PLA tank ammunition during 1980~1990s

[exsonic01]

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/10818 ... what-when/

China:
APFSDS
1992? 125-I
late '90s? 125-II
HEAT
1992? 3BK18 equivalent?
HE
1992? 3OF19 equivalent?

Comments: Precise service dates are not available, but China is believed to have fielded two APFSDS rounds, as well as generic HEAT and HE rounds for its 125 mm tanks. The 125-1 APFSDS round is available for export, and has been adopted by Pakistan. Very little information is available about the 125-II, and its performance figures are largely hypothetical.

Some claims on Chinese perpetrators have an issue of credibility, as it is written their 125mm could penetrate 900mm+ or 1000mm+ RHS at the moment of deployment... To my knowledge PLA tanks used Rapira-based guns and Carousel auto reloader or something similar with Carousel. (Type 99 and Type 96, before upgrade) Despite of assistance from Israeli tech, it is hard to believe their 125mm at late 1990s would penetrate more than 600mm. I was thinking of 550mm~600mm at 2km. But I can be totally wrong.

Pakistani 125mm for Al-Khalid was based on Type-96 and 125-I apfsds is about 450mm.
https://pof.gov.pk/catalouge/Anti_Tank_Ammo.pdf

I will update KPA / PLA apfsds and heat round info in this post.

[exsonic01]

https://www.wikiwand.com/zh-hans/%E5%B0 ... 2%E5%BD%88
Chinese name of APFSDS = 尾翼稳定脱壳穿甲弹
Type 96 use DTW2式(型/期)穿甲弹
Type 99 use DTW3式(型/期)穿甲弹
If they use Carousel type auto-reloader then their L/W ratio cannot be comparable to western ones, as the apfsds become two-pieced and forced to have short length to fit in auto-reloader. Estimation on two APFSDS are different depending on sources, looking for more.

Type-99 tank deployed from 2001 so I guess DTW3-125 would not be able to modeled for my mod. (based on time frame of 1980~2000 or 1985~1995) Then, I guess DTW-1 and DTW-2 type 125mm / 105mm would be used for PLA for pre-2000.

I also admit the language barrier is real. It is really hard to find data.

Also searching for PLA 105mm (1980s) and KPA 115mm munitions for their T-62M and Chonma-ho. For KPA T-62M and Chonma-ho, I guess it might be safe to just give them Russian APDS/APFSDS/HEAT for 115mm for corresponding time frame.

[exsonic01]

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/p ... 2part2.pdf
Information for specific order of battle of 7 military district (or military region), before PLA changed their command structure to theater-based command system. Would be useful if anyone tries campaign and scenario for PLA

https://www.offiziere.ch/?p=35886
https://www.offiziere.ch/?p=36272
Looks like a blog post, but author (Sébastien Roblin) has a degree in international relations (conflict resolution) and wrote good articles for mainstream news papers and journals.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastien-roblin-5b3508102/
Based on the assumption that the author of this blog post is Mr. Roblin himself, I guess his estimations and reports looks more credible then other sources from internet. Still, for AB implement I guess it would needs more data. Especially it is hard to find the reference of 1980~2000. How do you think Nikolas? Any Russian sources on KPA and PLA armor capability?

[nikolas93TS]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the links you posted.

I don't have much experience in studying PLA, but I noticed that in Western forums (mostly) some Chinese data pop-up from time to time, so I guess it is more of language and practical barrier (for example, Chinese using Baidu and probably sticking on their own forums) than secrecy. There are probably monographs on their equipment, but beyond the Great Wall.

[exsonic01]

http://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/topic ... ent=120582
Some good pictures from catalogs.
DTW-2 105mm at 2km ~ 460mm along LoS. There newer generation 105mm APFSDS has ~550mm along LoS.

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php? ... nt=8254804
From WT forum: Some twitter account uploaded Chinese source of Israeli M111 link with their 105mm APFSDS at 1983.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... orld-35112

Also a latecomer to the tank ammunition scene, China was always relatively independent in producing tank ammunition but only recently started to develop more advanced varieties of ammunition. If China hopes to make its tanks and tank exports world-class, they must possess the capability to develop the proper ammunition for them. Chinese engineers experimented with depleted uranium but found the cost-to-performance ratio not worthwhile.

The “ancestor” of modern Chinese APFSDS ammunition is said to be the Soviet 3BM32 from the 1980s. This was developed into the DTW and DTC 125mm rounds, which arm modern Chinese tanks. The DTW 125 round is also exported as the BTA 4, which was notably paired with the VT-4 tank for export to Thailand. The BTA 4 round is said to have good performance, enough to defeat all but the most modern main battle tanks.

[exsonic01]

Tradoc data
https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2 ... nts/218108#
Page 275~277 = Type 99A2 and variants.
Page 278~280 = Type 96 and variants.
Page 281~283 = Type 59D and variants.

Some of ammunition might be the outside of 1980~2000 time frame, newer APFSDS after 2000.

But I think TRADOC data is not perfect though, some data is based on assumptions or approximations. But still, it might be a good starting point.

Type 96 description introduce BM-42M or something new based on BM-42M as an armament. But I'm not sure if that RHA mm value is proper one. It is true PLA acquired western tech via collaboration with Israel, but 600mm+ at 2km with BM-42M based penetrator seems overestimated. But of course I maybe wrong. I'm just thinking if Chinese upgraded Mango, how they achieved the upgrade.

[exsonic01]

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/weg2001.pdf
OPFOR equipment guide written and published by US army TRADOC. This would be a good starting point as a basic reference for the description of PLA and KPA tanks, IFVs and APCs, I guess.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 0001-1.pdf
I found this document while I was looking for AMX-30's FCS. Some description on old PLA tanks is also included in this document.