Photo of the day: ZBD04A/WZ502G of Chengdu Military Region

According to this PLAdaily article (here) an armored regiment of Chengdu Military Region (MR) is now upgunned with the latest ZBD04A/WZ502G, this marks the fourth China Army MR to be equipped with this latest Norinco IFV.  The first three MRs with ZBD04A/WZ502G equipped units are Beijing, Shanyang and Lanzhou.    The challenge now for this Chengdu MR unit is to adopt ZBD04A/WZ502G properly for operations in the mountainous terrain, over the primitive road network and to trailblazer a new highland war-fighting doctrine for other units to follow. 

Lanzhou MR's ZBD04A/WZ502G on maneuver, photo taken March 2013.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

New tracked IFV entering service with a unit "up north"

More photos from the Chinese railway junkies

This new IFV appears to be sporting a BMP-3 turret mod.

Monday, June 06, 2011

A new Chinese tracked vehicle family emerges

Little is known about this new IFV but thus far it seems to have developed a complete family of variants in various stages of testing or field deployments. Some unconfirmed claims pointing to a heavy Type 89/ZSD89/YW534 mod, but without a closer inspection or an official acknowledgement from Norinco, they are still speculations.

At any rate, the PLA is long over due for a modern tracked vehicle,  this is especially true consider the weak armor protection the old Type89 and 86 families have to offer. 

 Engineering variant

 APC variant from the official Xinhua News

 Command variant

 Recon variant

 

SP 120mm turreted mortar variant

Photo from the PLAdaily

Monday, February 06, 2012

Photo of the day: New tracked IFV with bolted armor

Since not having enough armor protection is one of the loudest complaint against the ZDB04 tracked IFV, it was not popular with overseas customers.   it appears that Norinco took the complaint to heart and address that deficiency with some bolted armor slap on its new family of IFV.

Notice how thinly armored the older ZDB04 is

Other recently spotted variants since the last blog update.