Type 98 MBT "A New Beast From the East"

[Lancer]

http://www.china-defense.com/armor/type98/type98_3.html

Is Russia wise to be helping the Chinese?

"Unlike contemporary Russian active tank self-defense systems like Drozd, Drozd-2, and Arena, which launch projectiles to disable or "shoot-down" incoming anti-tank missiles and projectiles, the Chinese system apparently uses a high-powered laser to directly attack the enemy weapon's optics and gunner."

[MrFun]

What does this have to do with communism -- since China really cannot be seen as a purely communist country.

[Ted Striker]

What does this have to do with bare chested pictures of Ted Striker ???

[MrFun]

A picture of a skinny 17 year old?





That wouldn't be anything to get excited about.

[Ted Striker]

[Dinner]

I bet if you really started digging through the specs this is nothing more then a mildly reskinned Soviet design. the Chinese don't do their own designs and instead just modify other people's designs. Even their space rockets are nothing more then mildly rewarmed 30 year old Soviet designs.

[Ted Striker]

The weird thing about what I read is it said you have to move the whole turrett to face the enemy tank and launch the laser countermeasure.

Seems like a pretty hard thing to do.

[Dinner]

I doubt it will be all that effective.

[Ted Striker]

It sounds hokey.

[BeBMan]

Have you seen the pic of that tank? Looks as if the gun "rests" on the driver's head.

[Combat Ingrid]

I like the black "Al-Khalid" version

[Lancer]

"I bet if you really started digging through the specs this is nothing more then a mildly reskinned Soviet design."

I wonder if the Russians are wise to share military tech with the Chinese. They might one day end up in a contest over Siberia.

[Atahualpa]

Are MBTs still that useful?

[Harovan]

What is the best MBT anyway?

[Lancer]

Not as useful as 1939, but still useful. Chobham armor has increased a tanks survivability greatly. Anti missile measures, as described on this Chinese tank, may someday further increase a tanks chances in combat. Also, if you look at the lessons of Iraq, the difference between modern armor and soviet era armor is so great that one could say that they really had no armor. Their guns could not penetrate when they did manage a hit, and our guns killed on the first shot almost every time. I don't think we lost a single tank to enemy fire in the first gulf war and only 2 iirc in the second. Some kind of new era Russian missile...don't recall exactly.