Thailand ditches further T-84 purchases, orders MBT-3000 instead

Apparently Thailand's patience with the Ukranian state-owned company Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau (KMDB) has come to an end. The Thai Army had initally ordered 49 T-84 Oplot-M tanks from KMDB in 2011, while requiring total number of about 200 main battle tanks (MBTs). The delivery of the T-84s however was extremely delayed - mostly due to the Ukrainian conflict with the Donbass rebels and Russia's annexion of the Crimean peninusla, but even before that the production rate was poor. There also were some issues with production quality.

While KMDB decided to give an additional five tanks to Thailand for no costs as compensation, the Thai Army decided to order an initial batch of 28 MBT-3000 tanks made by the Chinese state-owned company NORINCO. The project name for the MBT-3000 is "Haider".
Supposedly Pakistan might order a further ~150 MBT-3000 tanks if satisfied with the performance of the first batch, however Pakistan also has shown interest in the Turkish Altay tank, which might become available for export once Turkey has developed an indigenous powerpack, which cannot be subject to foreign export regulations.

The MBT-3000 tank

The MBT-3000 is a further development of the MBT-2000 tank and the Type 99 MBT. At a 52 ton weight - 4 tons heavier than the previous MBT-2000 tank - it reaches a top speed of about 68 kilometres per hour thanks to a 1300 horsepower engine. It's armed with a 125 mm smoothbore gun, an improved local version of the Soviet 2A46M tank gun, and a 7.62 mm co-axial machine gun (MG). Optionally a further 12.7 mm heavy MG can be mounted on top of the turret near the commander's hatch for anti-air defence. This weapon can be remotely controlled from inside the tank. The MBT-3000's autoloader provides space for 22 rounds of 125 mm two-piece tank ammunition or barrel-launched guided missiles. Space for the storage for further 16 rounds of main gun ammunition is provided in the tank.
The frontal aspect of the tank is protected by composite armor and a type of heavy ERA, which should provide good protection against shaped charge warheads (HEAT warheads) found in ATGMs and RPG, aswell some amount of prorection against kinetic energy penetrators such as APFSDS rounds. The side of turret and hull are only protected by thin steel armor. Additional side-skirts provide some additional protection against HEAT warheads at the hull flanks. The storage bins at the turret flanks and rear can also provide some additional protection against HEAT warheads, double-acting as spaced and/or slat armor.

The MBT-3000 is provided with a modern fire control system (FCS), which contains separate optronics for the tank commander and gunner. The gunner has his main sight located in front of his hatch at the left side of the turret. It incorporates a laser-rangefinder, a conventional daysight and a thermal imager for operations in the night and situations with poor visibility.
The commander's optics are housed in a 360° rotatable periscope, enabling hunter/killer operations. This means the commander can spot targets independently, while the gunner is engaging another target. By pressing a button, the turret rotates and aims onto the target spotted by the commander. The commander's sight also incorporates a thermal imager.

T-84 Oplot-M being paraded in Thailand

The MBT-3000 however appears to be a major downgrade compared to the T-84M tank in many aspects. The coverage with explosive reactive armor (ERA) is rather low and has even a few gaps in the frontal profile. The quality of the ERA is also questionable, compared to the heavy multi-layer Duplet ERA of the T-84 (using up to three ERA layers) the Chinese ERA seems to be considerable thinner. While the MBT-3000's ERA solution is only applied to the frontal area of the vehicle, the T-84 has ERA protecting most of the tank's sides and roof.
In general the protection appears to be downgraded, as the turret design of Chinese tanks provides less armor coverage along the frontal arc and reduces the safe maneuvering angles. Unless the Chinese composite armor is a lot stronger, it seems very unlikely that the MBT-3000 can reach the same protection level as a T-84 Oplot-M tank.

In terms of FCS, both tanks seem to have different benefits. While the T-84 Oplot-M follows the old Soviet tradition of having separated day and night sights for the gunner, which unnecessarily increases the complexity of the tank and can affect the gunner negatively, it also has a much larger commander's sight with unobstructed view to the left and right sides. On the MBT-3000 the gunner has a unitary sight for day and night operations, but the commander's sight is smaller (which can affect the performance) and it's field of view will be reduced due to the gunner's sight having a similar overall height.

Nonetheless, the delivery of the T-84 Olpot-M tanks is still under way. The third batch of Oplot tanks was delivered in May after the tanks were shipped by sea in December 2015. According to Ukrainian expectations, the last remaining 29 tanks will all be delivered in this year, 2016.

Thailand's DTI presents new wheeled AFV: the Black Widow Spider

Thailand is developing a new 8 x 8 wheeled armored fighting vehicle, which has been named "Black Widow Spider". It was developed by Defence Technology Institute of Thailand with help from ST Kinetics of Singapore. It is said to incorporate technology from the Irish Timoney Technology Group, who already worked on other Asian wheeled combat vehicles such as the Taiwanese Cloud Leopard and the Singaporean Terrex.
The current version of it was presented on the Defence & Security 2015 military exhibition in Thailand.

The Black Widow Spider

The presented version of the Black Widow Spider is fitted with a remotely operated turret, which appears to be identical to the turret demonstrated on the ST Kinetic's Terrex II infantry fighting vehicle. The turret is equipped with a 30 mm Mk 44 Bushmaster II, a 7.62 mm NATO machine gun, optics for the gunner and an independent commander's sight, and a number of smoke grenade launchers.
A number of photographs of the vehicle were already shown on the internet several weeks before the 2015 exhibition. An earlier prototype was presented in 2013, which however was lacking a lot of the features of the current Black Widow Spider, such as the composite armor, the unmanned turret, the splash guard and the propeller blades for amphibious operations.

Older prototype of the Black Widow Spider seeing earlier this year

Side view of the Black Widow Spider

The Black Widow Spider presented at Defence & Security 2015 has a weight of 24 tons including the IFV. It is powered by a 450 hp diesel engine from Caterpillar. The vehicle has an operational range of 600 kilometers. Seating is provided for the driver, the gunner, the commander and up to nine dismounts.

The seats for the dismounts are not attached to the floor, which increases survivability against mines

 The battlefield management system (BMS) of the Black Widow Spider is made by ST Kinetics of Singapore. The composite armor used on the current version of the vehicle (previous prototypes lacked any sort of composite amor) is supplied by the Israel Military Industries (IMI). When fitted with the composite armor from IMI, the Black Widow Spider is protected against 14.5 mm armor-piercing (AP) ammunition in accordance with the NATO STANAG standard 4569. The gun used on the prototype IFV version is like the BMS also manufactured by ST Kinetics.

The battlefield management system in the BWS

The Black Widow Spider is the result of the Wheeled Armoured Vehicle Research and Development Project using the technical abilites and knowledge of the Thai army, the private industry and a number of research institutes in Thailand. The vehicle is an attempt of being less reliant on foreign manufacturers, which have shown to be problematic in some cases (such as the delivery of Ukrainian armor being troubled due to the conflict in the East-Ukraine).
Apparently no official requirement and order was made by the Thai army yet, but this might change after the Black Widow Spider went through field trials.