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2024 MBT-X Light Tank

By 2024, images of a new domestically produced tank has been circulated on the Internet, attracting the attention of everyone and even overseas media. It is generally believed that this tank is the first appearance of China's new generation of tanks. This new tank adopts a design of 6 pairs of road wheels, and its appearance is as low as possible, which makes people suspect that it uses an unmanned turret. Judging from the appearance, its total weight may be less than 30 tons. However, relatively little relevant information has been disclosed, and everyone can only evaluate the tank from the appearance. As for other technical parameters, it is basically all guesswork.

Many people have a question. China's Type 15 light tank in service is already a model of contemporary light tanks. It has mobility and protection capabilities. It can be equipped with enhanced protection components, and the 105mm main gun is also sufficient. Moreover, after the Russian-Ukrainian war, many friends are wondering why we still need to develop main battle tanks or a new type of tank? Even if my country's research and development capabilities are strong enough, will this new tank subvert the land warfare model?

After all, the war between Russia and Ukraine has not ended yet, but everyone has discovered that tanks have a low survival rate under the rotors of drones, especially when facing overwhelming drones, and have basically no protection. The Russian army even developed a stress product such as the "turtle shell tank" to deal with the attack of FPV drones, but the effect is not ideal. Moreover, after the modification, the tank's own protection ability, mobility and even firepower have been greatly reduced.

In fact, when it comes to this new tank, the biggest feature is not its stealth appearance, even the gun barrel has been designed to be stealth. The core of this tank is not these appearances and unmanned turrets, etc., but the biggest core is that this tank is a complex of modern sensors. In fact, the biggest problem in the Russian-Ukrainian war is that tanks have no way to effectively detect these small targets, even from artillery shells to rockets, anti-tank missiles, and drones. Especially for drones attacking overhead, they do not have effective detection and defense capabilities .

The tank exposed by China this time has a lot of sensors, including laser radar and various suspected phased array scanning components, and a large number of photoelectric probes. In addition, the tank itself has a relatively rich antenna group, which enables the tank to have the basic conditions for effective communication and networking with surrounding unmanned units. This move will also greatly reduce the possibility of tanks being hit by such unmanned equipment in high-risk areas. After all, such dangerous situations can allow surrounding unmanned units to go first. The unmanned turret of this tank is not only designed for stealth and miniaturization. There is also a suspected large-caliber unmanned remote-controlled weapon station on the top. This means that once such small targets are found, the strike capability must be much better than that of conventional tanks. At the same time, the relatively low appearance is also conducive to hiding itself in the battlefield environment.

The core of this type of change is not to rely on traditional armored units and use the thickness of armor to resist, because both the Leopard 2 tank and the M1A1 tank have strong protection capabilities and are very strong in the face of traditional armor-piercing projectiles. They are even equipped with various anti-UAV equipment. Unfortunately, they have not been able to effectively counter or intercept UAV attacks.

Therefore, the design concept and original intention of the Chinese military personnel for this new type of tank is actually very simple, that is, from the traditional "passive hard resistance" to the current "active defense", it must be to actively discover the target and actively intercept and attack. This move will cause a significant increase in the number of sensors on the vehicle, and will also make the power consumption of the vehicle quite high. If the revolutionary design concept of full electric propulsion is adopted, it will also help improve the corresponding power consumption.

This tank is a new thinking and preliminary answer by Chinese military workers on future ground warfare. On the contrary, this tank is not necessarily a complete one. It is very likely to undergo some actual combat tests and then return to the factory for further modifications, including strengthening and improving the active defense system and the detection system for dealing with various small targets. These may be strengthened in the future.

However, this type of tank has this kind of redundancy and strong overall design concept from the beginning of its design. Their system can upgrade the tank in linear and nonlinear upgrade modes. To put it bluntly, this tank is a very good land warfare equipment carrier from the beginning of chassis design. It can be equipped with various new weapon systems according to needs, without the need for temporary installation of traditional tanks like those on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield.