Empire Conquest-Chapter 701 - 25 Dilution Treatment

This tank battle, which took place on the night of August 4, could be characterized as both brief and sudden.

After returning to the Joint Force Headquarters and obtaining more intelligence, Ding Zhennan realized that the Iraqi Army had never intended to cross the border.

Just as he had previously speculated, the Iraqi Army was merely making a show.

As for the BMP-1 that triggered the battle, it most likely didn’t cross the border but went to inspect a boundary marker that had been in place for decades.

Because it was in the desert, these boundary markers had never been maintained after being established.

Before invading Kuwait, Iraq was also a member of the oil-producing group on the southern coast of Boss Bay, maintaining good relations with neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, to fight against Boi Country, oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia had provided Iraq with tens of billions of Gold Yuan in grants.

A significant portion of the major weaponry of the Iraqi Army was bought with aid funds from these oil-producing countries!

For this reason, over the past few decades, the border between the two countries was never defended.

According to the Iraqi soldiers and officers captured, they indeed had not received orders to attack Saudi Arabia.

Dispatching armored forces to the vicinity of the border was mainly related to the Joint Forces declaring a no-fly zone and was intended as a challenge to the Joint Forces through ground actions.

Consequently, Ding Zhennan proposed to Shi Shouliang that they not publicly disclose any information about this battle for the time being.

The reason was simple; it wasn’t yet time to start fighting!

Currently, only two armored battalions had been deployed without any supporting troops. The "Divine Archer" anti-air system intended to protect King Khalid’s Military City had not yet arrived, nor had the "War-16A" plane group, leaving them temporarily unable to counter ballistic missile strikes or hunt down missile launchers.

Provoking Hussein at this time could likely lead to an immediate retaliatory attack with ballistic missiles.

Furthermore, ground warfare could also breakout prematurely.

These were all outside of the plan!

Of course, this battle also fully proved the performance of the "ZT-99AL" and completely dispelled any doubts about this tank.

Previously, because of its high purchasing cost, not only members of the defense budget committees in both houses but also the Army and Marine Corps had expressed concerns.

In other words, whether this highly touted main battle tank was worth its unit price of 3.5 million Gold Yuan!

Although certain elements of luck were involved in the battle, especially as the Iraqi armored forces had not been prepared for combat before the exchange of fire and even failed to notice the Marine Corps tanks close at hand, leading to catching the enemy by surprise, the battle process was still very classic.

First of all, the power of the 125mm tank gun was fully demonstrated.

According to the battle report submitted by the Marine Corps, one armor-piercing discarding sabot had penetrated two tanks, one of which was a T-72M.

Additionally, all armor-piercing bullets that hit Iraqi tanks penetrated the armor, and there were instances where the angle of the armor plate caused the projectiles to ricochet.

And these were just the first-generation armor-piercing rounds!

Secondly, the precision and reliability of the "ZT-99AL"’s bi-directional stabilization aiming system were confirmed.

In the first round of combat, the firing distance ranged from 2000 to 2500 meters, and even in the second round of combat, the distance was still about 1900 to 2400 meters.

Under dynamic conditions, the hit rate exceeded 70%, which was higher than test results.

This proved that with advanced sighting equipment, such as infrared imaging night vision, the tank could engage targets up to 2000 meters away at night.

As for tactical maneuverability, there’s no need to say more.

However, the most significant aspect was proving that the protective philosophy adopted in "ZT-99AL" was correct, while traditional protection ideas had become outdated.

In fact, the T-72 was a product of traditional protection ideas.

In the last major war, medium tanks represented by the Luosha Federation’s T-34 achieved tremendous success, and the corresponding protection designs became very influential post-war.

Simply put, the idea was to design the tank as small as possible to reduce the likelihood of being hit. In terms of shape, they adopted a smooth, oval turret and increased the slant of the front armor to enhance the effective protection depth and increase the chance of ricocheting armor-piercing projectiles.

The first two generations of post-war tanks nearly all used this design philosophy.

Of course, there were also outliers, but they were few and their performance was not ideal.

For example, the Bulan Kingdom’s "Centurion" tank, despite being over 50 tons due to its welded turret, had worse protective performance than other contemporary tanks.

The Liangxia Empire’s first two generations of main battle tanks, namely "ZT-55" and "ZT-80," also followed this design approach, which allowed for good cost control.

Actually, this was most evident in the combat weight.

The "ZT-55" had a standard combat weight of only 38 tons, designed based on the standards of medium tanks, and was only later classified as a main battle tank after heavy tanks were discontinued. The "ZT-80DG" had a combat weight of 44 tons, making it one of the lighter main battle tanks, nearly 10 tons lighter than contemporary Newland tanks.

By the time of the "ZT-99A," the combat weight had reached 56 tons, and the "ZT-99B," which had enhanced protection and firepower, surpassed 58 tons. Comparable third-generation main battle tanks, such as the T-72, only weighed 41 tons, with the export model being even lighter.

The fact was already proven that in the face of the modern tail-stabilized armor-piercing discarding sabot, the shape of the tank was no longer the key factor.

The T-72’s oval turret did not increase the ricochet rate of armor-piercing bullets, and the additional effective protection thickness gained was meaningless in the face of the powerful armor-piercing bullets.