New power pack for Indian Army's T 72 Ajeya

New power pack for Indian Army's T 72 Ajeya

Indian army looks to upgrade the T 72 engine from initial 680 horse power to 1000 horse power engine. Which improves the tank's mobility and speed. T 72 M1 recently upgraded with new fire control systems and night vision devices. Nimda is the known Israeli company who leads in the contract who already upgraded the Czech army T 72 tanks by 1000 hp CV 12 engines.

Nimda uses the British engine Condor developed by Perkins, who is the known supplier of engines to British Challenger MBT and Warrior APC. The 1000 hp engine known as CV 12 is a water cooled electronically controlled four stroke 12 cylinder engine rated at 736 kW. It has a direct fuel injection, two turbochargers, air to air charge cooled, with electronic monitoring and control, protection and diagnostic system.

It's unique design and specification features provides reliable and durable operation, as well as exceptional power to weight ratio, easier maintainability and excellent overall performance.

The Engines transmission is developed by the known American company Allison who is a world leader in automatic transmission.  The CV 12 will be controlled by the XTG 411-6-N electronic controlled automatic transmission system. The transmission has four forward speeds and two reverse speeds with fully automatic range selection with electronically adoptable programmed shift logic.

With the new upgrades the T 72's performance gradually increase, as main advantages of

• Almost twice shorter time needed for acceleration from stop to 32 km/h
• Substantially increased mobility and maneuvering capability on terrain
• Substantial reduction of routine drivers work load and fatigue
• Eliminating human factor mistakes ( Gear selection and Relevant cooling issue )
• Substantially higher reliability and durability as well as increased mission duration 
• Lower vehicle downtime ( 2hr required for Engine replacement )
• Easier maintenance
• Improved performance in extreme ambient temperature

The T 72's were bought in a emergency situation in the early 1978, as initial India bought nearly 500 Tanks directly from the Soviet, They used the opportunity and given the T 72 M to Indian army. M designates the monkey version. which have poor quality of armour, fire control system also comes without having the proper fire control system.

However the Russian lobby pushed the Indian government to keep buying the Tank. who allows the HVF in Avadi to build the T 72 M1 variant. which makes India among one of the largest T 72 operator. Currently India operates nearly 2000 T 72 Tanks. where most of them modernized only after 2000.

Help from the Israeli's is known survivability of Indian T 72 M1. which were upgraded by numerous Israeli systems. Israeli company Elbit systems offered the night vision devices to the T 72 M1. even with transfer of technology. Indian private player Alpha systems secured the deal with Israeli Elbit systems to upgrade the T 72 with modern night vision devices, whose range upto 300 meters. It's believed more than 1000 T 72 M1 already upgraded with NVD systems.

The Russians also helped in the T 72 M1 fire control systems. which include multi channel vision devices, gunners sight etc. The upgraded variants are called as T 72 M2 Ajeya Tanks. which is more prominent tanks when compared to it's predecessor.

China gifts 300 Type 99 Tanks to Pakistan

China gifts 300 Type 99 Tanks to Pakistan

The Chinese Type 99

    Pakistan Army set to receive brand new third generation Type 99 main battle tanks from China as a gift. The Pakistani's shows interests in the Type 99 earlier and evaluated them for future purchase. This would be a ideal replacement of older Pakistani Type 59,85,69  main battle Tanks, those are also acquired from the Chinese earlier which is unfit in current battles. Recently the Pakistani Army buys some 300 second hand upgraded T 55 Tanks from Serbia, to increases their Tank numbers close to Indian Army.

    The Chinese Type 99 delivery seems just a beginning. Pakistan plans to replace their aging tanks with modern third generation Tanks with in house developed Al khalid and another foreign Tanks like Type 99. They also planned to modernize the Ukrainian delivered T 80 Tanks into new standard with the help of Russia. The modernization makes the tanks more powerful to fight against Indian T 90 MS. Pakistan operates some 300 T 80 Tanks which are 2+ generation Tanks.

    Addition of the new Type 99 tank in the Pakistani inventory gives some good advantages against the superior power fire of the Indian Army. India deployed more than thousands of brand new modified  T 90 Tanks along the Indo Pakistani borders, with the option of deploying another thousand more before 2020. Compared to the Type 99 the T 90 also developed based on the T 72 Variant and performance wise the T 90 leads in the race due to light weight and more protective composite armor.

    The Type 99 is a third generation tank, features some advanced automatic technologies like auto reloader, electronic countermeasures, missile firing cannons and active protection systems. The Type 99 is one of the front line main battle tank of the PLA Army. It's believed the Type 99 is the upgraded T 72 which incorporates Russian and Western technologies. the smooth bore main gun, auto loader mechanism are all comes from the Russia, while the armors and optronics suites  are derivatives from some western armors.

 

   The Type 99 has some active protection systems to spoof off the guided missiles and the explosive reactor armor used to withstand from point attack shells. The protection systems are comparable to the Modern Tanks like T 90 and western Tanks like Challenger MBT. However the Tank yet to be battle tested. The Type 99 comes with digital architecture for fire control which reduces the tank crew and work load. The fire control system is the ISFCS-212 with an IR automatic target tracker, The Type 99 also has laser target designator, an IR searchlight, and an improved 2nd generation thermal sight.

The T 80 MBT

  The Indian T 72 too modified with some western technologies, which allowed the Tanks to be operated in day and night conditions. The Indian T 72 modernized with Polish fire control systems and thermal imagining systems. along with home made explosive reactive armors and Israeli made Navigation systems. The T 72 Ajeya also employed Laser warning systems and improved Engines. while the Type 99 superior in missile firing cannons only. Indian Army operates more than  2000 upgraded  T 72 main Battle tanks.

   The Type 99 can fire guided Missile Invar from the smooth bore gun, makes the Tank powerful against non line of sight targets, which allows to engage Tanks hidden from the plain. The laser guided missile can home into enemy target then explode with high explosive or tandem hallow charge warhead. The missile can be self guided or guided from the Tank for jamming resistance. The missile uses laser beam riding for guidance, allows to engage targets upto some  5 kilo meters. The Inavr missile also being used by Indian Army in it's T 90 Tank. The Indo Israeli cannon launched guided missile comes with better range and fire power which was employed in the Arjun Tanks .

Indian Army T 90

  It's believed Pakistan may modernize the first batch of 300 Type 99 to suits in Pakistan condition and  they eventually deploy those Tanks near Punjabi lines. showing their little offensive fire power against Indian Army. However the Indian Army set to receive third generation guided anti tank missiles from Israel. which allows the Army infantry group to destroy modern tanks like T 80 and Type 99. The Spike ATGM comes with laser and IIR guidance with top attack mode, which can defeat almost all kind of modern Tanks. While Pakistan don't have such fire and forget man portable missiles.

   Those Type 99 should need better air cover to work near Indian borders, Since the Indian Air force already inked a contract to procure  the modern Apache gunships with fire and forget anti tank missiles like hell fire. The Apache can withstand from the Type 99 secondary fire support systems like 12.7 mm and 7.52 mm machine guns. 

Pakistan Buys 282 Refurbished T 55 Tanks from Serbia

Pakistan Buys 282 Refurbished T 55 Tanks from Serbia

    It's interesting and surprising from the Pakistani side that they invested into vintage T 55 tanks along with old APC and field guns from Serbia, but those are very well upgraded by the Serbians before hand overing to Pakistan. The upgrades includes Armour protection, new Generation Explosive reactive Armour added along with digital controls systems added in the Upgrade. makes them safer against  RPG's and heavy machine gun rounds.

The T 55 is a Medium Tank 36 Tons of weight, using a 100mm Main gun along with a 12.7mm for anti personnel usage, which shows good for mobility and good for asymmetrical warfare, where Pakistan suffering since decades. actually Pakistan need a good small arms to protect themselves from it's Terrorists. here T 55 is a good option because it's reliable against terrorists attacks and available in low cost both in procurement and maintenance. most of the fights fought by the Pakistan is  with their own Jihadi's.

        The Pakistanis went for Cheap Tanks rather than good APC and Infantry fighting Vehicle's which is not good against such Heavily armed militants, even they have good number of APC's named Talha which is not good against those Terrorists, usually they were easy targets to the terrorists.

     These Tanks were good in Mobility due to lower weight, with the ERA Armour It can be deployed in Battlegrounds, and It's more than good against the modern IFV's, But it's not a real threat to India when it's deployed to near border. but good for Ambushes only.

                    Pakistan is not known for Keeping good numbers of Main battle Tank, they have some less than thousand Modern Battle Tanks, nearly 300 Brand new T 80 from Ukraine, and some Pakistani Chinese Made Al Khalid MBT's.

             Mean Time India Have triple amount of Modern MBT's, and two new programs to increase the numbers. more than 300 Arjuns are under operational, nearly 1000 of MK 2 version planned, more than 1000 of T 90 in Operational. and 2500 modernized T 72 Ajeya Tanks.

                  But looks like The Pakistanis need a good numbers of MBT's o confront against the Indian Forces, mostly all of these Indian Tanks will be deployed along the Indo Pakistani Border, makes the Pakistani's pinned downed if war broken out. Pakistani's have no other options but increase the numbers of Battle Tank.

               Even if it is looked like Those T 55 procurement only for attacks against terrorist, but they frequently uses the Air power to defeat the Terrorists. but there is no way using those Tanks against Terrorists, because they easily can ambush if it was used in the Urban warfare. even though those terrorists uses huge size of IED's to break those Tanks from bottom end,

                The Pakistanis has the only option to Stop the Indian flotilla of Tanks by using latest generation Anti tank missiles, but the problem is no one ready to supply most sophisticated fire and forget Anti tank missiles to Pakistan. the Pakistanis uses the Chinese made  variant of HJ 8 Anti Tank missiles, which is good against older generation Tanks, The Modern Tanks comes with more defensive options from Armour upgrades to active protection system. also those HJ 8 uses the wire guidance which makes the Handler keep an eye of the target till the missile strike the Tank. which is not a good option in modern battlefields.

    But India also have the same wire guided missiles, but they have two other projects for fire and forget types, one is through procurement the Spike missile variants from Israel, another is home made Nag missile.