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Development
of MBT-2000 (Al-Khalid) An
overview of Pakistan’s first indigenously designed and manufactured
tank. The
MBT-2000 is a Pakistan-China project, which was initiated in 1990 for the
joint development and manufacture of Tank AL-KHALID to meet the General
Staff Requirement of Pakistan Army. Based on its strategic alliance with
China, Pakistan decided to utilise Chinese infrastructure in the field of
tank design/development. By adopting this approach, Pakistan Army aimed at
developing a modern land system with minimum development expenditures in a
reasonable time frame. The
development programme comprised a number of prototypes with following
configurations:-
During
planning stage, a thorough technical evaluation of hydro-gas suspension
and Rank-304 transmission was carried out, but these were not considered
feasible due to problems associated with maintainability, reliability and
other limitations. At the same time due to high ambient temperatures and
dust in the operational areas, special emphasis was laid on design and
installation of high capacity cooling and efficient air cleaning systems. The
strategy adopted by Pakistan for development of its MBT requirement has
been successful. Over a period of nine years a number of prototypes in
different configurations have been subjected to trials and evaluation in
difficult terrain environments having ambient temperatures upto 55o C and
desert conditions with very fine sand/dust particles. The users and
technical experts are fully satisfied with the trials conducted during
peak summers of 1998 in the southern desert of Pakistan and subsequently
in different regions of the country presenting different terrain
environments. After
successful completion of final evaluation, the pilot production of the
tank in configuration-3 is already under progress at Heavy Industries
Taxila (HIT). HIT has already successfully undertaken manufacture of
Chinese origin T-69IIMP/T-85I1AP tanks and US origin APC M113. It is
understood that major up gradation and balancing of production lines has
been underway at HIT for the last couple of years. This also includes
establishment of CNC machining centres for precision machining of hull,
turret and other critical parts to undertake manufacture of Al-KHALID. HIT
has been successful in developing special steel for tank guns and
composite armour materials for use during series production. During
successive trials, armour protection of the tank at hull and critical
areas of the turret has been tested through live firing which defeated all
types of 120/125 mm tank projectiles and other selected anti-tank
ammunitions. The
development work of AL-KHALID programme has shown tremendous progress
during the last ten years and AL-KHALID has matured as a modern
contemporary tank at a fraction of the international cost. In this regard
Pakistan has learnt a lot from the Indian experience on the ARJUN
programme, which started in 1974, but the tank has still not achieved
acceptability with the Indian Army. Status Development
stage has been completed. Pilot Production is scheduled to be completed by
June 2001.
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