Al-Khalid tank (Type 90-IIM / MBT-2000) Information Pool

[DeusExAstra]

Found this in Weibo, any ideas?

Spoiler

Description says about "leaked Al Khalid II" (if machine translation from Chinese was correct)

In my opinion, it looks just about usual AK

 

[RAMPAGE]

Found this in Weibo, any ideas?

Spoiler

View attachment 829454

Description says about "leaked Al Khalid II" (if machine translation from Chinese was correct)

In my opinion, it looks just about usual AK

Typo?

 

[iLION12345_1]

Found this in Weibo, any ideas?

Spoiler

View attachment 829454

Description says about "leaked Al Khalid II" (if machine translation from Chinese was correct)

In my opinion, it looks just about usual AK

Too grainy to tell really but it does look like a normal AK. It’s the figures on the left the are interesting.

No variant of the Al Khalid so far has reached or crossed the 50 ton mark (unless we consider short tons), Especially not without ERA and APS. How come it lists two different sizes for the hull and two different P/W ratios as well. I know that Al Khalid’s total length is 10.06 meters, but I can’t recall if that’s including the gun or not. Maybe these figures and the document are from the original production time of the Al Khalid as they may have Been experimenting with different stuff then.

 

[DeusExAstra]

Typo?

May be, but there was statement about new AK mod (I mean, it does not necessarily be called just "Al Khalid-II")

Too grainy to tell really but it does look like a normal AK. It’s the figures on the left the are interesting.

No variant of the Al Khalid so far has reached or crossed the 50 ton mark (unless we consider short tons), Especially not without ERA and APS. How come it lists two different sizes for the hull and two different P/W ratios as well. I know that Al Khalid’s total length is 10.06 meters, but I can’t recall if that’s including the gun or not. Maybe these figures and the document are from the original production time of the Al Khalid as they may have Been experimenting with different stuff then.

May be. My guess is it could be easilly reached by adding additional armor plates ~20-40mm in air gaps in turret and hull armor packages to increase base protection.

Interestingly, in the configuration with block b it has 28 hp/t, so it should be at least 1400 hp engine (1400/50). Looks a bit closer to 12V150 series engines for VT-4

 

[Scorpiooo]

I’ll have to explain a few things to explain that.

First of all, tanks have the thickest armor at the front, and they have a thing called the frontal armor arc. basically, tanks designers design tank turrets and hulls in such a way that the thickest armor doesn’t just cover the narrow front of the tank but also extends a certain amount to the side of the tank. Notice in this image of a T90S turret how the front of the turret is not flat but angled so the frontal armor arc extends on each side of the tank. This design feature is present in both the T72 and the T90S as well as the T80UD, meanwhile the Al-Khalid and the VT-4 have a nearly flat turret front, meaning it’s armor is only at the front with the entire side of the turret vulnerable to enemy fire, this is somewhat remedied by adding ERA to the turret side as the Al-Khalid and VT-4 do, but Al-Khalid has older ERA so this isn’t going to help it that much, VT-4 at least has much better ERA with better coverage on the side of the turret, but this design flaw is still there. Arjun has these design flaws too.
. View attachment 828661




A similar strategy is applied to tank hulls, where the first 1/3rd or 1/4th of the tanks side may have thicker armor than the rest. Or may have some sort of additional armor like ERA on the side of the tank. While no tank in South Asia has proper side hull armor for the entire tank, The T90S and the T80UD at least employ additional armor or ERA on the first 1/3rd of the tanks side. Al-Khalid and VT-4 have just their normal hull armor on the entire side of the tank, which is not that thick at all and is a massive weak spot. This is also surprising because Al-Khalid was initially deployed with similar 1/3rd armor coverage as T80UD and was even tested with a full side armor kit, but neither was ever put into service.
This image shows why having that 1/3rd side armor can be very useful, although it is an outdated example as it’s using a WW2 tank with no sloping armor, But disregard that for this example.
View attachment 828668



So what I mean to say is, that while Pakistani/Chinese tanks have armor that may be as effective, if not more, than the Indian/Russian counterparts, their design is very poor, with all of this armor being focused on the front of the tanks and no emphasis given to side armor, this is especially inexcusable in the case of the VT-4 which has the thickest front armor of any tank in the region and should have proper armor covering its entire side like T90MS or other modern tanks but has only thin steel on its side.

In short: from the front, modern Pakistani tanks are generally better protected than modern Indian ones (only talking about 3rd Gen stuff here), but Indian ones have better side armor simply due to their better russian design philosophy, however they’re not ahead not by much because of their age.

Indian tanks employ much poorer ammo when compared to Pakistani tanks, so they’ll have a hard time penetrating Pakistani armor in general, While PA tanks don’t have this issue. However the most prevalent threats to armor these days aren’t other tanks, it’s infantry, and that’s where side armor is important. IA employs a lot of modern ATGMs and AT weapons that will be very deadly to PA tanks if they can get a shot at the side.

So why we dont want fix this design issue at all, why cant it be fixed in al Khalid up coming version

May be, but there was statement about new AK mod (I mean, it does not necessarily be called just "Al Khalid-II")



May be. My guess is it could be easilly reached by adding additional armor plates ~20-40mm in air gaps in turret and hull armor packages to increase base protection.

Interestingly, in the configuration with block b it has 28 hp/t, so it should be at least 1400 hp engine (1400/50). Looks a bit closer to 12V150 series engines for VT-4

There is another project name as Al haider, few says its link to VT4 induction but can be another design tank program advance then Al khalids

 

[iLION12345_1]

So why we dont want fix this design issue at all, why cant it be fixed in al Khalid up coming version


There is another project name as Al haider, few says its link to VT4 induction but can be another design tank program advance then Al khalids

Al-Haider program doesn’t exist. It never did AFAIK.
VT-4 is technically the Al-Haider because it was PAs next tank, however they’re inducting both AK-1 and VT-4 while also working on future AK models so clearly things are different from what they were two decades ago.

So why we dont want fix this design issue at all, why cant it be fixed in al Khalid up coming version

Because it’s incredibly expensive to redesign a tank, especially this massively. They’d basically need to change almost everything about the tanks design to fix this flaw, all in all, it would cost too much to justify, at that point they’re better off designing a new talk altogether. Plus it would add significant weight, something the current engine couldn’t handle. All that, plus the fact that these flaws generally present in all Chinese, Pakistani and generally Asian tanks.
HIT have shown multiple times that they do realize this flaw and have tried to give AK a redesigned turret in the past, something they can still do in the future, however the issue with the engine is likely what’s holding them back here, that being said, The next AK seems to be getting a new and more powerful engine, so maybe theyll finally consider a redesign, However I’m not too hopeful for it.

Most Asian tanks have poor side armor and generally poor designs because of doctrine and lack of experience, however this doesn’t make them bad tanks. PA might simply not consider these issues big enough to invest resources into them given the enemy has weaker tanks in general, so they’d rather spent the money elsewhere.

 

[Dazzler]

Found this in Weibo, any ideas?

Spoiler

View attachment 829454

Description says about "leaked Al Khalid II" (if machine translation from Chinese was correct)

In my opinion, it looks just about usual AK

Not Alkhalid. One of the prototypes of type-98. Turret and hull front gave it away.

 

[iLION12345_1]

Not Alkhalid. One of the prototypes of type-98. Turret and hull front gave it away.

Yes, This might be the tank in question.

 

[DeusExAstra]

About AK, is there some kind of mods classification? I mean, on some resource found this:

"The Al Khalid II
According to the Pakistani military experts, the modernization is focused on improving the electronics and control systems, whereas the practical rate of fire is to be raised up to 9 shots per minute. Active prortection relies on the Ukrainian opto-electronic Varta blinding system, a jamming laser seeker, upgraded rangefinders and designators, plus a 3rd generation french Sage imager. According to "Pakistan Military Consortium" Usman Shabbir, the new Al Khalid integrates components of the Chinese Type 99 MBT, like the SB gun. Heavier, it has a redesigned turret and improved armour modules, new sensors, improved ammunitions, an Integrated Battle Management System (IBMS) and a new 1,500 hp powerpack. It is scheduled for production and also serves as a long-term modernization/upgrade programme for the Al Khalid of 1st generation."

So, here're AK, AK-I and some "AK-II", but I found only news dated ~2016-2018 years, any news about new modification with all this? Was it delayed for some reason? And what kind of mods there're should be (according to issues with 6TD-3 engines for obvious reasons), because some statements are different from source to source.

 

[farooqbhai007]

About AK, is there some kind of mods classification? I mean, on some resource found this:

"The Al Khalid II
According to the Pakistani military experts, the modernization is focused on improving the electronics and control systems, whereas the practical rate of fire is to be raised up to 9 shots per minute. Active prortection relies on the Ukrainian opto-electronic Varta blinding system, a jamming laser seeker, upgraded rangefinders and designators, plus a 3rd generation french Sage imager. According to "Pakistan Military Consortium" Usman Shabbir, the new Al Khalid integrates components of the Chinese Type 99 MBT, like the SB gun. Heavier, it has a redesigned turret and improved armour modules, new sensors, improved ammunitions, an Integrated Battle Management System (IBMS) and a new 1,500 hp powerpack. It is scheduled for production and also serves as a long-term modernization/upgrade programme for the Al Khalid of 1st generation."

So, here're AK, AK-I and some "AK-II", but I found only news dated ~2016-2018 years, any news about new modification with all this? Was it delayed for some reason? And what kind of mods there're should be (according to issues with 6TD-3 engines for obvious reasons), because some statements are different from source to source.

naming mistake the source here very likely quotes the AK-1 as AK-2 , as the Al-khalid 1 designation was only given in 2018 and before that the newer model was referred to as AK2

 

[iLION12345_1]

About AK, is there some kind of mods classification? I mean, on some resource found this:

"The Al Khalid II
According to the Pakistani military experts, the modernization is focused on improving the electronics and control systems, whereas the practical rate of fire is to be raised up to 9 shots per minute. Active prortection relies on the Ukrainian opto-electronic Varta blinding system, a jamming laser seeker, upgraded rangefinders and designators, plus a 3rd generation french Sage imager. According to "Pakistan Military Consortium" Usman Shabbir, the new Al Khalid integrates components of the Chinese Type 99 MBT, like the SB gun. Heavier, it has a redesigned turret and improved armour modules, new sensors, improved ammunitions, an Integrated Battle Management System (IBMS) and a new 1,500 hp powerpack. It is scheduled for production and also serves as a long-term modernization/upgrade programme for the Al Khalid of 1st generation."

So, here're AK, AK-I and some "AK-II", but I found only news dated ~2016-2018 years, any news about new modification with all this? Was it delayed for some reason? And what kind of mods there're should be (according to issues with 6TD-3 engines for obvious reasons), because some statements are different from source to source.

Nothing concrete is known about AK-II at the moment but there are strong indications that it is getting a new RWS and a Chinese engine. Other upgrades are unknown.

Varta was already rejected on the base model AK over a decade and will not be seen on the AK-2, or any other AK for that matter. What even is a jamming laser seeker?

The Rate of fire increase was already seen in the Al-Khalid-1 due to the new auto-loader it got. Same with the 3rd generation Thermal imager, which is the SAGEM MATIS STD. That was already present in later production Al-Khalids (base models) and all AK-1s. Neither of these are for AK-2.

IBMS has been present in AK since it’s introduction however it will or already has seen an upgrade.

The news about the gun, new sensors, more armor/redesign and other stuff is just Speculation as it was not seen in AK-1 and is not confirmed for AK-2. This article you quoted was likely written by someone with just surface level research and is confusing AK-1 for AK-2.

Al-Khalid-1 already got a new FCS/GCS with new optics for both gunner and commander so I doubt it’ll see another upgrade in AK-2.

We might see LWRs and new ERA however, and other stuff from VT-4P. I made a long post about possible AK-2 upgrades elsewhere on the forum, you can check that out.

As for delays, the entire Al-Khalid program is several years behind the original plan due to a production and development stoppage that occurred in the 2010s due to a lack of funds (war on terror). AK-1 was supposed to begin production Before 2015 but only started in 2018-19 (it was given a few more upgrades to make up for the delay). We should see the Al-Khalid 2 enter production by the time AK-1 (220x, 110x delivered, 110x in production) orders end, so around 2024-2025 hopefully.

 

[DeusExAstra]

naming mistake the source here very likely quotes the AK-1 as AK-2 , as the Al-khalid 1 designation was only given in 2018 and before that the newer model was referred to as AK2

Now I see, thank you!

Nothing concrete is known about AK-II at the moment but there are strong indications that it is getting a new RWS and a Chinese engine. Other upgrades are unknown.

Varta was already rejected on the base model AK over a decade and will not be seen on the AK-2, or any other AK for that matter. What even is a jamming laser seeker?

The Rate of fire increase was already seen in the Al-Khalid-1 due to the new auto-loader it got. Same with the 3rd generation Thermal imager, which is the SAGEM MATIS STD. That was already present in later production Al-Khalids (base models) and all AK-1s. Neither of these are for AK-2.

IBMS has been present in AK since it’s introduction however it will or already has seen an upgrade.

The news about the gun, new sensors, more armor/redesign and other stuff is just Speculation as it was not seen in AK-1 and is not confirmed for AK-2. This article you quoted was likely written by someone with just surface level research and is confusing AK-1 for AK-2.

Al-Khalid-1 already got a new FCS/GCS with new optics for both gunner and commander so I doubt it’ll see another upgrade in AK-2.

We might see LWRs and new ERA however, and other stuff from VT-4P. I made a long post about possible AK-2 upgrades elsewhere on the forum, you can check that out.

As for delays, the entire Al-Khalid program is several years behind the original plan due to a production and development stoppage that occurred in the 2010s due to a lack of funds (war on terror). AK-1 was supposed to begin production Before 2015 but only started in 2018-19 (it was given a few more upgrades to make up for the delay). We should see the Al-Khalid 2 enter production by the time AK-1 (220x, 110x delivered, 110x in production) orders end, so around 2024-2025 hopefully.

Yes, that's confused me in description. Now I understand, thank you!

P. S. As far as I understand, autoloader was enlarged on AK-1 to use more powerful APFSDS? Or it's about "solid state autoloader" construction?

 

[iLION12345_1]

Now I see, thank you!



Yes, that's confused me in description. Now I understand, thank you!

P. S. As far as I understand, autoloader was enlarged on AK-1 to use more powerful APFSDS? Or it's about "solid state autoloader" construction?

Auto-loader was not enlarged as far as I’m aware. It doesn’t need a larger auto-loader. The T72 style auto-loader present in the original AK is capable of holding ammunition up-to BTA-4 APFSDS that Pakistan recently got with its VT-4s. And I assume the newer auto-loader has the exact same dimensions, it’s just the solid-state construction for increased reliability and speed as well as digital displays and panels to make it easier to use.

As it stands Pakistan doesn’t have access to longer ammunition Nor does it need it, the BTA-4 purchased recently is likely going to be PAs main APFSDS for quite some time to come, so I don’t think they’d actively pursue an auto-loader that can accommodate bigger ammunition.

The T72 style auto-loader in T72, T90A/S, Al-Khalid, ZTZ-96, VT-4 etc can accommodate ammunition with a maximum length of 680MM. BTA-4 is exactly 680MM so it’s taking up all the available space, if they want to go even longer, they’d need new auto-loaders, I’m not sure if the auto-loaders in AK-1 and VT-4 can accommodate longer ammo, but I don’t think they can, the dimensions are probably the same as the originals.

 

[DeusExAstra]

Auto-loader was not enlarged as far as I’m aware. It doesn’t need a larger auto-loader. The T72 style auto-loader present in the original AK is capable of holding ammunition up-to BTA-4 APFSDS that Pakistan recently got with its VT-4s. And I assume the newer auto-loader has the exact same dimensions, it’s just the solid-state construction for increased reliability and speed as well as digital displays and panels to make it easier to use.

As it stands Pakistan doesn’t have access to longer ammunition Nor does it need it, the BTA-4 purchased recently is likely going to be PAs main APFSDS for quite some time to come, so I don’t think they’d actively pursue an auto-loader that can accommodate bigger ammunition.

The T72 style auto-loader in T72, T90A/S, Al-Khalid, ZTZ-96, VT-4 etc can accommodate ammunition with a maximum length of 680MM. BTA-4 is exactly 680MM so it’s taking up all the available space, if they want to go even longer, they’d need new auto-loaders, I’m not sure if the auto-loaders in AK-1 and VT-4 can accommodate longer ammo, but I don’t think they can, the dimensions are probably the same as the originals.

So, it's up to reload speed mainly.
BTA-4 is a good round with it's 300/60 degrees at 2 km, may be Chinese will provide some "export" DTC10-125 (If it's muzzle velocity remain 1800 m/s, it should reach ~320-340mm/60 degrees at 2 km), if they wish in future.

 

[Dazzler]

Carousel tray is slightly larger in AK1