ZSU-23-4 and ZU-23-2 AA Guns: Views

Not really new, during the soviet invasion of afghanistan ZU-23 towed gun mounts were lashed to the flatbed rear of ural trucks to provide serious fire power when needed... normally with no extra armour at all.

A smaller lighter jeep like vehicle with remote control rear flat bed mounted twin 23mm cannon would be a very good solution too... especially if the ammo feed was rejiggered to allow several hundred or even thousand rounds for each gun to be loaded in place in enlarged ammo magazines fitted to the gun mount so the crew did not need to leave the cabin to reload.

they have learnt a lot in Syria, and its now obvious from this that they see how useful AA guns can be in direct fire role, just like they designing a new lightweight anti tank?material gun which with its cheap effective rounds is what you want in a prolonged war.

To be fair they have for some time used SPAAGs in the ground role... from the twin 14.5mm HMG mount in BTR-40s, through twin 23mm cannon on flat bed trucks as well as Shilka platforms and ZSU-57-2 vehicles and Tunguska vehicles they already have a good history of dual use AA guns as devastating weapons in the ground support role.

Together with the 30mm cannon equipped BMPs and well as 73mm gun armed BMPs for heavier HE direct fire power led to the BMP-3 with both 30mm cannon fire power and 100mm direct and indirect fire HE fire power there is no shortage of fire power in Russian units...

Their 120mm mortar units have been pretty famous since WWII and also providing serious front line fire power, together of course with devastating artillery in the form of Grad rocket batteries.

Airburst rounds in 23mm is impressive....

Not just that, the 23mm cannon shell from the 23 x 152mm high velocity Shilka SPAAG and ZU-23 towed cannon is also used in the 23 x 115mm gun used in the tail gun of the Tu-22M3 and Il-76 type aircraft as well as the chin turret gun of the later model HInds.

The smaller propellant capacity means lower recoil, allowing a massive rate of fire at the cost of a low muzzle velocity of about 700m/s.

Rate of fire puts lots of projectiles on target at once even if they do take their time getting there and the smaller rounds means more ready to fire rounds can be carried on a give vehicle.

Equally interesting there is a version of the KPV 14.5mm HMG that can easily be converted to the KPVB in 23 x 115mm (from 14.5 x 114mm) which would be a single barrel machine gun with a 600 rpm rate of fire that would allow very short bursts or single shots to be fired easily enough (when you have airburst ammo you don't need an enormous rate of fire... but ironically in air defence you have your target box which is a theoretical box ahead of a moving target where the target will be when the shells fired at it arrive. For a stationary hovering target its target box would be its own dimensions where it is currently hovering, but even a stationary hovering target can suddenly decide to move so say the target is 1km away and the flight time of the cannon shells means those cannon shells will reach the target in 1.3 seconds... you can then extrapolate based on the known performance of the target where that target could move to in 1.3 seconds and that box which would include starting to fly backwards or forwards or left or right or climbing or descending or any combination of any or all of those manouvers... how far will the target move and draw an imaginary box around that airspace.

To shoot that target down what you need to do is fill that entire box with as many fragments as you can so airburst shells fired from 1km away in a burst of 10 shells spread around that box set to detonate in a scattered pattern inside that box so no part of that box is free of fragments... achieve that and you will assure your kill... remember your target might be the size of someones hand.

Now with 23mm cannon shells a target moving forward might slow down but will rarely head backwards and the chances of them climbing or descending are not high so you can concentrate your shots in directions the target is most likely to move but if they see you open fire they might drop down behind cover, but your shells don't fly straight and lobbing them over direct line of sight cover to explode in the safe area below the target will get a kill too.

The point is that airburst 57mm shells will have more fragments spreading over a greater area and the fragments can be heavier to deal with stronger targets, but 23mm rounds could be part of HMG loadout with an anti material 23 x 115mm version...

A SLAP round in 23 x 115mm would be very impressive.... you could use the larger calibre to have a heavier penetrator than used for 50 cal rounds which should enable the penetration to be maintained to greater ranges... the Europeans tried a 15mm anti material rifle based on the 14.5mm HMG round that could penetrate 40mm at 1km range so a 23mm cannon round based APFSDS round should do rather better, especially with improved propellants and penetrators etc etc.

There is a South African anti material rifle that uses a 14.5mm barrel for armour piercing rounds and 20mm cannon shells for HE effect on soft targets. I seem to remember the 20mm was the 20x99mm round or something similar, so a 14.5x114mm and a 23x115mm combo would be a vast improvement... especially with air burst HE rounds in 23mm.

I have my doubts if they can do a programmable 23x115 round, as the fuze is quite big considering the scale. I have shown the ammo samples for 23x152, and the guy who hosted the exhibition was obviously very proud of the fact calling that the smallest round of the type in the world.

Detailed cut of the newest 23x152 AHEAD ammunition along with modernized ZU-23-2M2 and anti-drone BTR.






Yup. That thing will work.

And just for the records. Take a look at the proportion of the fuze. It uses some 40% of the whole round. That is why I highly doubt if that will be possible to make 23x115. It is simply too small/short. Reducing the explosive charge or fragments load will inflict the round effectiveness in general. It is still the smallest caliber of the type in the world. Good enough to me