the 1.6 million PLA army is the present largest one in the world ...cost pressure is always a major problem to arm such a large land force... the Army is always going for to
cost-effectiveness which is exactly "good and Cheap" means ..
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Type86 IFV project started in early 1980's(very late comparing the emerging of BMP-1) and it is the clone of some BMP-1 sample vehicle gained from East Europe or Middle East... even then ,the 73mm low pressure gun system with RPG style ammunition was out-dated...
our first try was to replace the 73mm Low pressure gun turret with a
25-mm Machine Cannon+ 7.62mm MG ,single-person turret...this prototype was given the codename "
Type 86-1" IFV
but this weapon station suffered
reliability problems then .when the problems were able to be resolved, the date has been the early 1990s , later this turret was used on
ZSL-92 wheeled IFV and
ZSD-89-1 tracked APC...so the Type86 project began the Mass- production with the original design...
another try was a co-opeation project with an American firm...
NFV-1 IFV, a western 25mm Machine Cannon turret was imported...but when the Honey moon with the Western was over, this project also ended without much achievement except some prototypes...
in 1993, the TOT of Weapon Station of BMP-3 IFV brought new light on the Type86 improvement plan....on the base of ' seperated'
2A72 ,30mm Machine Cannon from the 100mm+30mm+7.62mm integrated weapon station and the simplified Gunner station , a new universal single-person 30mm gun weapon station was created...then the imporved
Type 86A (ZBD86A) arrived finally with some other improvement...the army's request for 73mm gun replacement was fulfilled...
this turret was also used to modify the
ZSL92B wheeled-IFV and
ZBD-03 Airborne Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
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It just so happened that today I saw these latest news report about the UKrain's current modification job on the hundreds of Reserved BMP-1 IFVs on our defence forum...
anyway, solutions are always more than the difficulties for those actors with the ability... those big talkers would always lose and keep empty talk all the time...