The hull and turret are of all-welded steel armour. The Type 99A has a crew of three with the driver located at the front center of the hull and two crew members are seated in the turret, with the gunner on the left and the commander on the right. The design of the Type 99A is very similar to Russian main battle tanks with the driver's compartment at the front, fighting compartment and turret in the center and power pack at the rear. Five smoke grenade dischargers are fitted on each side at the front of the turret.

Second armament includes one 7.62mm Type 86 coaxial machine gun mounted to the right of the 125 mm cannon and one 12.7 mm QJC Type 88 heavy machine gun mounted on the commanders cupola. A total of four missiles are normally carried. More recently an improved tandem HEAT warhead has been developed by Russia to defeat MBTs fitted with explosive reactive armour. The missile is fitted with a High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) warhead that is claimed to penetrate up to 700 mm of conventional steel armour. According to some military sources, the Russian missile is manufactured in China under license. The Type 99A can also fire a laser-guided missile from its 125 mm/50 caliber smoothbore gun similar to the Russian-made 9M119M Refleks Anti-Tank Guided Missile which has a maximum firing range of 5,000 m. Once the weapon has fired the stub cases are ejected through a door in the rear of the turret that opens to the left. The 50 caliber 125 mm cannon can fire HE (High-Explosive) fragmentation and a new APFSDS (Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding-Sabot) with a reported muzzle velocity of 1780 m/s. A total of 41 rounds are carried, of which 22 are in the carousel of the automatic loader. The turret is fitted with a carousel automatic loader located below the turret.

Main armament of the Type 99A consists of one 125mm smoothbore gun with a thermal sleeve and fume extractor.

Chinas main battle tank