T90 Compared with Al Khalid

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

As far as TB2s are the concerned, what's in the name of a tank? In whatever name you call it it's a pile of metals to be scrapped....

 

[Gripen9]

As far as TB2s are the concerned, what's in the name of a tank? In whatever name you call it it's a pile of metals to be scrapped....

It is a great disruptor in future armor planning.

 

[iLION12345_1]

A fairer comparison would be with VT-4

If you mean comparing a T90S with a VT4 then I’d disagree. One is from the early 90s and one is from Post 2010. T90MS is more comparable to VT4 but those are not in service with the IA. VT4 is Almost a generation ahead of the T90S.

If we compare the Al-Khalid to the T90S;

The T90S definitely has better protection both at the front and at the sides with a better overall armor design and better ERA. It also has laser warning receivers that the Al-Khalid currently lacks.

The Al-Khalid on the other hand has a Commanders panoramic sight and hence Hunter killer capability that the T90S lacks, significantly better firepower (which is down to PA having better ammunition more than the tanks themselves), significantly better reverse mobility and higher top speed (however acceleration might be comparable, Al Khalid’s advantage is mostly in its better transmission, at low speeds their forward mobility is likely comparable but the T90S has abysmal reverse speeds due to a single reverse gear). Al-Khalid also has more provisions in place to protect its ammo from damage and hence a catastrophic explosion, hence somewhat more crew safety.

Both tanks have comparable FCS and stabilization systems, Both tanks use the same thermal sights for gunner. They both use nearly the same auto-loaders and have similar guns. Both have similar weights and secondary weapons. Both tanks employ IBMS systems and neither have digital displays for crew members other than commanders IBMS. Al-Khalid also has INTERMAT thermal coatings, i’m not sure if india has developed or employs such coatings but I would assume they do given they’re not that advanced or rare.

The Al-Khalid-1 doesn’t seem to have Any increased protection than Original AK apart from possibly thicker roof armor, it still lacks Laser warning receivers and good ERA so T90S retains those advantages. However nearly everything else in AK1 is upgraded, apart from the existing advantages in firepower it has a much better FCS, better stabilization, better thermals, better auto-loader, better technology (C4 and digitization), muzzle reference device, upgraded commanders panoramic sight etc

VT4 builds upon all these advantages and also eliminates the disadvantage in protection + has LWRs.

The T90S is one of the best tanks of its time and is still not weak by any means, it’s simply the fact that they have remained mostly stock in IA service since they were delivered in 2001 apart from the addition of IBMS and Catherine FC thermals for gunner. There are also some claims that india is using it’s indigenous Kanchan composite armor on its T90S but this isn’t 100% proven. If true this simply adds to its existing armor advantage over the Al-Khalid.
Meanwhile Al-Khalid has seen a major upgrade in the form of the AK-1 and AK-2 is under the works. Obviously the T90MS exists but india has not decided to buy it yet.

There’s a lot more detail we can get into like ranges, engagement ranges, depression and elevation angles, fording depths, silhouettes etc that’s all important stuff but that would become too long of a post.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Why?

Please explain.

I think T-90 outclasses Al-Khalid and Type-96/Type-96A.

 

[Joe Shearer]

I think T-90 outclasses Al-Khalid and Type-96/Type-96A.

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

It is a great disruptor in future armor planning.

Especially when used in a team with land and air based EW systems like KORAL etc. Pak has got TB2s. I am pretty sure some form of KORAL is also available. It means an asymmetric advantage over the Indian armored within a vast region for an extended period of time at a miniscule cost.....

 

[iLION12345_1]

I think T-90 outclasses Al-Khalid and Type-96/Type-96A.

I think you’re significantly overrating the T90 then. Why do you think it outclasses those tanks? I don’t see any redeeming quality In it in 2022, and that’s not its fault, it’s from the early 90s being compared to modern tanks and the fact that it holds up shows how revolutionary it was when it came out. China has not started making third generation tanks until a decade later.

Unless you take the T90MS, which does indeed outclass those tanks significantly and is more comparable to the VT4, but the T90MS is not in service in the sub-continent.

I’d rate the T90S above the original Type 96 as well. It’s also better than the Type 96A in armor protection and mobility, but if they are upgraded the internal electronics in Type 96A and the Type 96B, they’ll start to lead the T90S in that regard, and they already have better firepower (at least compared to Indian T90S), due to better ammo. Russian T90S however might have access to better ammo so this may not apply there.

I already compared the Al-Khalid and the T90S and they’re rather comparable, both have some advantages and disadvantages. the T90S does not outclass the Al-Khalid.

 

[KaiserX]

The T-90 is just an upgraded T-72. The general design, structure, armor, etc...

Blown like crackers recently in the Ukraine-Russian war...

 

[Georg]

The T-90 is just an upgraded T-72. The general design, structure, armor, etc...

Blown like crackers recently in the Ukraine-Russian war...

ignored fact that 65% of all T-90 parts are still identical to first generation T-72
like all russian design looks good on paper and sucks in real world

 

[Broccoli]

T-90 was initially seen as upgraded T-72 whats biggest difference was welded turret.

 

[Oldman1]

T-90 was initially seen as upgraded T-72 whats biggest difference was welded turret.

The T-90 would have been a good tank if they kept the ammo in a separate compartment and not underneath where the crew is sitting if the ammo gets hit.

View attachment 833744
View attachment 833745
This is what a T-90 upgrade could have been.

 

[Princeps Senatus]

The T90S definitely has better protection both at the front and at the sides with a better overall armor design and better ERA. It also has laser warning receivers that the Al-Khalid currently lacks.

Indian T-90s don't have LWRs

 

[iLION12345_1]

Indian T-90s don't have LWRs

View attachment 882465View attachment 882466

Some earlier Indian T90S models came with a leaner version of the Shtora (just the LWRs and automatic retaliation systems and not the Dazzlers). Those were the ones delivered directly from Russia. But most of them don’t have it, you’re correct.

 

[serenity]

Type 96 is a pretty rubbish tank though and Al-Khalid is like Type 96 isn't it? Or 96A? From looks, it is like a slightly modified (internally and maybe instruments) Type 96 from 1990s rather than 96A with wedged armor section add on. Sure that section is spaced armor providing a rigging for ERA on top or modular type NRA/ERA and can be packed further if necessary but it is definitely a big improvement to protection compared to 96/Al Khalid.

96A itself is still having shit protection from sides and even angled shots. Frontal is decent and possibly better than T-90S (but not T-90MS) but side is just as bad if not worse and angled is worse simply. Russian modernized ones have okay angle shot protection. All of these lighter tanks are poor in protection. One is marginally better/worse than the other.

In electronics and instruments the Al-Khalid probably is better than PLA service 96. PLA has thousands of 96 and 96A in service, It is just focused on only frontal angles armor and taking that main gun to battle. It is designed to be used in their hundreds at a time so that sides are basically covered by dozens more tanks at least facing another direction. All this is supposed to be further covered and already pre-prepared with artillery and air superiority. These tanks are not designed to be charge into well defended enemies tanks hahaha but depending on who and how defended, it can really even do so since it does have decent front armor (for Type 96A).

Anyway pretty old and shitty tank vs pretty old and shitty tank lol. In context of PA vs IA though, IA has mostly very old, very shitty tanks. Arjun should have good protection but it doesn't move well compared to these, can't mobilize as easily, needs heavy duty infrastructure and bridges but it works in certain Pakistan - India environments. The others are all very old and very shit. Arjun's firepower side of things is simply very shit with that rifled gun, FCS systems if western then maybe workable, it does have more gizmos than these other tanks though ... mostly because 96 is very shit lol and so is Al Khalid OG. Basically Arjun isn't good in firepower's aiming and delivery side and not good in the gun itself or the ammo I would imagine. India struggles to design and manufacture a workable rifle.

China doesn't bother as much with modernizing tanks. Type 15 is for high terrain low oxygen environments and more versatile for transporting/mobilization and urban environments e.g. Taiwan. They mostly just wanted a tank to also not use that carousel style autoloader. Otherwise, 99A is modernized 99 and that's just an okay tank, more gizmos than 96A and better protection and much more engine power and so on. Nothing impressive but can be considered all things as good or at least good enough. Side armor for PLA doesn't matter. If you see PLA tanks, you already somehow got through cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, thousands of drones of all types and artillery fire from 100s different vehicles and guns types. If that's the situation, you don't have much around you to be destroying even a Type 96 let alone a 99A, much less from the side.

99A's frontal armor is something beastly. Again absolute shit in side protection though lol. And to add in case anyone's thinking, top protection also next to meaningless like all tanks. Rely on APS for countering ATGMs from soldiers, drones, or helicopters. Artillery or bombers then tank is fucked anyway.

PLA commanders basically have said, the way PLA applies tanks in genuine high risk of real war situations is in such a way that if you even do see it either through your rifle scope or whatever, your buddies and all your heavy weaponry hardware are all in pieces. Referring of course to land war and really in this case only India and North Korea region land war. Side and top armor is just there for tank's structural ability to withstand multiple frontal shots of the latest and best anti tank rounds. Russian tanks still distribute armor to angles which is good but at the cost of putting that just to defeat frontal shots. Designed for different environments, opponents and possible wars. In low risk of real confrontation, tanks used more carelessly just to be placed somewhere to hold positions. If they are lost, they are lost. Serious full scale war would involve thousands of tanks and a few lost during initiating exchanges is nothing because other side will lose at least as much if not much more.

India and China bordering regions are very tank unfriendly except for type 15. Pakistan and India is quite tank friendly and so both buy and deploy a lot of tanks. Arjun would be the only tank to properly give PA tanks trouble because if they can be deployed to those heavy weight friendly landscapes, then they can sit in place and exploit their not great but more modern than Al Khalid's equipment. T-90S I think modern Chinese rounds will destroy even in frontal shots, certainly the latest ATGMs will make easy work of every tank discussed here except the ones after 2010 with modern APS.

Pure tank group vs tank group is too outdated but with Pakistan and India we may see it with less involvement of other branches. If it were India vs China, China would employ drone swarms and various gunship and UAVs to CEC guided long range anti tank artillery. Basically ATGM to 100km or so. Helicopter or UAV as sensors and forward lookouts and artillery firing dozens of guided rounds 100km away to land on top of Indian tanks all within 20 seconds of each other. This would be the most economical solution, More expensive would be 15 MALE drones taking out 50+ tanks but the sortie to guarantee safety of 15 MALE drones from IAF would be more demanding and require countering IAF. One UAV to perform CEC spotting, targeting, and guidance for 50 rounds is easier and cheaper. Especially since China has many types of stealth UAV and high altitude UAV just for this sorts of purposes.

 

[iLION12345_1]

Type 96 is a pretty rubbish tank though and Al-Khalid is like Type 96 isn't it? Or 96A? From looks, it is like a slightly modified (internally and maybe instruments) Type 96 from 1990s rather than 96A with wedged armor section add on. Sure that section is spaced armor providing a rigging for ERA on top or modular type NRA/ERA and can be packed further if necessary but it is definitely a big improvement to protection compared to 96/Al Khalid.

96A itself is still having shit protection from sides and even angled shots. Frontal is decent and possibly better than T-90S (but not T-90MS) but side is just as bad if not worse and angled is worse simply. Russian modernized ones have okay angle shot protection. All of these lighter tanks are poor in protection. One is marginally better/worse than the other.

In electronics and instruments the Al-Khalid probably is better than PLA service 96. PLA has thousands of 96 and 96A in service, It is just focused on only frontal angles armor and taking that main gun to battle. It is designed to be used in their hundreds at a time so that sides are basically covered by dozens more tanks at least facing another direction. All this is supposed to be further covered and already pre-prepared with artillery and air superiority. These tanks are not designed to be charge into well defended enemies tanks hahaha but depending on who and how defended, it can really even do so since it does have decent front armor (for Type 96A).

Anyway pretty old and shitty tank vs pretty old and shitty tank lol. In context of PA vs IA though, IA has mostly very old, very shitty tanks. Arjun should have good protection but it doesn't move well compared to these, can't mobilize as easily, needs heavy duty infrastructure and bridges but it works in certain Pakistan - India environments. The others are all very old and very shit. Arjun's firepower side of things is simply very shit with that rifled gun, FCS systems if western then maybe workable, it does have more gizmos than these other tanks though ... mostly because 96 is very shit lol and so is Al Khalid OG. Basically Arjun isn't good in firepower's aiming and delivery side and not good in the gun itself or the ammo I would imagine. India struggles to design and manufacture a workable rifle.

China doesn't bother as much with modernizing tanks. Type 15 is for high terrain low oxygen environments and more versatile for transporting/mobilization and urban environments e.g. Taiwan. They mostly just wanted a tank to also not use that carousel style autoloader. Otherwise, 99A is modernized 99 and that's just an okay tank, more gizmos than 96A and better protection and much more engine power and so on. Nothing impressive but can be considered all things as good or at least good enough. Side armor for PLA doesn't matter. If you see PLA tanks, you already somehow got through cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, thousands of drones of all types and artillery fire from 100s different vehicles and guns types. If that's the situation, you don't have much around you to be destroying even a Type 96 let alone a 99A, much less from the side.

99A's frontal armor is something beastly. Again absolute shit in side protection though lol. And to add in case anyone's thinking, top protection also next to meaningless like all tanks. Rely on APS for countering ATGMs from soldiers, drones, or helicopters. Artillery or bombers then tank is fucked anyway.

PLA commanders basically have said, the way PLA applies tanks in genuine high risk of real war situations is in such a way that if you even do see it either through your rifle scope or whatever, your buddies and all your heavy weaponry hardware are all in pieces. Referring of course to land war and really in this case only India and North Korea region land war. Side and top armor is just there for tank's structural ability to withstand multiple frontal shots of the latest and best anti tank rounds. Russian tanks still distribute armor to angles which is good but at the cost of putting that just to defeat frontal shots. Designed for different environments, opponents and possible wars. In low risk of real confrontation, tanks used more carelessly just to be placed somewhere to hold positions. If they are lost, they are lost. Serious full scale war would involve thousands of tanks and a few lost during initiating exchanges is nothing because other side will lose at least as much if not much more.

India and China bordering regions are very tank unfriendly except for type 15. Pakistan and India is quite tank friendly and so both buy and deploy a lot of tanks. Arjun would be the only tank to properly give PA tanks trouble because if they can be deployed to those heavy weight friendly landscapes, then they can sit in place and exploit their not great but more modern than Al Khalid's equipment. T-90S I think modern Chinese rounds will destroy even in frontal shots, certainly the latest ATGMs will make easy work of every tank discussed here except the ones after 2010 with modern APS.

Pure tank group vs tank group is too outdated but with Pakistan and India we may see it with less involvement of other branches. If it were India vs China, China would employ drone swarms and various gunship and UAVs to CEC guided long range anti tank artillery. Basically ATGM to 100km or so. Helicopter or UAV as sensors and forward lookouts and artillery firing dozens of guided rounds 100km away to land on top of Indian tanks all within 20 seconds of each other. This would be the most economical solution, More expensive would be 15 MALE drones taking out 50+ tanks but the sortie to guarantee safety of 15 MALE drones from IAF would be more demanding and require countering IAF. One UAV to perform CEC spotting, targeting, and guidance for 50 rounds is easier and cheaper. Especially since China has many types of stealth UAV and high altitude UAV just for this sorts of purposes.

I mean no offense but this has a lot of contradictory and sometimes just straight up false information, and a suggestion would be to lower the word count of your posts, they’re generally very informative but a chore to read with all the repetitions.

First of all, the Type 96 and the Al-Khalid are similar because they both evolved from the same tank (type 85-IIAP) and somewhat the same project (Type 90-II), but that’s where the similarities about end. Because internally these two could not be more different, Al-Khalid series barely has any Chinese parts now (internally).

I doubt either 96 or 96A has better hull or turret base protection than Al-Khalid. However 96A/B definitely has better ERA coverage on the turret and likely better overall protection due to the better ERA. However all Chinese origin tanks have abysmal overall protection in general, including any used by Pakistan (Al-Khalid, VT-4) because they have absolutely no armor anywhere except the front. I strongly doubt the 96, 96A, 96B or Al-Khalid/Al-Khalid-1 have base armor better than T90S. And that tank also has decent ERA coverage with Kontakt-5. Russian metallurgy is hard to beat. And T90S design is much much better than anything China or Pakistan make in regards to angles and side protection. It’s only held back by its age now (Hence T90MS). And no matter what Chinese doctrine says or their generals thing, it’s just incredibly stupidly poor design to not have armor anymore except the front. China (and by extension Pakistan) doesn’t know how to design a good tank, period. Even the ZTZ-99s design only improved a bit because they copied a T72, and even then they failed to improve the side armor (which is something they finally realized with their new light tanks…)

Al Khalid definitely has better electrical systems than 96. Maybe comparable to 96A. AK-1 is likely ahead of all of them by a considerable margin. The OG 96 is shit, not the OG Al-Khalid. When the Al-Khalid entered service it had basically everything, a panoramic commanders sight (96 doesn’t have that, even in A/B configuration), Full body ERA coverage, LWRs (unfortunately never made it to production), side armor (another thing skipped in production, god knows why) and a modern FCS with auto-tracking. And the AK-1 still definitely holds its own. (Keep in mind this applies for the region, not for the world at large, in that case there are no “good” tanks in South Asia apart from VT-4 and 99A which are just serviceable at best compared to modern European, Russian and American tanks on paper).

Arjun is shit period, Arjun MK1A has decent electrical systems and FCS, but they’re useless because it can’t fire any modern ammo. An OG Al-Khalid will handily outdo An arjun MK-1A even with its better electrical systems, because the Arjun cannot penetrate the front of the Al-Khalid even if it didn’t have ERA and it’s armored was halved. Yes. I mean that. The T90S has considerably better protection than the Arjun and will most likely stop all but the best Chinese APFSDS if hit frontally on its ERA. Chinese APFSDS is rather average to say the least. No long rod penetrators anywhere.

Top protection is most definitely not meaningless in any tank. An APS only works if your tank has enough armor, you can’t put an APS on a Family sedan and expect it to survive a tank shell. An APS reduces the penetration of projectiles to where they can’t penetrate the armor of a tank and are not garunteed to work. If your tank has no top armor but the best APS in the world. It can still die to an obsolete cluster bomb dropped from a crop duster or the remnants of an APFSDS shell after it’s been struck by an APS projectile.

Type 15 is a welcome change in Chinese tank design and is definitely more useful against india than any other tank China has. And india has no counter to it as of now. Their tank fleet is very old even when compared to Pakistans. The devil is in the details, I’ve talked about how obsolete Indian tank ammo is before.

I’m not even going to get into the doctrinal aspects of your post because it just seems like a mashup of words From a multiplayer video game instead of actual combined arms warfare. I could pick apart your post for hours, but it’s just going to become a mess.