Thread: PLA – A quick Reference.

Klrajiv,

Good sir, the answers are somewhat complicated. There are still divisions awaiting new equipment while the 38th and 39th Group Armies have discarded their 1960 era systems. Add to that a splattering of independent artillery and engineering regts, then there is a mix of old and new still around.

The best place for all your answers would be the China-Defense.com/forum where Andy and I run this academic (read you would have more fun staring at a dead fish) centric forum.

Originally Posted by klrajiv

Xinhui, what guns do each artillery brigades and divisions have? Also, what is the organisation and table of equipment with the divisional engineer regiment regiments? Which kind of pontoons do the PLA River crossing Regiments have?

There are only two Arty division in PLA's orbat, the 1st and the 9th, both of them are stationary with one purpose, Taiwan. I don't think many folks would consider them tactical units as they are equipped with A-100 300mm long-range rackets for offshore bombardment.

PLA is slowly, (I mean painfully slow) moving away from the Soviet/Russian 130mm/152mm cal systems toward 155mm based system, it took them 20 years and still only very limited number of elite arty formations (38th GA, 39th GA, 54th GA, 1st GA, 142nd GA) have 155mm systems in their TOE (PLZ05, PLZ91, PLL01)

xinhui,

for an amateur groundpounder watcher, can you explain the cost/benefits of the shift?

The short answer is that if you want to put a HE round some where near the target, the Soviet system will work just fine and much cheaper, but if you want mobility, accuracy, long service life, all those good stuff, well, a western based system might be a better answer.

Section 8 wrote the following unpublished article and it should explain (in general) some of the short comings of the Soviet systems as demonstrated with the Type59 Howitzer.





The First Modernization:

The Chinese engineers began to work on the improved
variant of the Type 59 in the late 1960s. The goal was
to the fixing many of the shortcomings of the Type
59’s design while try to expands its capability. Many
of the new components for the improved design were
borrowed or influenced by the Type 66 152mm howitzer
and Type 60 122mm field gun.

The first thing that got changed was the Type 59’s
carriage. The new carriage was based on that of the
new Type 66 152mm howitzer’s spit-trail wheel
carriage. The new carriage offered many features the
old carriage lacked. It removed the need to uses a
limber wheels and therefore not only it offered better
cross-country mobility but also greatly reduced deploy
and recovery time. The newly added flip-up metal
coaster wheel at the end each trails makes it much
easier to open and close the spit-trail. The new
carriage also added a base-plate that when lowered to
the ground, it helps improve the overall stability and
reduce recoil during firing. The lowered base-plate
together with the coaster wheels on the trail also
allows 360 degree traverse for the field gun.

The Type 59’s recoil mechanism had to be redesigned in
order to fits into the new carriage. The original Type
59 uses an over and under configuration for its recoil
and counter recoil buffers. In the new carriage the
bottom position is taking up by the new base-plate.
The counter-recoil buffer cylinder had to be relocated
to the top of the breech assembly and along side of
the recoil buffer cylinder. The side benefit of the
new configuration is that it makes servicing both
buffer cylinders a much simpler job.

A simpler double-buffed muzzle brake replaced the
multi-port “pepperbox” type design used on the
original Type 59. The new muzzle brake is cheaper and
easier to manufacture, weights less and it also
increases the efficiency to over 45 percents.

The Type 59’s breech mechanism also received an
upgrade. The old manually operated horizontal
sliding-wedge breech was replaced by a semi-automatic
vertical sliding-wedge breech. The new breech was
based on the Type 66 152mm howitzer’s breech. The new
breech added a coil spring and uses gravity to reduce
the effort in open and close the breechblock. The
“semi-automatic” function is that the breech mechanism
can be configured to automatically to open the
breechblock and ejects the spent propellant case at
the end of the recoil cycle. This does help speed up
the reloading operation somewhat. The maximum firing
rate had increased from the original’s 6-8 rpm to 8-10
rpm with the Type 59-1’s new semi-automatic breech.
However, the realistic rate of fire is still depends
on the efficiency of the gun crew. After the first few
minutes of firing, even the most experienced crew will
be slow down due to fatigue. The other improvements to
the breech assembly include a retention device that
holds the projectile or the propellant case in place
while the breechblock is opened during high-angle ammo
loading operation. The redesigned firing mechanism has
added safety to prevent it from firing if the
breechblock is not closed completely.

Besides those major changes, there were other smaller
but no less significant improvements. New ball
bearings and rollers were added to the field gun’s
mechanical components. Those help to reduce frictions
while improve the reliability. Light emitting diodes
and fiber optic lightings replaced conventional light
buds for the sight illumination and the running
lights. The automotive braking system was replaced by
a pneumatic brake system that’s comparable with common
PLA trucks and artillery prime movers.

The 130mm field gun’s formidable ballistic performance
remains unchanged in the Type 59-1. Most of the
upgrades were focused on improve its mobility and
operational efficiency. The biggest improvement
resulted from all those upgrades is a major 2,100
kilograms weight reduction from the original Type 59’s
8.2 tons towing weight to new Type 59-1’s 6.1 tons.
This in term, lead to a significant improvement to the
field gun’s mobility and it’s light enough to be tow
by most of the medium trucks in service with the
Chinese military.

The Type 59-1 variant’s development was completed in
the early 1970s. However, due the turmoil of the Mao’s
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution the Type 59-1’s
initial production was grinded to a halt after few
small batches. The Chinese military only started to
receive the Type 59-1 130mm field gun in numbers in
the early 1980s.


The Second Modernization:

The second modernization of the Type 59 field gun
system occurred the 1980s. The emphases of the second
modernization was not on the Type 59 field gun itself
but to enhance its targeting capability, effective
range, ammunitions and an attempt of developing a
self-propel version of it.

Combat experiences learned from the Sino-Vietnamese
War in 1979 indicated that the PLA artillery units had
ineffective surveillance and target acquisition
ability. The major cause of this deficiency was not
enough artillery forward observers (FO) and the few
FOs that they had were either poorly equipped or often
poorly trained for their jobs.

The PLA used a two-prong approach to modernize their
artillery target acquisition capability. The first one
was the creation more FO positions in the artillery
units. The best surveillance and communication
equipment the PLA had at the time were issued to those
new FOs. They were one of the first to received
light-intensifier night version equipment, handheld
laser range finder and digital communication gears in
the PLA. Their trainings were also updated with new
tactics and modified according to the new equipments.

The second approach was by adding artillery radars to
the Type 59 unit’s organic table of equipment (TOE).
In the early 1980s, China’s relation with the European
and American begin to warming up. The Western nations
started to allow military sales to the China. Since
one of the Type 59 unit’s main tactical role is
counter-battery operation, the artillery locating
radar was on the top of the PLA’s shopping list. The
first artillery radar the PLA ordered was the British
made Green Archer Mark I. The first four Green Archer
units were sent to the initial stage of the Second
Sino-Vietnamese War in 1984. The imported artillery
radars together with the newly trained and better
equipped FOs demonstrated to be highly effective in
combat engagements. The Vietnamese artillery supports
were quickly eliminated by the Chinese artillery radar
equipped Type 59 batteries. The well directed Chinese
artillery fires inflicted devastating causality on the
unsupported Vietnamese infantries. The PLA was so
impressed with the artillery radar’s combat
performance; they later brought the production license
for the Green Archer series.

At the same time, the PLA was also looking for larger
and longer range artillery radar system with more
capabilities for their artillery division level TOE.
The state of the art American made Fiefinder AN/TPQ-37
was chosen by the PLA for the task. The AN/TPQ-37
utilizes a phased array antenna and computer
controlled digital signal processor. It’s capable of
first round detection at range up to 50km for mortar,
tube artillery and rockets. Its phased array antenna
allows the radar to tracks multiple targets
simultaneously and the onboard computer automatically
calculates both the firing position and the impact
point of each projectiles. Only two units of the
AN/TPQ-37 were delivered to the PLA in the late 1980s
before the new American led arms embargo cancelled the
rest of the order. Subsequently, the Chinese engineer
developed a reverse engineer AN/TPQ-37 copy based on
the two examples they received. The Chinese made copy
was designated the Type 704 artillery radar. However,
the early version was still relied heavily on foreign
made components. It took the Chinese engineers ten
years to achieve the completely indigenous production
of the Type 704.

By the 1980s, the Type 59 finally gave up its class
leading long-range crown to the new long barrel 155 mm
howitzers; which including China’s own 45 calibers
155mm howitzer. To close the performance gap, a new
family of enhanced 130mm ammunitions was developed for
the Type 59. The first to become available was the
Extended Range Full-bore Base-Bleed (ERFB-BB) rounds.
It increases the Type 59’s maximum range from 27.5km
to 35km and 37km if fires at 52 degrees instead of the
standard 45 degrees. The ERFB-BB ammo works by having
a very streamlined projectile shape and burns gas
generating chemicals at its tail in flight to reduce
air drags. Comparing to the old rocket-assisted
extended range ammo, the base-bleed ammo is not only
more efficient in increase the range but it also
without having the penalty of decrease the size of the
main explosive charge. The gas generating chemical
base burner takes up much less space than the rocket
motor in the rocket assisted round. In fact, the
base-bleed rounds actually carries slightly more
explosive than the regular high-explosive (HE) round
due to its longer projectile. The 130mm ERFB-BB round
has a dispersion of 1/170 or 0.58% at its maximum
range.

The 130mm cargo carrying ammo was developed along side
with the base-bleed round. For the longest time, no
one had developed a cargo carry round for the 130mm
field gun. The difficulty was due to the 130mm’s
projectile design. It needs a thick projectile case
wall construction to cope with the Type 59’s high
chamber pressure design. However, in the mid 1980s,
the Chinese engineers had finally overcome that
obstacle and developed the cargo carrying round for
the Type 59. The new 130 mm cargo ammo is what the
American military would calls it the DPICM or
Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions. The
130mm DPICM contains 35 dual-purpose bomblets. Each of
those bomblets is capable of penetrating 80mm of
rolled homogeneous steel with the build-in small
shape-charge warhead. The detonation of the bomblet
also produces fragmentation for incapacitating near by
unprotected infantries. The 130mm cargo carrying ammo
has a maximum range of 25km.

Those new enhanced 130mm rounds indicated a major
advance in Chinese munitions technology. On the other
hand, the Chinese engineers may have gotten some
outside helps. In coincidence, the infamous
Canadian-born artillery ballistic genius Dr. Gerald
Bull was doing some consulting works for the Chinese
arms industry during the mid 1980s. In fact, the new
Chinese 45 caliber 155mm long range howitzer was
designed by Dr. Bull. It’s highly possible that Dr.
Bull may have provided technical assistances to the
Chinese engineers in developing those enhanced 130mm
ammo. In addition, the new 130mm ERFB-BB round also
resembles the Dr. Bull’s signature base-bleed extended
range ammo design.

Even the Type 59’s conventional ammos received some
upgrades. The more powerful RDX replaced the TNT as
the main explosive charge in the standard HE round.
However, the old TNT filled HE round remain in
production because of its lower cost.