2S1 Gvozdika 122mm

Mir wrote:You guys had the Abbot till about 1995 but nothing new in it's place since then. The cuts in conventional forces have been brutal over the years, but for some stupid reason they want to up their nuclear capability!  

The abbot was de facto our AS-90, so AS-90 replaced it. They could have kept the abbot on as our 2S1. Swing fire/striker Anti tank vehicle was also a good system packet a punch they got rid of that as well many missed it, Russian equivalent would be MTLB armed with konkurs. At the time only 155mm towed gun (with small petrol engine) we had was used by the TA, (reserve forces). I believe it was phased out long ago now.

And as an ex soldier I can tell u in the British army we rarely got the fire support we requested, AS-90 were never available and our regiment never had access to it, and the 105mm light gun never could keep up being a towed gun it's good for static defense but when advancing we normally moved ahead and then realized by the time the gun had been deployed enemy had retreated or we had to.

How ironic because that 105mm gun was the gun on the Abbot, which was withdrawn to save money.

I remember at the time they said the smaller calibre round was no longer effective against new Soviet Armour so they were getting rid of the 105mm Abbot and relying instead on 155mm guns, but as you say if they still had towed 105mm guns then what was the value in retiring the Abbot because they clearly didn't eliminate that calibre from their inventory.

The 105mm round was also designed as a tank gun round first and foremost... it would be a bit like putting the 100mm smoothbore gun from the MT-12 towed gun on the 2S1 and using it as portable anti armour and direct and indirect artillery.

Ironically what perhaps they should have done was replace the Abbot with an FV432 with a 120mm mortar in the back... it packs a punch and would have good mobility and they likely already had the vehicles and spare parts...

I remember a few senior officers making comments on what the Russians had that we could do with. Mentioned was the following: 2S1, 120mm mortars, SP 120 mortars, 82mm automatic mortar, BM-21, and BTR-80. The later was far much better than our Saxon APC in every single way.

The really sad thing is that the British Army seems to have its procurement dominated by bean counters, and there is a vicious cycle where some huge task is set to really test the British military... like travelling 12 thousand kms and recapturing the Falklands, or going to Iraq and taking part in Desert Storm or going to Afghanistan for about the 6th time... and every time your boys come back mission essentially accomplished, the bastards in charge of the funds seem to think that was too easy, lets get a peace dividend and cut funding massively... and it is not like there isn't a lot of waste you could actually cut that would make very little operational difference but would free up money for things that would actually be useful and make the job easier and better and safer.

Note I mentioned suggesting using the 120mm mortars before I read your comments about them.

The German Army learned in 1941 the value of front line 120mm mortars and adopted them for themselves immediately too.

The old saying... the genius does immediately what the fool eventually gets around to doing too.

You guys had the Abbot till about 1995 but nothing new in it's place since then. The cuts in conventional forces have been brutal over the years, but for some stupid reason they want to up their nuclear capability!

That is the real kicker... having more tridents just costs more... it does not make the UK any safer at all... it fact it means they will want to get nukes on target in the UK faster to limit your ability to use those Tridents effectively, so it actually has the opposite effect desired.

As long as the UK is in HATO then the US will be pulling the strings and you can bet your ass that buying more Tridents was a favour to the US... essentially they are US controlled missiles so it is a sneaky way of getting more missiles pointed at the Russians.

I don't wish to sound rude mate, but the Russians really don't think about the UK all that much... if your government kept quiet and got rid of all its Tridents, I could actually see them dropping you off their radar and largely ignoring you most of the time... there might even be room for a bit of trade and cooperation...

But that is not the world we live in sadly.

Just had a look at wiki and it mentions the 2S8 Astra, which was going to be a modification of the 2S1 with a 120mm mortar, but other model vehicles were used instead including the BMD based NONA. There was also an attempt at a light anti tank vehicle called 2S15 which had what I suggested above, a 100mm smoothbore gun mounted in the 2S1 chassis but by the time it was ready for testing the 100mm gun was not ideal so they went with the 2S25 Sprut instead.

Maybe the Ukraine military could sell their 2S1s to the British Army in gratitude for those useless APCs you gave them...

Mir wrote: Sadly my own country's defense force (South Africa) is going down the drain rapidly, but if I were the Brits I would have taken the 32++++ billion GBP for the nuclear upgrade and invested half of that into a much better conventional capability.

Russia is really doing a great job atm in upgrading a broad spectrum of older gen weapons into something useful - and that includes artillery assets.

The cost to replace trident sits at £256Bn, and we know that will rise, and then they need new subs which keeps rising around £10bn each, then trident disposal, and sub disposal, training, any changes to maintenance equipment, sub pens etc, effects of Brexit on parts etc and we all know every project over runs always we could be looking at £320-350Bn for new nukes and four subs and the rest of costs mentioned. Complete waste of money.

@garryb

I totally agree Russia doesn't see UK a military or political threat, they know the UK military can only field a small force, and not sustainable for long periods on its own. It's air force, and special forces is the only think we have left, and a handful of subs armed with nukes which we all know they can't fire them without USA say so, and nukes are a paper dragon at the end of the day. UK is USA lapdog and that's it really. Our army is massively reduced, the new challenger 3 tank is a minor upgrade really no hard kill systems even, and they new IFV had become a very very embarrassing saga from being unable to fire on the move, to not being able to travel faster than 20mph, to severe vibrations causing troops to get motion sickness, amongst other faults and rising costs, and it's also not far off the weight of a T-72.

As I said zero support for troops on the ground, the light gun had it's uses, but the British army could have kept some abbots in service with a light upgrade and give troops much needed fire support in a self propelled configuration, it can take out enemy positions no problem. And as u said getting rid of abbot and still using light gun makes no sense. They didn't even give them to TA reserve forces sold off to other countries.

Mir wrote:That is just crazy man!!!

And I suppose there is not much the taxpayer can do about this?

Nothing at all, and now out of EU the UK can do what it wants with it's nuclear disposable program, which is normally canned and chucked off the north west coast of England where many old WW2, 50's, 60's, 70's munitions have been dumped.

Russia is really doing a great job atm in upgrading a broad spectrum of older gen weapons into something useful - and that includes artillery assets.

What we are seeing is that they have developed next generation systems to replace pretty much everything currently in service (eventually obviously.... not all at once), and to get it into service and into production and get the troops experienced with it they are adding a lot of it to older gen equipment so it gets into service faster, and they can test it out and see what changes or improvements need to be made...

This of course means a little way down the track these upgraded older items are going to become extra and perhaps available, certainly upgrading and selling equipment would be a good income for them and useful for potential buyers to get bargains and an opportunity to test this stuff and see if it actually works where you live.

and we all know every project over runs always we could be looking at £320-350Bn for new nukes and four subs and the rest of costs mentioned. Complete waste of money.

And all they could manage was a 1% pay increase and a thank you to your healthcare workers... but they get away with it...

The next time it is in the news it will be about serious shortage of nurses and healthcare workers in the UK because they are all moving to New Zealand and Australia and Canada for better money and better conditions.... something they could avoid if they paid them properly in the first place.

I totally agree Russia doesn't see UK a military or political threat, they know the UK military can only field a small force, and not sustainable for long periods on its own.

Not just that, but you are all the way over there and they are all the way over there... what are you fighting about?

The basic truth is that you are not, but you have to pretend you are to defend democracy and decency and that is why you spend all that money on defence.

As I said zero support for troops on the ground, the light gun had it's uses, but the British army could have kept some abbots in service with a light upgrade and give troops much needed fire support in a self propelled configuration, it can take out enemy positions no problem. And as u said getting rid of abbot and still using light gun makes no sense. They didn't even give them to TA reserve forces sold off to other countries.

The really pathetic thing I am guessing is that previously if you came across an enemy sniper position or machine gun position or small bunker the Abbot would be a relatively cheap and effective and efficient and safe for your guys way of dealing with the problem. These days I am suspecting Javelin would be the solution, which probably works out more expensive and less effective than an Abbot...

The Russians are resurrecting their recoilless rifles in the form of the SPG-9... direct fire HE rounds are just useful, and any other type of round carried just makes you even more flexible.

Maybe someone should tell these guys than in any nuclear exchange the entire UK will be reduced to murky sea water...

Or better still tell them they don't want to be your enemy and don't need to be.... the only reason Russia is the enemy is because the US wants you to have a reason to need them, and having a boogeyman enemy that is a constant and ever changing threat is great for sales of weapons you would not otherwise need.

If the EU wasn't busy fighting Russia they might do something terrible... like start trading with them instead...

For all Russia and Chinas evil machinations around the planet they both seem to be investing a lot of money to deliver energy to Asia and Europe, and also to provide road and rail and air and sea links between those two regions... pretty strange for countries wanting to invade Europe and the UK and destroy the west.

Cynical me... do you think Johnson really wants more Tridents, or did he have a chat with Biden and Biden realises US nuclear weapons need a complete overhaul and so called oil change and chassis straightening... and this big order from the UK is going to help pay for it... you would think the pressure to give healthcare workers would warrant more than a 1 percent offer when they will likely spend a third of a trillion pounds on a system they hope to never have to use...

Regarding that video... I see Uber delivers 122mm HE artillery shells now....

Was doing some digging around while reading up on the Serbian upgrade on the 2S1 it's pretty impressive what they did,
(allows the vehicle to deploy into firing mode in 20 seconds, an increase of 38% in range with the use of two new types of artillery projectiles, rate of fire increased to 6-8 rounds per minute, and with the new ballistic computers allows the 2S1 to use MRSI technique which multiple round simultaneous impact (MRSI), where a single weapon fires multiple rounds at differing trajectories so that all rounds arrive on target at the same time. Also a 12.7mm machine gun had been added with a small armoured shield for the gunner) see pic


Has Russia upgraded it's 2S1 to similar standard?

Also found the project back in 1980's when they put a 100mm anti tank gun on 2S1 called 2S15 Norov, it never took off due to better armour and ATGW. And the 122mm already has anti armour rounds. Interestingly Myanmar did a similar conversion using a 2S1 and a Chinese turret with a 105-mm cannon from the Chinese wheeled (6x6) armored vehicle WMA301 (PTL02)
See pics below




Myanmar version


Links to the 2S15 and Myanmar version
https://web.archive.org/web/20140421121231/http://alternathistory.org.ua/2s15-norov

https://amp.topwar.ru/156165-mjanma-pokazala-legkij-tank-na-shassi-sau-2s1-gvozdika.html

The only plus point I could see with this system is if they used the same gun as T-12, this would allow the gun to be able to fire:
APFSDS
HEAT
HE-Frag
And bastion ATGW
This would allow it to be a jack of all trades, destroy AFV, bunkers, buildings, indirect fire out to 8km, and longer range and tougher armour use the Bastion. The only drawback is the light armour of the 2S1 but they could add armour or caged armoured to improve it. The system might be useful where your facing light armour in areas where a lighter vehicle is more suitable due to terrain, heavy MBT have trouble in very soft ground, or maybe for artic areas where lighter vehicles are needed. The MT-LB chassis is well known for its good off road capabilities and amphibious abilities. This is looking at it now but back in the 1980's Soviets where looking at MBTs and ATGW as the source of destroying armour. The Soviets did a similar conversion using a BTR-60 armed with 85mm gun, this too could have been used as direct fire anti armour role and as artillery, as the calibre was used as both in Soviet army. And Cuba did mount a T-55 turret onto a BTR-60 giving anti armour role, although I felt the turret was too heavy for the vehicle, they would have been better making a light armour turret and using the T-12 gun to allow the use of indirect fire as well.

The key is what you want it for and where you are going to use it.

A PT-76 is not a fantastic vehicle against M48s and M60s, but in a swamp where normal armoured vehicles sink like a rock the amphibious PT-76 and even 2S1s go rather well because the enemy can only have amphibious vehicles too for which their guns are suitable for dealing with.

If you look at the VDV the 57mm ASU-57 was popular for a while but replaced by the ASU-85 because rear area vehicles were getting tougher and tougher and now they have Sprut 2S25 which of course has a 125mm gun which can pretty much take on anything.

Ironically the PT-76 could be useful with a 125mm gun or a new 57mm gun depending what you want to use it for and what it might face.

For instance in mountains the high elevation and trajectory and ability to change the propellent charge for a 120mm gun or 122mm gun make it vastly more suitable than a high velocity tank gun that might only elevate a total of 25 degrees.

Half way up the side of a mountain you are more likely going to see a group of enemy troops or an ATGM position than an armoured vehicle and avalanches and falls will probably end up killing more enemy troops than small arms fire... a 122mm HE round would be good at starting avalanches or blowing people off the sides of mountains.

The advantage of the T-14 turret is that it does not bother with heavy armour and is unmanned, so mounting it on a light vehicle would add serious capability to most vehicles.

The optics and other systems would extend the range at which targets could be engaged... the upgraded T-90AM can shoot targets 5km away while it is moving (target is stationary of course). The T-14 would have at least as good performance so even a light vehicle that could engage targets at that distance wouldn't need to rely on heavy armour.

Lack of armour makes them lighter and cheaper to buy and operate and more mobile so they can take shortcuts normal armour cannot.

d_taddei2 wrote:
Has Russia upgraded it's 2S1 to similar standard?

Hardly, as they have much better gear on their hands.
The principal modernization of 2S1 is something that used to be called 2S1M, and 2S34Hosta for some time.
They simply replacing the gun with 120 mm 2A80 mortar and adding a PKTM.

ALAMO wrote:

d_taddei2 wrote:
Has Russia upgraded it's 2S1 to similar standard?

Hardly, as they have much better gear on their hands.
The principal modernization of 2S1 is something that used to be called 2S1M, and 2S34Hosta for some time.
They simply replacing the gun with 120 mm 2A80 mortar and adding a PKTM.

I know about the Hosta but this a completely different use from the 2S1 and they never upgraded many. It's seems many 2S1 still in service and fulfills a unique niche for troop support and as mentioned above by myself and garryb the 2S1 weight has advantages over the heavier 152mm SP platforms. I don't think the 2S1 is disappearing anytime soon.
Just for comparison
2S1 - 16 ton
2S3 - 28 ton
2S5 - 28.2 ton
2S19 - 42 ton
2S35 - 48-55 ton (depending on sources)
2S31 SP mortar system 19.1 ton
So in terms of driving over weak/small rural bridges, bridge pontoons, transport by ships, and aircraft, weight does have an impact.
From this list only the 2S1 and 2S31 could be carried by Mi-26 (underslung) although in practice only the 2S1 could be carried due to the fact the 2S31 could only be carried if it wasn't carrying any ammo (Mi-26 max carry weight is 20 ton).

Modernization of the 2S1 self-propelled gun to the 2S34 variant was carried out at the Perm JSC Motovilikhinsky Plants. Instead of the 122-mm howitzer, the vehicle was equipped with a 120-mm rifled semi-automatic 2A80-1 mortar cannon with muzzle brake, as well as a modern automatic guidance and fire control system (ASUNO) 1B168-1 with auxiliary armament — a 7.62 mm PKT machine gun on the commander's turret.

The modern 2A80 mortar gun allows you to fire high-power projectiles, all types of 120-mm feathered mines of Soviet/Russian production, as well as 120-mm high-precision guided projectiles. The gun was provided with vertical aiming angles from -2° to +80°, and the installation of ASUNO made it possible to automate the control of its guidance in the vertical and horizontal planes. The car also received an automatic system of topoprivyazki (navigation) and orientation.

After the modernization, the effectiveness of the combat use of the 2C34 "Host" ACS compared to the old 2C1 increased by about 3 times. According to the developer, this result was achieved due to an increase in the aimed rate of fire from 4-5 rounds / min to 7-9 rounds /min (unitary shot, automatic recovery of aiming), an increase in the power of ammunition up to 2 times, an improvement in the firing mode (cooling of the barrel, the presence of an indicator of overheating of the barrel, the exclusion of gas contamination), improved conditions for the habitability of the calculation, a reduction in the preparation time of the first shot.

In addition to the modernization of the self-propelled gun itself, work was also carried out to improve the 122-mm ammunition used by 2S1. So, back in 1997, an active-reactive high-explosive 122-mm shell with ready-made rifling was developed, with which the maximum firing range of 2S1 increased from 15.2 to 21.9 km.

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So in addition to conversions to 120mm gun/mortar vehicles the original calibre has had its range improved... and has proved to be popular in Syria and other environments too that have led to them changing their minds about withdrawing the vehicle it seems.

Sounds like a useful vehicle.

This article is worth reading too...

The combat path of the 2S1 self-propelled howitzers began in Afghanistan. True, the tactics of their use in the Afghan war differed from the one for which they were actually developed — 2S1 did not fire from closed positions, but were used as assault weapons.

For example, in the operation to capture the base areas of Khaki Safed and Shingar, 2S1 batteries advanced behind attacking assault groups, destroying enemy resistance points with direct fire. This tactic, tested during the Second World War, significantly reduced the loss of personnel. Specially designated 2S1 backup batteries were also used for fire support in difficult terrain areas when escorting assault groups.

The rest here...
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