China's land armaments giant has developed a prototype of a new turret system called the Red Arrow 73 Missile/30mm Gun Combined Turret Weapon Module (GCTWM).

The company, the China North Industries Corporation (NORINCO), is pitching this system at the new-build and upgrade markets.

The turret weighs 1300kg, making it suitable for installation on various tracked and wheeled armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs).

For trials, the turret has been fitted to the NORINCO WZ 501 infantry fighting vehicle (IFV): essentially, a reverse-engineered example of the widely deployed Russian BMP-1.

Its main armament comprises a 30mm dual-feed automatic cannon with a cyclic rate of fire of 300rds/min. The gunner can select single shots, bursts of three to five rounds and bursts of five to seven rounds. The day/night sight, understood to be non-stabilised, is fixed on the left of the turret roof.

The 30mm cannon is claimed to and a bank of three electrically operated smoke grenade launchers is mounted on either side of the turret.

The latest version of the Red Arrow 73 anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW), situated on the turret roof to the right, allows the operator to engage tanks and AFVs at long range. This ATGW has been in production in China for some years.

The Red Arrow 73 is a further development of Russia's Kolomna KBM 9K11 Malyutka but upgraded from the original manual command-to-line-of-sight to a new semi-automatic command-to-line-of-sight guidance system. NORINCO claims it has a 90% hit probability at a maximum range of 3,000m.

This system can fire all Red Arrow 73 ATGW types, including the latest version fitted with a tandem HE anti-tank warhead to defeat targets fitted with explosive reactive armour (ERA). NORINCO says this will defeat 800mm of steel armour protected by ERA.