The armoured protection of the vehicle is said to be able to withstand frontal attack from a APFSDS round fired from a Length 44 cal 120mm cannon.

These contain vertical ceramic tile’s, which are commonly mistaken as composite armour. Either side of the main gun are two distinct modular armour box’s. Judging by the lack of angled surfaces and the number of almost vertical surfaces the vehicle does in fact use laminate armour. A number of sources claim that the Type 90 has composite or laminate/composite armour. The Mitsubishi Steel Works and Kyoto Ceramic Company developed the armour for the vehicle. The suspension allows the vehicle to either lower or raise the front or rear of the vehicle to hugely increase or decrease the elevation of the main gun, which gives it greater fighting capabilities in mountainous area’s, which most of Japan is.

This is achieved by its light weight of 50 ton’s, it’s powerpack (Mitsubishi MT1500 automatic transmission forward gears 4, reverse gears 2 and diesel engine) which generates 1500 horse power and its hydrogas suspension. In late 2008 I sat down and drew up a chart comparing the mobility of all modern MBT’s using a 2006 Janes recognition Guide and surprisingly found that the Type 90 (shared with the Leclerc) had the highest rate of mobility! By 1991 the vehicle passed field testing and orders for the first MBT built with all Japanese parts, with the exception of the main gun, were made and first production models were completed in 1992, by the Japanese company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries under the designation Type 90 for the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. Further prototypes mounted the Rheinmetall L44.

The first prototypes were completed in 1982, first sporting a Japanese designed/manufactured main gun. Japanese Type 90 Main Battle Tank Developmentĭevelopment to replace the Type 74 with an indigenes design that could defeat the Russian T-72, started in the mid 70’s under the designation STC, which was changed to TK-X by the Technical Research Headquarters of the Japanese Self-Defence Force. It wasn’t until the mid 50’s that Japan started tank development with the Type 61 (heavily influenced by US tank design) and then the Type 74 in the late 60’s. Japanese tank development & production leading up to and during World War 2 did not yield any great successes or offer the same threat to the Allied tanks as the other Axis forces did.

Japanese main battle tank