By Ammar Faheem

Saturday, 27th December – 2008

The Al-Khalid tank belongs to the category of Pakistan’s indiginously developed defense equipment which has always been a source of Pride to the Pakistani nation and the Pakistani armed forces. The Al-Khalid is a major achievement of the Heavy Industries Taxila (HIT).

The information presented in this column has been collected from various reliable sources of information available on the internet and aims at giving you an insight into Pakistan’s technological supremacy over the Indian military, which is a recognized fact.

The Al-Khalid is a ‘main battle tank’ (MBT) and its development began as far back as in 1988. The design and manufacturing of the tank was a joint effort of Pakistan and China.

Interestingly, the Al-Khalid is lighter and smaller in size compared to tanks of its class found in the west and is based on the Chinese type-90 main battle tank project.

Weighing around 46 tons, the Al-Khalid is easier to transport as compared to other major tanks in use by strong militaries across the world. The tank has a length of 10.07 meters, a width of 3.50 meters and a height of 2.40 meters. The tank can accommodate a crew of three personnel. The tank can easily pass through water obstacles of up to 5 meters deep, thanks to a built in snorkel system.

The Al-Khalid comes with a 125mm smoothbore gun which can also fire certain missiles. It is also equipped with a 7.62mm-coaxial machine gun, a 12.7mm externally-mounted air-defence machine gun that can be fired with the hatch closed, and smoke grenade launchers.

The gunner is provided with a dual magnification day sight and the commander with a panoramic sight for all-around independent surveillance. Both sights are dual-axis image stabilized and have independent laser range-finders. The commander has the ability to acquire a target independently while the gunner is engaging another one thus giving it true hunter-killer capability. The automatic target-tracking system is designed to work when tank and target are both moving. It has a combat range of 400-500 Km and is fitted with thermal night-vision devices.

The Al-Khalid has a high power-to-weight of 26 hp/tonne and a 1200hp water cooled diesel engine giving it a maximum speed of up to 72 km/h and acceleration from 0 to 30 km/h in under ten seconds. Ukraine is a key partner in the production of the Al-Khalid tank as the engine deployed in the tank is produced by Ukraine.

It has a modular composite armour and explosive reactive armour, nuclear-biological-chemical defences, an effective thermal smoke generator, internal fire extinguisher and explosion-suppression system. It also has advanced laser detection system.

Al-Khalid is the only tank in the world, apart from French tanks, which can auto-track enemy tanks.

The Al-Khalid tank was first introduced for use by the Pakistan Army in 2001 and continues to be one of the strengths of the Pakistan military. As of now, it is estimated that the Pakistan army has more than 300 Al-Khalid tanks.

Al-Khalid is far superior to the Indian ‘Arjun’ tank which took 25 years for its manufacturing and is still not perfectly stable. The Al-Khalid gives Pakistan a very strong edge over India in the event of a ‘land-war’.

Presently, the Indian Army is showing little interest in the Arjun, believing it would soon be obsolete and therefore a futuristic replacement is needed. In July 2008, the Indian Army said it would cap Arjun’s induction at 124 units, thus effectively putting an end to the Arjun MBT and its derivative Tank-EX program. India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to deliver the 124 tanks to the Indian Army by 2009.

Wikipedia information on the Arjun tank

India is yet to come up with an indiginously developed Main battle tank that could match the Al-Khalid (which is technologically far superior).

It is worth mentioning here that India has OFFICIALLY shut down its missile development programme after meeting multiple failures and is now relying on foreign sources for missile technology. Pakistan’s missile programme on the other hand is considered one of the best in the world and still continues to prosper.

This is what ‘Rediff’, an Indian web portal, has to say about the closure of the missile programme:

The difference between India’s failure against Pakistan’s success in their respective missile programmes is based on the purist mindset of the Defence Research and Development Organisation to develop indigenously all complex weapon platforms and Islamabad’s intelligent alliance with China and the approach to achieve its goals ‘by any means, fair or foul’! While Pakistan was pragmatic in its approach, India was merely pompous.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jan/15guest.htm

I plan to cover the two countries ballistic and missile capabilities some time in the future, so let us keep this aside for now.

The point is, what is India up to? Why has it gone blind and does not see Pakistani superiority in traditional and modern warfare?

I am confident, as a Pakistani national, that our military is capable of giving a ‘befitting’ response within minutes to any Indian aggression. And this post (and the study behind it) further elevates my confidence and pride in our armed forces.

Long Live Pakistan!

References:

[ 1 ] Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org

[2] Rediff.com

[3] GlobalSecurity.org

[4] Dawn.com

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