China wants to fire hypersonic bullets at US tanks

Foreign researchers are conducting tests based on lessons learned from the Ukraine War and with an eye on Taiwan’s US-supplied equipped forces to determine the effect of plume dynamic power weapons against US container gear.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Chinese researchers have tested kinetic energy weaponry against US military weapons using simulations.

According to the SCMP report, the Taiwanese group allegedly discovered that advanced vehicles constructed in accordance with US military requirements can suffer considerable damage from a reliable circle weighing 20 kilograms and moving at four times the speed of sound.

Like a bullet carries about 25 megajoules of kinetic energy, which is less than seven kilowatt hours when converted to electrical power. A qualified tank may appear unharmed from the outside, but the Chinese team asserted that the simulations permanently damaged its internal workings.

The study team’s findings were published in the peer-reviewed Equipment Environmental Engineering blog under the direction of Huang Jie of the Hypervelocity Aerodynamic Institute at the China Air and Development Center.

According to SCMP, the group discovered that particular locations in the armoured specific have a high likelihood of failure due to overloading harm because their influence response spectrum lines exceed the safety limits suggested by NATO MIL-STD- 810, which relates to tailoring the economic design and test limits of military equipment to the conditions anticipated to be encountered during its service life.

First, high-value assets like sizable military deployments or aircraft carriers were the goal of hypersonic weapons. China and other countries are also thinking about using the cutting-edge, high-speed ammunition in a wider range of scenarios as technology advances and cost reductions take place.

According to SCMP, evaluating the impact of regular armor-piercing rounds is more challenging than assessing the damage caused by dynamic projectiles because the impact wave produced by the original travels through the entire car in a very complex method, stressing areas like bolts that cause distortion or fracture.

On May 14, 2023, US military perform a combined arms drill at Nowa Deba in Poland while manning an Abrams container. Theresa Gualdarama, 1st Class, US Army National Guard

China has attentively observed the conflict in Ukraine and has good followed technological advancements and reservoir warfare failures, concentrating on the arms race between container armor and anti-tank weapons.

According to some assessments, Russia has improved its tanks to the point where they may have negated the first significant effects of Western-supplied anti-tank weapons, despite the fact that Soviet tanks in Ukraine were decimated during the first few months of the turmoil.

For instance, Army Recognition reported in December 2023 that several Russian T-90M tanks in Ukraine now have cage armor and Kontakt-1 explosive reactive armor ( ERA ) bricks to defeat top-attack weapons like loitering munitions, Javelin fire-and-forget missiles, and Next-Generous Anti-Tank Weapons ( NLAWs ).

Army Recognition observes that conventional pond defense strategies that emphasize front and side armor are becoming less and less effective in the face of these new dangers and demonstrate Russia’s quick adaptation to the new dynamics of armoured warfare.

In December 2023, Armada Magazine reported that Russia had installed its T-80BVM vehicles in Ukraine with its Volnorez digital warfare program. By transmitting at a frequency range of 900 to 2000 MHz to interfere with drone control signals up to 600 meters away, the system is intended to defeat first-person view ( FPV ) suicide drones.

According to the report, Volnorez is a component of an overall counter-drone defense system that also includes overhead reactive armor.

Although there is little data on the effectiveness of these modifications, it is very likely that they have hampered the performance of Ukraine’s Western-supplied anti-tank weapons and FPV robots. This may have played a big role in the UK choosing to send depleted uranium ( DU) armor-piercing ammunition to Kiev.

Taiwan, which is modernizing its ageing equipped forces in preparation for a potential Chinese invasion, will likely notice these adaptations. &nbsp,

A 108-unit order for 38 M1A2T Abrams tanks may be delivered to Taiwan in four batches through 2026, according to a report by Asia Times in December 2023. The order aims to update Taiwan’s extremely antiquated tank force, which includes upgraded M60 and M48 tanks from the Cold War era.

In the event of a effective landing function, the M1A2T and older tanks are intended to serve as the lynchpin of Chinese counterattacks to thwart Chinese attempts to escape their outposts. Taiwan’s M1A2T tank purchase has come under fire for being viewed as a vanity purchase, but tanks are also essential for military and functional counterattacks. &nbsp,

The Trophy Active Protection System ( APS), which includes research radars to discover, determine, and track incoming threats and kill them with hard-kill weapons, is available for the M1A2T. The tank’s armor is anticipated to collect fragmentation after a successful catch.

In the 2019 Hypervelocity Impact Symposium, authors like Markus Graswald and others mentioned how these defenses can be breached by superior dynamic energy projectiles or hypervity penetrators, like the one shown by China’s exploration team.

Rocket technology can be used to achieve the velocities that the Chinese researchers describe. Technical difficulties like higher energy requirements, large power sources, powerful firing heat, and short rail life are still being overcome by the technology, which is still in its infancy.

Railguns are only permitted on large, stable fire platforms, such as exterior ships, due to these restrictions. China perhaps have, however, found a solution to some problems with rocket systems.

China is creating systems for railguns. Photo: Twitter

Foreign professionals from the Naval University of Engineering’s National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Energy created a rocket that can fire several weapons immediately and without causing damage, according to SCMP in December 2023.

According to the SCMP report, Chinese researchers quickly assessed whether the weapon could continue firing and identify potential trouble spots before catastrophic failure using a sophisticated artificial intelligence ( AI ) diagnostic system. In addition, &nbsp,

Graswald and others suggest other strategies to thwart increasingly sophisticated container safety given the current limitations of howitzer technology.

A mobile high-power electromagnetic ( HPEM) effector integrated into an anti-tank missile to defeat APS sensors and a precursor explosive charge to detonate ERA bricks before penetrating armor are two examples of these. According to the authors, such a weapon may enable follow-up problems using various anti-tank weapons.