By Ravish Handoo
A routine field-firing exercise at the Hathazari range in Chattogram turned deadly on September 9, 2026. A T-59 tank suffered a gun malfunction during live firing, killing two Bangladesh Army soldiers and leaving an officer critically injured. The Bangladesh Army has not publicly identified the exact tank involved in the accident, but there is little doubt about the larger picture: China has been the dominant supplier of tanks and other major military platforms to Bangladesh for decades. What happened at Hathazari might have been dismissed as an unfortunate military accident had it occurred in isolation. It did not. Over the years, questions have repeatedly surfaced about the reliability, durability and after-sales support of Chinese military hardware supplied to different countries.
China has built a formidable defence-export industry by offering weapons that look impressive on paper and are generally cheaper than comparable Western systems. For developing countries with limited defence budgets, the proposition is understandably attractive. A modern tank, drone or air-defence system can often be acquired without paying the premium associated with American or European equipment. But purchasing a weapon is only the beginning. Keeping it operational for years, maintaining it under difficult conditions, securing spare parts and ammunition and, ultimately, trusting it in combat are altogether different matters. This is where the experience of some countries operating Chinese equipment has raised uncomfortable questions.
Take the Chinese VT-4 main battle tank. It is marketed as a modern platform equipped with a 125mm gun, sophisticated fire-control systems and advanced electronics. Yet in December 2025, a VT-4 operated by the Royal Thai Army suffered a serious gun-barrel failure during live firing near the Cambodian border, injuring its crew. Questions have also been raised about the operational performance of Chinese armoured vehicles elsewhere. Nigeria, Kenya and other users have at different times faced complaints involving maintenance, protection or operational limitations of Chinese-origin equipment. Such incidents do not by themselves prove that an entire family of weapons is defective, but they inevitably attract attention when similar complaints begin emerging from different operators.
The concerns are not confined to tanks. Algeria has faced problems involving Chinese CH-4 drones, while Chinese unmanned systems supplied to Middle Eastern customers have also faced criticism over reliability and performance in harsh desert conditions. Heat, dust, intensive operations and the requirement to keep equipment serviceable for prolonged periods can expose weaknesses that are difficult to detect during controlled demonstrations and defence exhibitions. A weapon that performs impressively during trials still has to prove that it can withstand years of operational use.
Bangladesh is particularly important in this discussion because its military relationship with China is neither new nor insignificant. Beijing has been Dhaka’s largest defence supplier for years, and Chinese-origin equipment is spread across the Bangladesh Army, Air Force and Navy. Its armoured fleet includes Type 59 derivatives, Type 69s, MBT-2000s and the newer VT-5 light tanks. That dependence has also brought its share of reported problems. Bangladesh’s MBT-2000 tanks have faced reports of difficulties involving firing and spare parts. Concerns have been raised over Chinese ammunition, while reports surrounding newer armoured platforms have pointed towards mechanical and material-related issues. A T-59G Durjoy was also involved in a serious incident during trial firing in Chattogram in May 2024. The September 2026 Hathazari accident has inevitably brought these earlier concerns back into focus.
The picture becomes more troubling when aircraft are considered. On July 21, 2025, a Chinese-made FT-7BGI fighter trainer of the Bangladesh Air Force crashed into a school campus in Dhaka. At least 35 people were killed, many of them children. It was a national tragedy and one of the country’s worst aviation disasters in years. An aircraft crash can have many causes—technical failure, maintenance, pilot error or a combination of factors—and it would be wrong to attribute every accident involving Chinese equipment automatically to its country of manufacture. But when problems appear repeatedly across different platforms and different countries, questions about manufacturing standards, maintenance requirements and long-term reliability become legitimate.
Bangladesh has also raised concerns about Chinese-supplied naval equipment and defective components. Yet moving away from China is easier said than done. Once a country’s armed forces become heavily dependent on one supplier, changing that ecosystem is enormously expensive. Training, ammunition, spare parts, maintenance facilities, technical expertise and logistics gradually become tied to the original manufacturer. Dependence therefore goes far beyond simply purchasing a tank, aircraft or warship. This helps explain why countries may continue buying from the same supplier even when complaints about individual systems arise.
The India-Pakistan confrontation in May 2025 and Operation Sindoor added another dimension to the debate. For China, the confrontation was more than a regional military crisis; it also became an unintended test of Chinese military technology. Pakistan has spent years integrating Chinese fighters, radars, air-defence systems, drones and other equipment into its armed forces. If there was ever a moment for those systems to demonstrate their effectiveness against a technologically capable adversary, this was it. India nevertheless succeeded in carrying out precision strikes against important Pakistani military targets. The ability of Indian weapons to penetrate defended areas and strike airbases and other military infrastructure inevitably raised questions about the effectiveness of Pakistan’s Chinese-origin air-defence network.
No air-defence system can provide an impenetrable shield, and drawing sweeping conclusions from a short military confrontation would be simplistic. Even the world’s most advanced air-defence networks can be overwhelmed, deceived or penetrated. But military equipment is ultimately purchased for precisely such moments. When hostile missiles, drones or aircraft are approaching, catalogue specifications cease to matter. What matters is whether the system detects the threat, tracks it correctly and prevents it from reaching its target. Operation Sindoor therefore gave military analysts another opportunity to examine how Chinese-origin equipment performs when confronted by a capable adversary rather than during exercises or demonstrations.
At the same time, Operation Sindoor highlighted India’s growing ability to develop, manufacture and deploy sophisticated military systems of its own. The BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was among the most prominent examples. Jointly developed by India and Russia and increasingly manufactured within India’s defence-industrial ecosystem, BrahMos has evolved from a prestigious missile programme into an operational weapon as well as an export product. Its reported employment against Pakistani military targets during Operation Sindoor gave the missile something no advertisement can buy: combat credibility.
That distinction matters enormously in the international arms market. Countries do not buy weapons merely because their specifications are impressive. They want to know whether the weapon actually works under operational conditions, whether ammunition will arrive when required, whether spare parts will remain available years later and whether the manufacturer will continue supporting the system after the initial contract has been signed. Combat experience can therefore influence the reputation of a weapon far more profoundly than a demonstration at an international defence exhibition.
India’s ATAGS artillery programme reflects the same change taking place in the country’s defence industry. Developed in India with significant participation from the private sector, including the Kalyani Group, the Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System has attracted attention beyond India’s borders. Armenia’s growing defence relationship with India is particularly significant. It has purchased Indian military equipment and continued to explore additional acquisitions. In the defence business, a customer returning for more equipment can sometimes say more about a weapon than an elaborate marketing campaign.
None of this means that every Chinese weapon is poor or that every Indian system is automatically superior. China possesses one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated defence-industrial bases, and the People’s Liberation Army operates technologies that cannot simply be equated with every export model sold abroad. Military equipment also fails in every country. American, Russian, European and Indian systems have all suffered accidents, technical failures and operational setbacks. The more important issue is whether a pattern begins to emerge and how manufacturers respond when problems are discovered.
When similar concerns begin appearing across tanks, drones, aircraft, ammunition and naval equipment supplied to different countries, they deserve closer examination. Competitive pricing can win a defence contract, but price alone cannot compensate indefinitely for weak maintenance support, unreliable components, shortages of spare parts or equipment that struggles under demanding operational conditions. This may ultimately be one of China’s biggest challenges as an arms exporter. Beijing has already demonstrated that it can manufacture weapons in enormous numbers and sell them aggressively across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. What it must demonstrate just as consistently is that those weapons remain dependable after years of service and, more importantly, when they are finally taken into battle.
For the soldier inside a tank, the pilot in a cockpit or the sailor aboard a warship, this is not an academic debate about geopolitics or defence marketing. A weapon is trusted with a person’s life. The two soldiers killed at Hathazari were participating in what should have been a routine military exercise. Their deaths are a reminder that the true value of military hardware is not established at an arms exhibition, in a glossy catalogue or by the specifications printed beside it. It is established on the firing range and, ultimately, on the battlefield. That is where the brochure ends and the real test begins.
