Most recently, I came across an article describing a Japanese 4th gen. tank model Type-10, which judging by the characteristics is not inferior to the Russian third gen. tank T-90. However, then I realized that in the world there is no country-buyer of modern Japanese tanks! Why is that?
In fact, the Japanese have never distinguished their tanks, simply for territorial reasons.
First, Right now Japan doesn’t have any potential enemy on the other side of the ocean, and secondly – even inside Japan itself a turbulent landscape that will render any tank useless. So basically Japanese tanks are not battle proven like the Chinese tank
In addition, after the defeat in World War II, the Americans literally disarmed Japan, banning them from having an army and attacking countries.
If you compare the tank Type-10 with latest version of T-90MS then the strength is nearly same, only cost of Type-10 much more: $6.5 million, the same cost of Israeli “Merkava” $4.5 million.
Moreover, the export of tanks has long been strengthened by real monsters of lobbying around the world.
At the same time, Russia produces cheaper and dangerous tanks such as T-72 and T-90. And regularly updating the performance time by time.
It is worth noting that Japanese tanks are also produced to their standards of small growth. So there is absolutely no point in overpaying for tanks of Japan, which have not been in battle, inconvenient and expensive.