Rebirth of the 1980s: The Military Industry Empire

Booldastan nodded: "If your side is willing to export a batch of tanks to us, that would be great. However, we hope to obtain more advanced tanks, better than the batch that Iraq obtained!"

Iraq has been using Soviet-made weapons for a long time, so when the Type 69 tanks arrived in their hands, they immediately gave a thumbs up: Not bad, these tanks are very good. We don't need extra training, we can just drive the tanks onto the battlefield! Especially the fire control system, it's not complicated at all!

Giving Iraq too good things is a waste for them. Even if you give them Leopard 2 level tanks, they will drive within 500 meters and then use visual aiming to solve the target. What is moving target engagement? What is first-round hit rate? It is meaningless to them. The T-72 tanks in Iraq's hands now operate in this way.

But the Iranians are different. They operate Western tanks, especially their main force, the Chieftain tank. This tank, developed by the British in the 1960s, has already begun to use the advanced 120mm tank gun. Its accuracy is quite high, even hitting opponents more than 3,000 meters away.

The Iranian armored soldiers now have very high standards. The Type 69 tank is nothing in their eyes. The performance is too poor! It cannot meet their needs!

Therefore, they want to order tanks from the East, but they want more advanced models! This will also help them gain an advantage on the battlefield.

This is different from history. After all, in history, the first batch of Type 69 tanks only arrived on the battlefield in 1983. By that time, many of the excellent tank soldiers on both sides of the battle had already died. The newly recruited tankers did not have time to receive professional training. Even if they were given a tank that could kill the enemy from 3,000 meters away, they would not have the ability to operate it. They just wanted to rush up and engage in close combat with the enemy.

So, by that time, the Iranians also felt that the Type 69 tank was good, but now, they can still pick and choose.

"First of all, the tank gun. It uses a 100mm tank gun, and the armor-piercing ability is only more than 100mm! It can't even penetrate its own armor. What's the use of this tank?" Booldastan said: "We hope to replace it with a more advanced tank gun!"

Although it is called the Type 69 tank, the actual changes from the Type 59 tank are not many. At the beginning, it was also replaced with a 100mm smoothbore gun as a new tank gun, but later, during the test firing, it was found that the shells fired from this smoothbore gun floated and were not accurate when flying out, so it could only be replaced with a 100mm rifled gun.

That's right, it is still the rifled gun used on the Type 59 tank. The maximum penetration depth of armor-piercing projectiles is only 140mm, which is really not very powerful in this era. After all, the turret of the Type 69 tank is also 202mm thick. It can't even penetrate itself. On the battlefield, it can only rely on fearless charges to rush into the opponent's camp, and then can only eliminate the opponent from the side or the rear.

Looking at the Chieftain MK5 imported by the Iranians, it is equipped with a 55-caliber L11A5 120mm rifled gun. The muzzle velocity of the armor-piercing discarding sabot projectile reaches 1370 meters per second. At a distance of 2500 meters, it can penetrate 202mm thick homogeneous steel armor. The error at this distance is 0.35 meters. Within 500 meters, all tanks can be blown into slag.

Therefore, the Iranians now have very high standards and simply look down on the 100mm rifled gun of the Type 69 tank. This type of artillery, which was transplanted from naval guns in the 1940s and 1950s, is already outdated!

"Of course, there is no problem." Qin Yang said: "Currently, you have three options. One is our 105mm rifled gun, which is even more performant than the NATO standard L7 tank gun. The other two are our 120mm and 125mm smoothbore tank guns. However, due to the thick barrel and large shells of the latter two, the tank's ammunition reserve will be relatively small, and the loading speed will be very slow."

"We want a 105mm tank gun, as long as it can reach the NATO standard!" Booldastan nodded.

Leader Dong frowned there. Although he used to be engaged in supervision work, he started to engage in military industry when he came to Fangbei Industrial Company, so he has some understanding of various military industrial technologies.

When signing the L7 tank gun import agreement with the British, it was clearly stated that this tank gun can only be used for self-use and cannot be exported! Will there be any problems if we agree to Iran so easily?

"If it is matched with our simple two-way automatic instrument simple fire control system, the price of the whole set of modification is 300,000. If you want to add a more advanced disturbed fire control system, the price of the whole set of modification is 500,000." Qin Yang began to quote.

Hearing this price, Leader Dong was shocked again. This is too expensive, isn't it? A tank only costs 500,000, but modifying a tank gun and adding a fire control system actually costs the same price?

Expensive, too expensive!

Sure enough, Booldastan and others were also a little surprised. Even if Qin Yang gave a preventive shot in advance, they didn't expect it to be so expensive!

Prices are soaring, really soaring! In addition to the price, blood pressure will also soar.

"If you think it's too expensive, then forget it. I personally feel that the Type 69 tanks exported to Jordan are enough for you. The advantage in quantity is the most important. Think about it, hundreds or thousands of tanks driving over, what a spectacular scene!" Qin Yang said.

Booldastan shook his head: "No, only the advantage in quantity is meaningless. We must have a quality advantage! We want both the disturbed fire control system and the 105mm tank gun!"

"Well, that's one million per tank." Qin Yang said: "I remember, you just said that the first thing is the improvement of the tank gun, so next, regarding protection and engine, you must also need to upgrade, right?"

Qin Yang's face was smiling, like those insurance salesmen in later generations.

"No, if we add more, the price will be higher than the Chieftain tank." Booldastan said.

In 1971, the Iranian government at that time chose the Chieftain tank as the next-generation standard tank. There are many statements about the quantity and cost of the purchase. Among them, the more credible one is that it spent 650 million pounds to purchase 1,500 vehicles, so each vehicle is 433,000 pounds. In that year, the US dollar began to implement a floating exchange rate, fluctuating within the limit of 2.5471 US dollars to 2.6643 US dollars per 1 pound. Taking the intermediate number of 2.6, each vehicle is about 1.13 million US dollars.

Now, the Type 69 tank purchased from the East has also soared to one million US dollars, which is not a low price!

"You purchased the Chieftain tank in the 1970s, and now it is the 1980s. The devaluation of the US dollar has been very severe in these ten years." Qin Yang said: "If converted to the present, the price of your Chieftains is two or three million US dollars. Our Type 69 tank only needs one million US dollars, which is already very cheap. Moreover, the disturbed fire control is more advanced than the Chieftain. By the way, can you stand the manual transmission of the Type 69 tank? Do you want an automatic transmission?"

After the US dollar was decoupled from gold in the 1970s, it began to depreciate rapidly. There is no problem with Qin Yang's introduction like this, but what is automatic transmission? We don't have a mature automatic transmission tank in China at all!