How Good is the Chinese Type 99G Main Battle Tank?

Ever since the Chinese government unveiled the latest version of its Type 99 main battle tank, the Type 99G, the vehicle has been dubbed an "M-1 killer," referring to America's combat-tested main battle tank. As a rule, tanks have three basic aspects: firepower, protection and speed. However, the United States Army has not thought it necessary to extensively upgrade the M-1 for many years, based on their combat experience. Simply put, it wasn't broke, so they didn't fix it.

However, the Germans have continued to steadily improve on their Leopard 2 tank, making the Leopard 2A7 a highly modern variant of what many experts already considered to be the best all-around main battle tank design in the world. The comparison is a much better one in terms of how a very modern western tank matches up against the Type 99G in a tank vs. tank clash.

Firepower
The Chinese tank uses a 125 mm gun based on Russian technology, and therefore not markedly different from the Russian tank guns that have been in use since the 1970s. The ability of this gun to penetrate the armor of modern western tanks is suspect to say the least, especially at long range, as demonstrated repeatedly whenever British Challengers and American M-1s squared off with Iraqi T-72s. The Chinese undoubtedly have better ammunition than the Iraqis did, and the Type 99G is known to have vastly better fire control systems. Even so, the gun is hampered by its inferior, Soviet-style ballistic characteristics, a fact implicitly acknowledged by the gun's original designers. Soviet/Russian-doctrine calls for using anti-tank missiles instead of kinetic penetrators at long range, and the Chinese Type 99 continues to employ a locally manufactured version of the Russian AT-11 missile for this purpose.

The Leopard 2 has used the Rheinmetall L55 120 mm smoothbore gun since its inception, the same cannon that was later adopted by the American M-1. It is a widely used gun design in the west, and is the most combat-tested modern tank gun in the world, having proven capable of ripping T-72s to pieces.

Protection
The Type 99G is known to use composite armor, although the exact composition and the sophistication of the materials technology therein are unknown. A good measure of how much armor a tank has (albeit not how good that armor is) is how heavy the tank is, and the basic Type 99 weighs 54 tons. The Chinese have chosen to buttress the armored protection with reactive armor as a standard feature, which uses explosive plates to deflect incoming missiles and penetrators. The tank has also been fitted with active defenses, namely small missiles that intercept and destroy incoming projectiles. The Chinese claim that their frontal defenses are the equivalent of 1 to 1.2 m of steel, and while that claim might be exaggerated, it is probably good enough to deflect a 120 mm depleted uranium round.

The Leopard 2A7 uses a third-generation western composite of steel, tungsten, plastic and ceramics for its main armor, plus modular add-on plates, especially over the front of the turret and hull. The vehicle weighs 62 tons. It has also been fitted with an active defense kit. The Germans have developed a reactive armor kit for the Leopard 2, but both they and the many foreign customers of the Leopard 2 have rarely seen fit to use it, a supreme statement of confidence in the strength of the passive armor of the vehicle.

Speed
The earlier versions of the Type 99 used a 1,500 hp turbocharged diesel engine, based on German designs. That is roughly equivalent to the V-12 turbocharged diesel that the Leopard 2 has used from its earliest days, an engine that develops roughly 1,480 hp. Given that the Chinese tank is slightly lighter than its German equivalent, it ought to be somewhat more mobile under most circumstances.

The Type 99G, however, is supposed to have a 2,100 hp turbocharged diesel engine. If so, that would represent a major increase in mobility. However, there are plenty of reasons to take the unvalidated 2,100 hp engine claim with a grain of salt. The Chinese capability for designing high-performance engines isn't very good, and the existing engine for the Type 99 was already based on a German design. Engines with that kind of power output are used to run locomotives, and no one in the West has even proposed to build a 2,100 hp engine of the type that would be used in a tank.

If the Chinese have produced a 2,100 hp engine, it is very likely over-charged to the point of making the engine very twitchy and unreliable. The bottom line is either that the Type 99G is a little faster than the Leopard 2A7, or it is a lot faster, but with very unreliable powerplant.