Shinichi Kiyoya (defense journalist)
"The Truth About Shinichi Kiyoya's Defense Issues"
[Summary]
・The Type 10 cannot be modernized due to the weight increase and has no development potential. A defective car that dreams of a large tank battle on the plains that would never happen in Japan.
・The Ground Self-Defense Force has 4 types of virtually incompatible "tanks", which is a big burden on operational costs and logistics. Even the ability to continue fighting is disadvantageous.
・If we did not develop and procure the Type 10, but modernized existing tanks, we should have been able to invest in equipment and fields that were desperately needed.
I have verified twice how the Type 10 tank was unnecessary equipment.
The Type 10 tank is not equipped according to the National Defense Program Guidelines. And tanks have a fairly low priority. The GSDF's main threat is not large regiment-sized enemy forces landing, but countering guerilla commandos. The Type 10 is not a suitable tank for that. A modernization of the existing Type 90 would have been far less costly and quicker to deploy.
In the first place, there is almost no possibility that a regiment-sized enemy armored force will land and fight in our country. The GSDF's armored forces are nothing more than insurance in case the situation changes in the distant future. In that case, it is natural to reduce the number of tanks, and in fact, the number of tanks that used to be over 1,000 has been reduced to 300 under the current outline. And it should have been assumed during the development of the Type 10 that the investment in servers, drones, networks, etc. would be further reduced.
The disregard for guerrilla commando countermeasures is also reflected in the main gun. The Type 10 used a license-produced 120 mm smoothbore gun from Rheinmetall for the Type 90, but the Type 10 adopted a more powerful new main gun and armor-piercing bullets to destroy enemy tanks. there is In the first place, if there was no possibility of engaging with enemy tanks, the same 105 mm gun as the Type 74 tank and Type 16 mobile combat vehicle, or a 76 mm to 90 mm gun would have been fine.
▲ Photo Type 16 mobile combat vehicle (provided by the author)
As mentioned earlier, there is little chance of mechanized warfare occurring on the mainland. If the emphasis was on dealing with guerrilla commandos, priority should have been given to the development of new high-explosive ammunition and multi-purpose ammunition (also useful in urban warfare) rather than armour-piercing ammunition. Battles in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that conventional high-explosive shells for tanks are not effective in urban warfare, such as with enemy soldiers trapped in buildings.
For this reason, the US Army's M1A2 tank is equipped with the M830A1 multi-purpose anti-tank grenade, which can be used not only for armored targets, but also for pillboxes, positions, helicopters, and UAVs, as well as the M1028 anti-personnel canister ammunition. The U.S. Marine Corps uses the programmable DM11 multipurpose high-explosive ammunition.
Similar multi-purpose ammunition is being developed in Israel, Germany, China, etc. However, the army staff gave priority to the development and procurement of new armor-piercing ammunition that was unnecessary and not urgent. From this point, it can be inferred that the Army General Staff is not seriously considering dealing with guerrilla commandos.
▲ Photo US Army M1A2 tank Source: Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
From these things, when developing the Type 10, "best suited for dealing with guerrilla commandos" was just a "sales pitch" for the introduction, and in reality it dreamed of a large tank battle on a spectacular plain. It can be seen that it is a delusional tank developed by Naturally, a large amount of taxpayers' money is wasted because of that "delusion" or "hobby".
The Type 10 is not equipped with the RWS (Remote Weapon Station), which is now standard equipment. The Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) is a "Showa era army" that is not equipped with RWS, which is normally equipped even in developing countries.
RWS is a guerrilla commando, and the crew can search for enemies and counterattack the enemy from inside the vehicle. Moreover, it can be performed accurately regardless of whether it is day or night. It is also effective against UAVs. The reason why the GSDF did not equip the Type 10 with RWS would be the increased weight and cost. If the weight increases, it will not be possible to mount it on a 40-ton transporter. In other words, it is a defective tank that cannot be modernized in the future due to its increased weight. In this sense, the Type 10 is a "stuffed" tank.
The introduction of Type 10 tanks is putting pressure on the GSDF's logistics. Currently, the GSDF has about 200 Type 74 vehicles, 340 Type 90 vehicles, and 70 Type 10 vehicles, but the current National Defense Program Guidelines only allow 300 tanks. It is supposed that the quota of the outline should be achieved by the final year of the outline. This is also a very leisurely story, but for a long time, three types of tanks will be mixed.
Although it doesn't fit in the fixed frame of tanks, "mobile combat vehicles" that should be called wheeled tanks are also deployed. This effectively results in a mixture of four types of "tanks".
The Type 90 and Type 10 use the same 120 mm smoothbore cannon, but the Type 90 ammunition can be used with the Type 10, but the Type 10 shell has a higher pressure when fired to increase its power. It cannot be used with the Type 90 because it hits the gun. In other words, there is no mutual compatibility even with the Type 90, which uses the same caliber shells. For this reason, GSDF tanks require three types of tank ammunition, which places a burden on logistics.
Effortlessly operating four types of tanks is many times more expensive than operating one. For education and training, four types of tanks and instructors for each are required, and the procurement cost of the tanks required for education, and the personnel costs of instructors and maintenance personnel are quadrupled. Naturally, the efficiency of parts production will be 1/4 by simple calculation, and the production cost of parts will jump up. Each tank has different specifications and training, so for example, a Type 10 crew cannot operate a Type 74 or other tanks. In order to do so, it is necessary to receive training for changing models, and this also costs unnecessary costs for one model.
This is a big disadvantage even in the ability to continue fighting in actual combat. In actual combat, damaged units need to be replenished with tanks and crews. Severely damaged units will need to reorganize multiple units into one. However, the four tanks are not compatible with each other in terms of hulls and crews, so it is very difficult to replenish and reorganize.
Otherwise, tanks with different performance will be mixed in one unit, making it difficult to take collective action. Of course, the ammunition and spare parts to be supplied on the battlefield are also different, so the logistics are confused.
In theory, it is impossible to maintain 300 tanks (+ 200 mobile combat vehicles) with the GSDF budget. In other countries, the GSDF's only armored division, the 7th Division, which is no more than a brigade, cannot even be maintained in a combat-ready state.
Of course, a tank cannot fight alone. The Type 89 combat armored vehicles that paired with the tanks were so expensive that there were only 68 of them, and not even all of the 7th Division's regular regiments were equipped with them. Naturally, it is not deployed in other combat units. Moreover, even though the Type 90 will be replaced by the Type 10, there is no plan for a successor vehicle or a plan for modernization and life extension. The same goes for the Type 96 120mm self-propelled mortar and the Type 87 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.
Some regular companies use wheeled Type 96 armored vehicles that can only be used on the road. Naturally, they cannot accompany tanks in field battles. In units other than the 7th Division, tanks are accompanied by light armored vehicles like 96 type armored vehicles that cannot run on rough terrain, or unarmored high mobility vehicles. It's like a third world army.
Similarly, the Type 82 command and communication vehicle is old and has not been modernized or overhauled. This is also a wheeled type and has low ability to run on rough terrain, so it cannot accompany tanks. Moreover, many other armored vehicles and equipment were procured in the 1980s, but have been neglected for over 30 years.
For this reason, it is becoming obsolete and the operating rate is falling. There are only a few tank transporters in a tank regiment that carry tanks over long distances. In this way, no matter how much new type 10 tanks are introduced, strategic maneuvers can hardly be done, and they will only become idle soldiers. The same is true for logistics vehicles, which can only support company-sized exercises and not division-sized battles. In other words, even in terms of equipment, it is a failure for an armored unit of an advanced country, and it has the appearance of a museum.
▲ Photo Extra-large truck of the Ground Self-Defense Force Source: JGSDF/flickr
The GSDF is lagging behind even developing countries like China and Pakistan in terms of computerization and networking, such as reconnaissance UAVs and precision-guided artillery.
When the GSDF tanks fight against the Chinese army, they are destined to be slaughtered before they can fight enemy tanks by being unilaterally attacked from far away by precision-guided artillery, loitering suicide drones, attack helicopters, etc. .
It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that the GSDF ordinary course motorization was completed. Until then, normalization didn't even have a truck of its own. Except for some equipment such as tanks, the GSDF is at a level that cannot be called the military of a developed country at the level of the Korean War.
For example, an office worker with an annual income of 3 million yen, who should be commuting by a light car, throws away the existing light car that can still be used sufficiently, and frequently replaces it with a luxury foreign car for commuting. is in arrears.
If we hadn't developed and procured the Type 10 and had just modernized existing tanks, the budget would have been an order of magnitude less. If so, that budget could have been invested in areas so desperately needed, such as modernizing armored vehicles and other equipment, improving capacity utilization, or sanitation.
To be frank, my knowledge of the army is only about the same as a junior high school student who enjoys tank games. With this, it is impossible to come up with a proper military force development, and it is also a failure in terms of deterrence development. Our tax money is being wasted on "tank mania war games".
Originally, instead of developing Type 10, we survived by modernizing Type 90, while reducing the number of tanks and artillery to about 100 each. should have been spent on updating , normal course equipment update, cyber, etc.
Top photo: Type 10 tank (provided by the author)
Tags: Type 10 Tank, Type 16 Mobile Combat Vehicle, Type 74 Tank, RWS, UAV, Guerrilla Commando, Armored Forces, Shinichi Kiyoya, Precision Guided Artillery, Self-Defense Forces, Armored Vehicles, Ministry of Defense, Ground Self-Defense ForceI want to read it
Who wrote this article
Shinichi Kiyotani Defense journalist
Defense journalist, writer. Born in 1962. Graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, Tokai University. Contributes, appears, and comments on general magazines, economic magazines, newspapers, television, etc., mainly in military-related magazines. Japan correspondent for Jane's Defense Weekly, a British defense magazine, until 2008. Senior advisor to Kanwa Information Center, a Canadian private military research institute based in Hong Kong. Read the article here.
・Japan PEN Club member ・Tokyo Defense & Aerospace Review Publisher (Tokyo Defense & Aerospace Review) http://www.tokyo-dar.com/ ・European Security Defense Japan correspondent
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