China-US Army Cooperation Project: Jaguar Medium Main Battle Tank

+1 for both US and China, similar to MBT-70/KPz-70

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Belongs in both the US and Chinese trees. +1

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Addendum:
Because the Jaguar tank was very similar to the newly established M1 main battle tank of the US Army at that time, except for a slight loss of weight.
So the Chinese engineers involved in the plan gave the Jaguar tank a nickname… “Mini version of Abrams”

Image: A photo of a moving Jaguar tank taken from another angle
Jaguar Tank3

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Image: A close-up photo of an existing Jaguar tank
Jaguar Tank4
Jaguar Tank6

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American make it more like an OF40 instead of an russian T-series tank,beautiful!

+1 for China and US

This would be so fun. Basically a low br Abram’s.

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Historical Story: The Jaguar Tank Project that Died at the Last Moment
The direct reason for the failure of the Jaguar tank project was the subsequent military cooperation ban imposed by the United States on China. ‌
The Jaguar tank is a main battle tank jointly developed by China and the United States in the mid-1980s, aimed at targeting the markets of third world countries.
The design of the tank is based on the chassis provided by China, while the American partner Gage is responsible for the upper body, turret, transmission, and engine parts.
In early 1989, the project announced the successful completion of research and development work, and ultimately produced two prototype cars for testing by Gage Company.
The testing work went very smoothly, and the performance of the Jaguar tank greatly exceeded the expectations of the Gage engineering team.
The only issue with high performance is the significant increase in cost budget, which skyrocketed from the initial estimate of one million US dollars to 1.55 million US dollars.
However, Gage Company believes that this will no longer be a problem after entering the mass production stage.
However, due to the subsequent military cooperation ban imposed by the United States on China, this originally promising project was forced to be abandoned.
The implementation of this ban prevented the planned production and promotion of the Jaguar tank, leading to the failure of the project.
Although China and the United States have made significant technological achievements in the development of tanks as a result, including the use of advanced fire control systems, high-performance engines, and robust armor protection.
However, due to political factors, these efforts ultimately failed to translate into actual mass-produced products on the Jaguar project.
After the interruption of military cooperation between China and the United States, Gage Company was unwilling to accept the failure of 99% of its projects that had already been completed.
So they imported the complete technology of the 59 chassis from their previous partner, YTO Luoyang 704 Factory, in an attempt to promote the mass production of the Jaguar tank and complete the project thoroughly with their own strength.
The complete burial of the Jaguar tank project was due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which caused massive chaos and led to a massive influx of Soviet equipment, represented by the T-72 and T-80, into the global arms market.
At the same time, the NATO group led by the United States also began to install a large number of newly designed M1 Abrams main battle tanks. The previous generation main tank M60 was retired and sold extensively to recover its last bit of value.
These second-hand main battle tanks have similar performance to the Jaguar, in fact, the Jaguar has a slight advantage compared to them.
But the extremely low price makes the cost-effectiveness of the Jaguar tank extremely unattractive, and the expected international buyers no longer exist.
At this time, the Chinese military had already lost interest in the 59 tank, and they had learned a lot of American tank design experience and advanced technology from their previous cooperation.
The modernization modification plan for the Type 59 tank has been abandoned, and the Chinese military has decided to fully promote its advanced main battle tank program… the WZ123 project, also known as the Type 99 main battle tank.
In this way, the death sentence for the project has been completely pronounced.
In 1994, Cadillac Gage announced bankruptcy and the company was acquired by Textron Marine and Land Systems.
In 1997, Cadillac Gage Textron officially announced the failure of the Jaguar project.
(So the 99A of China’s technology tree is actually a hybrid technology of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany, but the Soviet prototype is not the T72 but the Soviet T62 captured by China during the Treasure Island War. The German prototype is the Leopard IIA0 main battle tank, and the fire control turret engine transmission and electronic equipment are all based on American technology.)
(Addendum: The development sequence of Chinese tank equipment started with the T54A, and the Type 59 tank thoroughly mastered the relevant chassis technology and formed its own series. After the Zhenbao Island War, the Type 69 and Type 79 tanks were developed based on the captured T62, and new technologies introduced by China and the United States in cooperation produced the Type 80 and Type 88 tanks, with the final result being the 96A.).
(During the period of friendly relations between China and the United States in the 1980s, Germany had just completed the development of the Leopard 2 tank and attempted to promote it to the international market, including the Chinese market.
Germany has shown great enthusiasm towards the Chinese military delegation, displaying and allowing Chinese military personnel to access the Leopard 2 technology blueprint, but only for reference, and expressing willingness to transfer the Leopard 2 tank and its related technology intact to China.
This means that the complete Leopard 2 tank technology, including artillery, power, and other technologies, will be provided without any intentional modifications.
This proposal for technology transfer reflects the good state of China-Western relations at that time, as well as the willingness of Western countries to open up technology transfer to China.
In addition, the Chinese military has also seriously considered introducing the Leopard 2 main battle tank in history, which was very rare at that time because the Leopard 2 tank was one of the most powerful main battle tanks in the Western world and had long occupied the top spot on the world’s top ten main battle tank rankings.
The introduction of this type of tank had a profound impact on the development of China’s main battle tanks, and even in the famous Japanese war fantasy novel “Minsk Strike”, the Leopard 2 main battle tank equipped by the Chinese army fought fiercely against the powerful armored flood of the Soviet Union.
Although China ultimately did not adopt the Leopard 2 tank as its main combat equipment, this encounter undoubtedly provided valuable learning opportunities for China’s military industry and promoted technological progress in tank design and manufacturing.
In addition, in 2010, Chinese soldiers had the opportunity to personally experience and test drive the Leopard 2A6 tank during their training at the Mengster Armored Forces School in Germany. This tank is renowned for its outstanding performance and advanced technology, and is known for being able to hunt down any type of main battle tank in the world.
The exposure to the technology of Leopard 2 directly inspired the development of Chinese tanks and initiated the WZ123 project, which means that the 99 tank is based on Leopard 2 tank as a technical blueprint and parameter benchmark. It has to be said that the 99 tank has nothing to do with the T72. The only contribution of the T72 to the research of Chinese tanks is its automatic loading machine.)

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Unfortunately, according to historical facts, only the American technology tree has the Jaguar tank, and the Chinese technology tree does not have it.
The military cooperation between the Chinese and American armies is divided into two stages. The first stage is for China to provide the 59 chassis as the foundation and dispatch a team of engineers to assist Gage in completing their product… the development of the Jaguar tank.
The second stage is when Gage Company sends engineers to China to assist Luoyang 704 Factory of China’s First Tractor Group in retrofitting the Chinese version of the Jaguar, which is the true T59M.
Shortly after the completion of the first phase, the ‘honeymoon period’ between China and the United States came to an end, and military cooperation between the two countries immediately broke down.
704 Factory had already started the development of T59M with engineers from Gage at that time. After the cooperation broke down, Gage had to interrupt the project and withdraw all its engineering teams in China.
Subsequently, NATO included China in the list of countries subject to sanctions by the Paris Integration Council, causing a significant interruption in exports of products from European and American military industrial complexes to China, rendering the T59M program completely unnecessary.
After studying the situation, the Chinese military believes that the potential of the Type 59 tank chassis has been fully tapped and must research its own next-generation main battle tank.
So, based on the Type 88C tank, the 96A was developed.
And the Chinese cooperative enterprise 704 Factory, which was once involved in the Jaguar project, suffered serious losses due to the lack of orders for years. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, management authority was gradually delegated from the state to the local level.
Finally, the Fifth Ministry of Machinery Industry of the People’s Republic of China, which was in charge of military production at that time, cancelled the military production qualification of Luoyang 704 Factory and kicked it out of the Chinese military production system.
The Jaguar project in the United States has completed research and development, prototype construction, and full system testing, with only the final step of mass production and sales remaining. It is a prototype vehicle with a completion rate of 99%.
The Jaguar project in the Chinese stage has completely failed, and the expected product T59M is forever stuck on the design drawings, with no possibility of implementation,

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LOL no.

And I get a particular giggle out of how all the sources cited are PRC and CIS.

This is fiction.

how dare Chinese people write sources!

How sad, I wonder that this tank didn’t get the name Richard Nixon for Sino-American friendship.

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Wait do you actually think this is a fake program that America didn’t participate in? LOL

Here’s the Janes article on it (Army Guide copies them):

Here’s another: The Jaguar; Almost the Joint Chinese/American Battle Tank - Weapons - Military Matters

Because it was based on a number of developed components, the Jaguar enjoyed a very rapid development program. Cadillac Gage was provided with two Type 59 MBTs by China and by mid-1989 the prototype was complete and undergoing automotive trials in Detroit, while the turret was undergoing initial firing trials. In October 1989 the vehicle was completed and began trials. By all accounts, it performed extremely well.

Unfortunately, timing is everything and the Jaguar’s was bad. On June 4, 1989, the Chinese government cracked down on students who had been protesting in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for several months. PLA troops opened fire and tanks rolled in. An unknown number were killed, but the footage of the massacre shocked the world. The result was a rapid cooling of relations between the United States and China.

This was to spell the end of the military cooperation projects, though Cadillac Gage would continue to work on the Jaguar alone. The hope of building new vehicles in China may have ended, but Cadillac still believed that there was a market for offering upgrade packages to the vast numbers of Type 59 and T-55 tanks in service around the world.

What ‘agenda’? That a real vehicle exists and you’re dismissing it entirely because it’s partly Chinese?

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not bad

+1 for the US and Chinese trees! Time for friendship and cooperation!

This is silly and has no place here. We are discussing a factually known, commercial product tank being added to a game, not IRL politics.

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I am a Chinese player, but I also play on American ground vehicles.
I want to make the national vehicles I use more comfortable and add some more interesting vehicles.
Any problems?
We are discussing games and adding a tank that looks similar in performance to the T72 and T80 to the US tech tree.
You are discussing politics in inappropriate places and openly promoting racism.
Oppose for the sake of opposition, even at the cost of denying one’s own country’s history and the goods created by one’s own country.
ooops, It seems that you are also a person who discriminates against ethnic minorities in reality.
How should I put it:
Make USA-ground-forces Great Again!

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+1 from me, though I think only the US should get it. While it was a joint project with China, I see no evidence that they ever got one, unlike the joint jet project that happened about the same time.

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The 704 plant has the chassis of the Jaguar TA-2