China announced its 12.7mm Duplex Ammunition

Chinese Weaponry Equipment Group, also called as China South Corporation, in October opened its newest Type DVD06 12.7mm Duplex ammunition through its one owned publication. This monthly publication introduced that the Type DVD06 12.7mm Duplex was developed since 1996 and finally pass the final designation examination in December 2006.

Chinese people admitted that the development of Type DVD06 is arose by Russia's AP series 12.7mm Duplex ammo, which was demonstrated on Abu Dhabi IDEX1994. At that time, QJZ89 12.7mm heavy machine gun just entered PLA. The duplex ammo will definitely upraise the hitting rate and firepower.

Type DVD06 Duplex cartridge includes front bullet, rear bullet, casing, propellant powder and primer. The size of type DVD06 is 147mm length and 140g of weight and its appearance are same with Type 54 12.7mm cartridge. After contrastive testing, Chinese experts believe that their Type dvd06 12.7mm duplex has better performance than Russian AP-I duplex series (see below table 1).

	Russian AP-I ICL Duplex	Russian AP-I-T ICLT Duplex	Chinese DVD06 Duplex
bullet weight (front/rear, g)	31/31	31/27	32/36
muzzle velocity (front/rear, m/s)	735/680	730/700	750/700
pressure chamber(M pa)	304	304	294
spread in 300m(cm)	≤50	≤50	≤45
Armour piercing performance	Penetrates 5mm rolled homogeneous armor @ 100m		Penetrates 20mm RHA @ 100m Penetrates 7mm RHA @ 1000m

DVD06 duplex ammunition can be used in PLA present type 89 12.7mm heavy machinegun, Type 85 12.7mm AA gun and type 88 coaxial machine gun for MBT machine gun. And dvd06 duplex ammo also can be fired in recently developed Type QJK99 12.7mm air machinegun, which can be installed on light helicopter for low altitude close air support.

The manufacturing of small arm ammunition is always considered as massive production in Chinese Military Industries. Under the theory of "Ammunition Generalization" for great consumption in ground combat, PLA has no interests on developing special functional or match-grade military ammunition.

Without high-precision ammo, China's Type 79/85 and Type QBU88 sniper rifles still cannot reach the spread level of Russian SVD (table 2).

	Type 79/85 rifle	Type QBU88 rifle	SVD
Spread @ 100m	4.81moa	4.10moa	2.06moa
Spread @ 800m		5.06moa	4.51moa

PLA's small arms are usually manufactured in limited 2-3 factories, which cannot raise a competing market and hardly enter global market. Chinese manufactures prefer to trace and copy foreign products and promote them to PLA. The DVD06 Duplex Ammo is a typical example. China's ammo R&D, however, is in a low level.

From 2006-2007, China has introduced some large caliber 12.7mm sniper rifles and organized domestic manufacturers to participate the sniper rifle competition in third-world countries like Pakistan, but failed for mediocre ammo.

China opens its 120mm Guided Mortar Munition

China just unveiled its 120mm Guided Mortar Munitions via a state-run magazine in beginning of September. This kind of 120mm guided munition can be fired from PLA's existing 120 Mortar systems. A typical Mortar company includes 6 120mm mortar system with additional laser guidance system (for frontier observer), fire-control computer (for commanding vehicle), synchronous communication devices and battlefield fiber digital commanding network.

Chinese official resource also describes the 120mm Guided Mortar Munition's operation sequence:

Step 1: When commanding vehicle receive fire request and the company prepare to fire in 60 seconds
Step 2: gunners receive firing characters from fire control computer and then manually load laser code, fuse mode and flight time through the setting button on the round body and finally adjust direction. Meanwhile, forward observers also receive these firing characters.
Step 3: The mortar system fired and flies to the target acquisition area.
Step 4: The forward observer designates the target with a laser guidance system and the mortar seeker begins to find laser energy.
Step 5: Seeker find laser radiation and lock the target.
Sept 6: By means of embedded impulse thrust motors, the mortar round maneuvers ballistic trajectory to impact the target

The specifications of China's 120mm Mortar munition can be described as：

Weight: 17-20KG
Kill radius: 20m
Range: <13km>5km
Fire-control computer weight: 1-3kg
Computing time: 1 second

Chinese resources said that the seeker is a simplified device also installed on 122mm, 152mm and 155mm howitzer munition. For this reason , the 120mm Guided Mortar probably can not reach the declared 2-3m CEP but 7-9m because the seek is fixed on the round body head without a gyroscope platform.

Unlike U.S XM395 PGMM (Precision Guided Mortar Munition)'s DASALS (Distributed Aperture Semi-Active Laser Seeker) and Israel IMI's DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System) for its Guided Mortar Bomb, China's 120mm Guided Munition can not be ranged into so-called High precision weapon but competitive for cheaper price.

Clearly, China unleashed its 120mm Guided Mortar Munitions for overseas markets in Middle East, South Asia and South America. If Iraq or Hizballah militants can get this killing weapon in black-market, U.S. and Israel land forces will have to deal with a more formidable game.