Defence & Arms
Chinese Tanks – Illustration: Sixty Years of Tank Design
By Louis Martin-Vézian, Offiziere, 12/8/19
Aug 13, 2019 - 11:33:39 AM

According to the Military Balance 2019, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may possess the largest active-duty tank fleet on the planet, with about 5,800 tanks in operational service. However, Chinese tanks remain relatively little known in the Western world. Therefore, in a two-part series, we first briefly surveyed the operational history of mainland Chinese tank forces, and the development of indigenous Chinese tanks through 1990. In a second part, we looked at the organization and role of contemporary PLA tank units and reviewed Chinese tanks currently in PLA Ground Force, Navy and Air Force service, as well as models exported abroad. Finally, Louis Martin-Vézian provided offiziere.ch with a comprehensive illustration of the last sixty years of Chinese tank design.

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