Why China’s New Tank is Radically Different

This is China's next generation main battle tank, the Type 100, that was first unveiled during their massive World War II Victory Day parade. With its smaller 105mm cannon, radar sensors all over the turret, and unmanned companion support vehicles, in many ways it's a radical departure from both Western and Russian tank designs. But in some other ways, it reveals a convergence towards similar capabilities that all of these so-called fourth-generation tanks are showcasing, namely that each tanker now gets an advanced comfort pillow. We'll see how the Type 100 actually represents a nearly seven decades-long journey of evolving Chinese tank philosophy, and how main battle tanks have come to represent a nation's prestige. As Sun Tzu once said, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He also said anyone who quotes Sun Tzu is a total hack. But I think the Type 100 really embodies that philosophy of change at its heart. Can the Type 100 survive a battlefield like Ukraine that's lousy with enemy drones today? How has Chinese tank development through the ages landed on these specific capabilities? Let's find out. I just found out I was being charged $15 every month for an old workout app that I haven't used in over two years. I felt violated. But that's why I reached out to today's sponsor, Rocket Money. Because they're a personal finance app that helps you cancel subscriptions. That got me digging even deeper, and I went down a whole rabbit hole where I found out I was being charged hundreds of dollars every month for services I don't want or don't use anymore. Rocket Money has helped customers save over $500 million and cancel subscriptions. And once I connected my bank account, Rocket Money identified all of my subscriptions in a single list. From there, I simply selected the ones I didn't want anymore, and Rocket Money helped me cancel them with just a few taps. Rocket Money even helped me negotiate my bills like my internet service. But it's more than that. They're an all-in-one personal finance app. They help you manage your money better in general. It starts with the subscriptions, but then you see how clearly it shows you where you're wasting all kinds of money each month. So if you guys want to take control of your finances, go to rocketmoney.com slash capyarmy. They're offering you a free trial today. Just click my link in the description or the pinned comment below, and let us conduct our annual subscription purge together. This is China's Tank Factory 617, also known as Number One Machinery Plant or Botou Factory. It was created in 1954, and since then, it's the one and only main battle tank factory in all of China. It seems like a random remote location, but it's only 120 kilometers away from the Bayanobo Rare Earth Iron Ore Fields. This is where they mine for steel to cast the holes of the Type 100 tank. The factory is Costco levels of gigantic, with over 20,000 employees, and it houses 5,000 R&D team members, and it covers 20 square kilometers. But it wasn't always this huge, and this declassified American intelligence document shows that they've been closely monitoring the site since at least 1966, when spy planes flew over and tracked every time they expanded or upgraded it. This document from 1983 shows a detailed layout of where the PLA brings their tanks right next door to test the weaponry. The U.S. even knew the lead tank designer's favorite color, it was green. Having all tank production under one roof isn't that unusual, it's very similar to the Lima Tank Factory in Ohio, America, that's been pumping out tanks since 1941. China's use of tanks has historically been limited compared to other major powers. When World War II first kicked off, the rough terrain and limited fuel meant Japan only deployed light tanks in small numbers. But by 1949, the CCP did manage to capture over 600 foreign tanks in their civil war, most of them old American and Soviet armor. One military expert at the time even noted that the PLA's 1949 parade was, quote, the most extensive public display of U.S. military hardware in over a decade. Acquiring these first tanks started nearly a century-long struggle for China between copying other nations' tank designs and attempting to create something that was uniquely Chinese. The Type 100 is, I think, the first tank where they may have actually broken that cycle. During the Korean War in the 1950s, China used basically no main battle tanks again. The reason for this was because China had no real heavy industry yet. So Mao Zedong instituted the Chinese Communist Party's first five-year plan in 1953 to create steel mills and factories. The Soviet Union sent billions of dollars in today's money in loans and 10,000 foreign advisors to help with this reorganization. In 1955, Moscow says, hey comrade, we're both communists, so hey, I'm going to give you this blueprint for the T-54A main battle tank. China starts pumping out thousands of Soviet-clone T-59s. The Soviet Union says, hey, you wouldn't ever use those tanks against us, would you, comrade? And China says, no, of course not. Then they do. The T-59s were then turned around and used against the Soviet Union in 1969, when Beijing engages in its one and only meaningful tank-on-tank combat in history. The fight takes place on this frozen sliver of land, the Ossury River. The Soviets send four of their newest secret T-62 main battle tanks, and they engage with the older Chinese T-59 technology. But one of the Soviet T-62 tanks runs over a landmine as it crosses the frozen river, and it's disabled. The two sides fight over the husk of the dead tank for months, but finally the Chinese Navy successfully recovers it. Finders keepers, losers weepers. The PLA brings it back to Beijing, and they study the tank's majestic secrets. It turns out it's a goldmine of information. The PLA reverse-engineered it to develop their next model, the Type 69, with its smoothbore gun, night-fighting infrared sights, and its tricked-out turret stabilization. The American Central Intelligence Agency was closely monitoring all this, and they sent back this declassified intelligence report about the very day that their spies observed This one battle revealed to the Chinese military planners why main battle tanks were necessary. Tank production in China has always been driven by geography. First, the PLA needs armor to secure their borders against Russia in the north, and second, they need armor in the west to cover the plateaus there. These are theoretically the only realistic avenues of approach for any kind of large, mechanized threat to attack them. There's also the ability to police your own people with these tanks, but more importantly, there's the prestige aspect. It's the intangible. It's the aspect of tank production across all countries you can't really quantify with numbers or stats. Because modern armored tanks are undeniably the symbol of a nation's power. It showcases a society's ability to work together, to cooperate across different expertise, to produce something that is mind-bogglingly absurdly expensive, millions of dollars each unit. Its ability represents the pinnacle of many different fields from chemicals to material science, and it creates something that is both horrifyingly deadly and captivating at the same time. The PLA goes ham on pumping out thousands of T-59s and T-69 tanks and exporting them around the world to different countries. A western military officer went to Thailand and inspected the Chinese tanks and he found that they were inaccurate, the suspension system was poor, and the engines often broke down emitting clouds of black smoke even when they just started up. In the 1980s, China and western nations are on great terms, their relationship is just warm and fuzzy, so they exchange technology. So China receives fancy British fire control computers from Marconi and reliable German diesel engines. Believe it or not, the United States and China even worked together on the Jaguar main battle tank which was like a cross between the M1 Abrams and a T-59 Soviet inspiration, it was a communist slash capitalist death machine. The 1989 Tiananmen Square incident caused a split with the west and China, and China was once again back to the drawing board when it came to their tank technology. Beijing had been through this kind of break up before with the Soviet Union, China had long been skeptical of foreign military technology, the Qin dynasty officials from back in the day even have a famous quote saying, quote, Chinese learning for substance, western learning for use, end quote. In the 1990s, we see Tank Factory 617 is absorbed into the giant state owned defense conglomerate China North Industries Group Corporation, also known as Norinco. Norinco is what would happen if Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing in America all had a big war baby together. Norinco began standardizing designs and they hit their first great leap forward, so to speak, in the T-96 and heavier T-99 tanks. This bad boy has composite armor, digital fire control systems, and it can actually shoot while on the move, but it's still heavily influenced by Russia's T-72 and their whole T-series of tanks. Which brings us to today, with this next generation Type 100, or ZTZ-100, and it's development story is really unusual compared to past models. It reportedly started more than a decade ago, as early as 2012, under the direction of what's called the Northern Vehicle Research Institute, or number 201 in China. This is their main ground combat research and development center, it's kind of like China's Skunk Works or DARPA, but for vehicles, but it's run very differently because instead of relying on private contractors, number 201 controls the entire design pipeline from initial concept sketches to prototypes before Norinco finally produces it. It's a leftover form of that Chinese central planning that hasn't left since the first five year plan. What's really unusual though I think is how mysterious the T-100 whole project is. It was only mentioned briefly in a 2016 show on China's state TV, then nearly 10 years of radio silence before this parade, and only a few blurry photos of it existed like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster before that that circulated online under the designation ZTZ-201 on obscure Chinese defense forums, so you might have easily missed it. Tank Factory 617, the same one that produced those same original T-59s, they were then also chosen to produce this new next generation T-100. The first thing that stood out is it's noticeably smaller at 40 tons, putting it in what's called the medium tank category. It appears to be 7 meters long and 2 meters high, making it's hull and turret taller than previous main battle tanks. The side skirts have been reshaped for increased fragmentation deflection. It's tactics and capabilities are built around this key aspect of lower weight though. Thus we should seize the opportunity to make a substantial study of all kinds of foreign machines and weapons in order to learn their secret completely. In times of disturbances it can be used to oppose aggression, and in times of peace they can show our prestige. One of the things making it lighter is it's unmanned turret and smaller 105mm cannon. This is a major departure from larger 125 or 120mm cannons that the Russians and American tanks have. Why the smaller size? Chinese media claims that recent advances in tank ammunition propellant mean that it doesn't lose any of that firepower compared to the bigger cannons. They state that new armor-piercing rounds still are able to achieve a reported muzzle velocity of 1,700 meters per second. The PLA claims it's effectiveness is on par with what they call their Phase 3 larger cannon ammo. Phase 3 is estimated to be able to punch through 650mm of rolled homogenous steel at 2km. Punching through armor may not even be it's main job anymore though because data from the war in Ukraine has suggested that tank-on-tank combat is exceedingly rare and armors typically used to dislodge infantry from cities and to destroy fortifications during advances. And that's part of the reason why this switched to smaller, lighter tanks because bigger, slower, louder giant platforms have shown to be vulnerable in the war in Ukraine. It looks like it has no blowout panels for the ammo but the crew is actually inside a special compartment separate from the autoloader and the ammunition and explosives and this compartment is more heavily armored. It's interesting to note the crew has been reduced from 4 in Russian tanks down to either 2 or 3 members here. Which can be an advantage or a disadvantage because that means more workload, more jobs on just 2 team members who are taking care of an entire tank. The lighter weight has a trade off of course because the Type 100 is more vulnerable with less armor. It'll be exposed when taking autocannon fire on its flanks. Chinese sources state that the overall protection is not high except at the hull front. That's one reason Chinese military observers have dubbed it the double ridiculous online, meaning ridiculously light and ridiculously unarmored. One of the biggest changes is the new diesel-electric hybrid power system that generates 1500 horsepower. Electric motors have the advantage of allowing the tank to reverse quicker which helps tanks fire and retreat back into defensive protection. More importantly though, it's that extra juice that it generates. Exact numbers are classified of course but there are estimates that these type of hybrid systems generate maybe 50% higher electrical capacity which as we'll see is very important in a minute. Something really unusual with this release is we're hearing from actual PLA soldiers. So Wang Kun who is a crew member of a T-100 spoke to the media saying that this hybrid engine they're capable of approaching the enemy in silence in specific environments. The way to understand the Type 100 tactics is by looking at its mysterious new support vehicle which appears to be kind of a whole new category of tanks that aren't tanks. It's like if your tank had an emotional support animal armed with an autocannon. The support vehicle carries 3 soldiers only so less than a squad but they can dismount and act as an anti-tank RPG team. The support vehicle can be reconfigured and transformed into a mobile loitering missile launcher. It's meant to be unmanned and remote controlled possibly with an autocannon on top. This is what 4th generation tank warfare is supposedly all about. It's where the principles of all future tanks in the west and in China seem to converge on these very specific set of principles. The similarities, the themes that they share across the board between US and Chinese tanks are they're smaller now, active protection systems, and network warfare. In the past, tank generations were basically referred to based on how big the cannon was and how thick its armor was but that's no longer the case. The support vehicle's job in theory is to scout ahead, tag targets, put a little Dorito red mark over them, and feed it to the infantry's platoon network. It's a spotter that works to route the whole team's kill chain. It launches surveillance drones right off the back of the vehicle to push surveillance 10 kilometers past where they are. It also works as a counter-UAV defense umbrella. It creates a protection bubble against anti-tank threats which explain its high 90-degree elevation traversal for its cannon. Specs reported by China's state media say that it has AI-assisted target recognition that tags threats that are spotted by drones automatically, which means the crew gets a ping on their screen telling them where a hostile tank is hiding without seeing it themselves, so crew members showcase their new situational-awareness augmented reality goggles to look through the metal interior. It's a feature seen in many modern armored vehicles for the past few years. Similar to Apache helicopters, turning your head with this goggle system on also turns the remote weapon system to where your eyes are looking, so just make sure you never make direct eye contact with your buddies in this way. Demo footage of the Type 100 has also been unlike anything I've seen from the PLA. It's similar to the demo footage that we see coming out of the Pentagon recently. It seems like they all use the same editor or 3D animator. They even reused a Raytheon animation for their explainer of how their active protection systems work. The footage reveals it'll have a little compartment that can launch a drone out in front of the tank to scout ahead for targets. A lot of the demo footage for the Type 100 doesn't show the tank firing its main gun, it shows something we almost never see, the hard-kill defensive knocking out live incoming threats. We're talking ATGMs, even rockets fired from drones hovering over Bobs. That's something of a first that's been publicly released video evidence that China's active protection system, according to these videos, actually works. Now at a first glance, the Type 100's setup looks like a copy of the Trophy or the American active protection systems, but if you dig a little deeper for that bone, it's actually different. Instead of blasting out a shotgun-like spread of metal pellet fragments to shred the warhead at close range, China's GL-6 system fires mini missiles. Each interceptor has its own propellant, so it operates under its own drive, almost like a mini VLS launch cell wrapped around the turret. The design is pretty unusual, I've never seen anything quite like it on an operational tank. What does that mean? In theory, this approach could let the system engage threats further out than pellet charges ever could, maybe even small drones further away. Because each interceptor can be angled upward, it has a chance of swatting down some of the western-style top attack munitions like javelins, which are notoriously hard to stop with older APS tech. The whole thing is cued by four radar arrays, giving the tank full 360-degree coverage. It's a concept that feels closer to South Korea's KAPS active protection system, or even the United States' quick-kill program that Raytheon worked on back in the 2000s. And if it works as advertised, it explains why Chinese media calls the Type 100 this mini Aegis destroyer on land, that it doubles as a kind of short-range air defense system. Cosmetically, the Type 100 looks closer to maybe a Russian T-14 next-gen tank, but under the hood, all of its sensors and its tactics, it's more in common with the NATO and western philosophy of warfare. According to CCT reports, this isn't just a one-off. They claim that the Type 100 is going to be the core strength of the PLA ground force on future battlefields. At the end of the day, the older Type 99 still led the parade, though. The Type 99 was still the centerpiece of their entire armored display to the public. Why is that? Because the Type 100 is extremely expensive, who knows how much it'll cost, and Chinese sources claim that wide-scale production is not yet feasible, and that the PLA is still testing the concept on network-centric warfare. What it does show is that either way, China has the ability to quickly adapt and field the tank prototype based on something they seem to have already been working on, and that is an answer to some of the ways that armored warfare has changed since the proliferation of drone combat. If you liked this video, check out this one here, I think you'll really dig it. I'm your average infantryman Chris Cappie, please remember to hit the like and subscribe button if you haven't already. Ending transmission.