in north China and in south China.” The vehicles will have two-man crews: a gunner (presumably doubling as commander) and a driver.
Sound familiar? What Mao Ming is describing is essentially the original vision for the U.S. Army’s now-defunct Future Combat Systems, which aimed to connect a family of lightweight vehicles to a robust command-and-control and sensor network. Spiraling cost and problems with the network, plus the clear vulnerability of light vehicles on modern battlefields, doomed FCS, and it was dismantled in the 2010 budget cycle.
(Video: via YouTube)
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How do you say boondoggle in Chinese?
This could be amusing. Can the Chinese succeed where Boeing and the DOD failed? Or will China realize that their tanks are too vulnerable.
What is more critical is the weight decision. A light weight tank is much more strategic mobile, and, as a result, better suited for expeditionary operations, such as invasions, for example.
Finally, look at the battes: They are in north China, against the Russians. In that battlefield, big tanks are probably more useful. But, fights in south China, especially in the mountains around India, would be more condusive to a lightweight tank.
I think this lightweight tank is a shift towards a military that can fight abroad better.
So the Chinese are twenty years behind us on the power curve?
As long as the Chinese are ignoring the openly-available lessons learned by the US military over the last decade in favor of revolution in military affairs fantasies, we and their neighbors have little to fear.
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