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Al Khalid MBT-2000 / Type 2000 Main Battle Tank

Pakistan's development of the MBT-2000 Al Khalid began in 1988, and in January 1990 an agreement was reached with China to jointly design, develop and manufacture system. The design is an upgrade from the original T902M and work had been going on at China's NORINCO for some years. Besides a low silhouette, it is considerably smaller as compared to other modern tanks, with a maximum weight of 46 tons. The Al Khalid is fitted with a smooth bore gun of 125mm which can also fire missiles.

Initial prototypes were produced in China and fielded for trials in August 1991. Pakistan's manufacturing plant at Taxila was completed in 1992. Since then development efforts have focused on improving the design for Pakistan's terrain and high temperatures. The engine of the T90 2M is replaced by the Ukrainian 6TD 1200hp engine, and a newly developed thermal viewer system has been added to improve nocturnal fighting capability. US$20 million were reportedly spent on the indigenous development of the Al-Khalid tanks over a period of eight years.

Heavy Industries Taxila started production of Al-Khalid in November 2000. The Chinese ground army has not made any purchase orders and will not use the same tank when it does decide to buy a next-generation armored vehicle. As of early 2002 Pakistan had about twenty Al-Khalid tanks in service. It had received its first consignment of 15 Al-Khalid MBTs in July 2001.

In February 2002 Ukraine announced that the Malyshev plant would provide another 315 engines for Al-Khalid tanks over three years. The contract's estimated value was $125-150 million. Pakistan's Army reportedly hopes to produce a total of 300 more tanks by 2005. According to a 2001 report, Pakistan planned to add another 300 indigenous Al-Khalid tanks to its armoured corps by 2007.

Ukraine is a key partner in the production of the Al-Khalid tank which is a joint venture between China, Pakistan and Ukraine. Ukraine is also providing assistance to Pakistan in the Upgrade/Re-Build its T-59 tanks to the Al-Zarar Configuration, which is intended to match the T-80UD tanks.

Ukraine possesses one of the most reliable tank engines in the conditions of hot climate. It is the result of the strategy of tank building development. At one time Ukraine and Russia, as two great tank powers, took two different ways of tank engine development. Ukrainian constructors chose the Diesel direction, while Russian ones the gas turbine, like many other countries. Now, according to the words of the chief designer of Ukraine armored troops, head of the Kharkov machine-building design office lieutenant general Mikhail Borisyuk, when the principal prominent buyers of armored equipment are located in countries with hot climate, the stability of engines with the ambient air temperature higher than 50 degrees has become one of the key factors for tanks reliability. In the extreme conditions of hot climate gas-turbine engines of China and Poland, created on the base of B-1, B-2 engine types, Russian engines, having had serious problems during testing in India, started to receive transient errors. At the same time Ukrainian engines on the tanks T-80UD, provided to Pakistan, showed high reliability.

On September 23, 2004, Pakistan received an additional consignment of Al-Khalid MBTs. The Al-Khalid MBT has a combat weight of 46 tons and carries a crew of three. It had a combat range of 400Km and is fitted with thermal night-vision devices. It is powered by a 1200 HP water-cooled diesel engine and has a maximum speed of 65-70Km/hr with an acceleration of 0-32Km/hr in 10 seconds. It's armor is made of composite material as well as explosive reactive armor.