For a long time, the basis of the armored fleet of the Pakistani army was made up of American and Chinese-made tanks. For example, in the 90s, the troops had more than three and a half hundred M48A5 Patton III and 1200 Chinese clones of the Soviet T-54A - Tour 59 and 250 more advanced Type 69-II.
By the beginning of the new century, this entire armored armada was already outdated and needed work to improve its tactical and technical characteristics.
As a result, after considering various options, the command of the armed forces decided to focus only on the modernization of the Tour 59.
American cars have practically exhausted all available reserves of the design. Their combat weight was close to fifty tons, and the addition of additional armor would lead to a significant increase in weight, as well as an already enormous size. In addition, new more powerful and, accordingly, expensive engines would have to be installed.
The "fifty-ninth", in turn, received 125-mm smoothbore guns, copies of those used on the T-72. However, the loading of the gun remained manual.
On part of the samples, bulletproof and anti-splinter protection appeared for a fighter firing from an anti-aircraft 12.7 mm machine gun mounted on the turret, produced in Pakistan under the designation Toure 54, a variant of the Soviet DSHK.
Sufficiently high shooting accuracy was provided by a new fire control system with sights with thermal imaging channels.
To improve security, multi-layer packages and reactive armor were introduced.
They planned to install new engines with a capacity of 1000 or even 1200 hp, such as on the T-80UD or Al-Khalid, but then decided to limit themselves to 730-horsepower power units already tested on the Type 85-IIAP parts available.
The combat weight was 42.7 tons. The maximum speed on the highway is 55 km/h. The fuel reserve is 400 km.
Currently, Al Zarrar are the most massive tanks in Pakistan, more than 720 of them have already been manufactured.
Al-Zarrar Main Battle Tank of Pakistan Army ⚔ ?? pic.twitter.com/Oe3siHWN0D
— Pakistan Strategic Forum (@ForumStrategic) January 15, 2022
Alexey Moiseev
