The ZBD2000 Infantry Fighting Vehicle is the PLA’s Marine Corp’s most recent armour addition. it’s a more up to date design, doing away with the traditional boat shaped hull pushing through water, but rather skimming across water thanks to a hydraulically-actuated bow and transom flaps. When the bow and flaps are brought in to line by the hydraulics with the hull bottom, creating a flat surface, which raises the front end of the vehicle out of the water whilst travelling at higher speeds, which is provided by way of two water jets.
The added speed also means the vehicle can travel a greater distance from its amphibious launch ship to the shoreline, pushing these ships out of harms way from the reach of costal defence equipment/emplacements.
The ZBD2000 Infantry Fighting Vehicle Variants:
The Infantry Fighting Vehicle carries 6 to 10 fully equipped marines. They disembark from the rear of the vehicle through a door. Its crewed with the driver sitting in front of the turret, which the commander and gunner man. Its main armament is a 30mm cannon. It also has an ATM launcher on the turret.
There is a command vehicle, but not much is not known about this vehicle.
The Light Tank is equipped with a fully-stabilised 105mm rifled main gun, which has the capability to fire armour piercing fin stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) and high explosive (HE), with the added bonus of firing a laser beam riding ATM.
The turret has a coaxial 7.62mm MG for close encounters and a turret roof mounted 12.7mm MG for AA support. A bank of four smoke grenade launchers is mounted either side of the main gun. It has a modern FCS system (laser range finder & night vision equipment) and GPS. The crew has the addition of a loader who is also located in the turret and operates the 12.7mm
Including the number of marines carried, there still is a lot not known about the vehicle due to the recentness (2006-7) of its introduction into the PLA Marine Corp.