2S38 Derivatsiya-PVO 57-mm SPAAG

HVAP was a WWII type, there was 1250m/s HVAP for the WWII 57mm anti-tank guns but just the 1000m/s APCBC for the cold-war S-60 the new gun is based on.

All the rounds for the AA gun need to be matched ballistics... if you want to fire an AP round at a high velocity you render the HE round ineffective, because to get it to that speed you lose HE power...

So, can be a 57mm shell be guided to destroy aircrat, UAV and other airbone target?

As shown on the chart above the smart fused HE Frag can be used against air targets out to 3km for UAVs and very light aircraft and 6-7km for helicopter sized targets, and so can the guided rounds.

The guided round probably has between 1.5 and 2.5kgs of HE as a payload so it should be quite effective against soft skin targets... like troops in the open or unarmoured vehicles.

Against stationary ground targets both the smart fused and guided rounds seem to be effective out to 15km... 4km for the anti armour round.

Single projectiles of volley fire systems, means the launcher is a volley fire system... ie MLRS.

The single projectiles would be standard rockets but also ATCMS.....

ATCMS is two rockets per vehicle.

Even a full volley of 12 rockets are not launched simultaneously there is normally a half second or so between each rocket.

The US doesn't really have anything like a 40 tube Grad system...

The fact that it says it can deal with individual rockets is like the British claims the Seawolf SAM could hit individual 114mm artillery shells.

It gives you an indication of accuracy and ability to engage certain target types... based on this information alone one could assume this system should be able to deal with Javelin ATGMs on a modern battlefield for example as well as most types of guided artillery rounds... which are normally fired individually rather than in enormous volleys anyway.

The increased cost of the guided round justified by not needing a large number of rockets to get the job done... we with this system you might need more dumb weapons to overwhelm the defences... but in the case of the US they will just use more of the expensive models... pushing them closer to economic collapse.

Missiles and rotary cannons are superior to slow firing autocannons against aircraft.

But that is just the point... rotary cannons are not superior to guided shells.

The main value of a rotary cannon is rate of fire... sending a cluster of rounds towards the target like a shotgun blast instead of like a string of bullets like from a machine gun.

The value of a rotary cannon is that a very short burst of a fraction of a second, will, in a fraction of a second deliver shells all around the point of aim and the point of aim is where the target will be when the rounds get there.

The problem is that point of aim is estimated based on the target speed and trajectory and the distance to the intercept point and the speed of the rounds you fired.

That means with a 30mm gatling gun firing shells at 960m/s, an incoming fighter plane that is 4km away moving a mach .5, means if you fire right now your shells will probably start hitting him at about 2.5-3km range... the shells are moving at about mach 3, but will rapidly slow down as they move through the air.

What is important is that while the fighter is moving from 4km distance to 3km distance it might climb or turn left or right or it might descend or it might speed up or slow down... or any combination of all those things, so rather than having a single point where the target might be when the shells arrive it will be a target box that could be quite big.

A burst of 200 shells however means spread of hits around the point of aim that rather fills that box... the more shells you can launch in a burst the better the coverage inside the box is, but against an aircraft you are more likely to get a hit than with an anti ship missile which is a much smaller target and would probably need several 200 round bursts to get a hit.

The faster the target is moving and the smaller it is the harder it becomes to hit even with very long bursts and pretty soon you are firing your entire load of shells and still not certainly hitting the target.

The solution is guided shells.

If the target is big like a plane or a helicopter then standard shells will be fine out to enormous range, but small fast manouvering targets need a guided round for any real chance of a hit and that is what the 57mm calibre guided shells offer.

Of a load of 140 rounds it might only carry 20-40 guided shells and the rest will be air burst HE and perhaps APHE for thicker skinned targets.

A small UAV could be taken out with simple air burst rounds most of the time, but incoming missiles will need guided shells to stop them.

Indeed... at 2km range a burst of 50-100 shells will likely hit an area 10m across... but it wont be a line of hits like you see in Hollywood... it will be a random scatter of hits... some of the rounds will just blow past the target and others will make solid contact and to be honest the gunner will have no control over individual shells so it will literally be hit and miss.

Air burst 30mm shells would not be useful against an Apache helo as 30mm shell fragments move fast but are not an ideal shape for moving through the air (like a bullet is) nor will it have the mass or shape for high penetration, so for troops out in the open or a light structured UAV it would be ideal, but for armoured targets like an Apache or a light armoured vehicle the fragments would simply bounce off doing very little damage at all, so against an Apache these rounds would be HE and HEI rounds that impact the target and explode on impact to increase the damage to the target.

A much more powerful 57mm shell could be used as an air burst munition, which means every shell would do damage rather than only the ones that hit directly, and the much heavier fragments would do rather more damage to any type of target.

For a small target like a cruise missile the chance of a direct hit is rather small so you would need to fire an enormous number of 30mm shells to get hits... air burst rounds would increase the damage done to the target, but it would still take rather a lot of rounds to ensure a kill, while the much bigger heavier calibre 57mm shells with guided projectiles and proximity fuses to ensure an explosion close to the target will make it much easier to get a result with a few rounds.

With airburst rounds the 30mm rounds could still be perfectly effective against light targets like UAVs or perhaps even Javelin missiles, but the 57mm rounds greatly extend the effective range, and will have ammo commonality with the new IFV 57mm guns which will likely include APFSDS rounds too... a scramjet powered model with the ability for limited manouver would be rather interesting...

The cost of optical seekers is quite low these days, and if you look at the model for the 152mm shells and larger calibre shells, they used a GLONASS guidance system with control fins with a nose mounted fuse, so instead of a normal fuse you attach this fuse to the nose of the round... it is a standard fuse so it should fit 152mm and 203mm shells as well as 160mm and 240mm mortar rounds too but it also has fins to steer the round to the target.

What they seem to be talking about here is a simple optical system like the one used in the Sokol-1 missile that can use basic target identification but can also detect a laser spot. Putting it in a 57mm shell projectile means it is pretty small and compact, so fitting that to an unguided rocket in place of a nose mounted fuse could solve the issues with accuracy there too.

Fire the rocket or 57mm shell at a target and shine a laser beam at the same time... as the round gets closer it will detect the laser and manouver to hit it.

You could probably design it to also hit targets that are moving like vehicles or stationary vehicles distinct from their backgrounds.

Of course some times the target is a large well spread out group of enemy infantry, in which case a good spread of a full load of unguided rockets is the best solution... those trees and bushes you are hiding amongst wont stop shrapnel.

If they can get it cheap enough it should be rather interesting... a cheap thermal sensor that detects the hot engine of a truck or car could be used on rockets in a rocket pod to take out a convoy of trucks with only one rocket per vehicle expended... with simple fuzzy logic so it can tell the difference between a truck or car with its engine running and a truck or car already on fire.

There are already guided shells. They're called SAMs.

The difference is efficiency... a BMP-3 can easily carry 40 100mm HE rounds in its ammo carosel, plus 8 separate missiles and a few hundred rounds of 30mm cannon ammo.

With this technology you could put a nose mounted fuse and control fins and a simple optical seeker on the HE round so you get a 15kg HE round guided to a point target out to 7km and still have room for two crew in the turret, plus these 40 guided shells plus 8 further missile rounds and about 500 30mm cannon shells.

The missile armed model of the BMP-3 carries Kornet missiles and it has about 12 including the rear hull.

Guided gun rounds are both cheaper and much much more compact and more efficient than missiles and ammo handling systems normally give them a higher rate of fire.

The difference would be even more pronounced with a 57mm gun turret and guided shells with perhaps 140 rounds per vehicle.

Imagine an artillery battery with these add on fuses... 70km range 152mm artillery shells with 40kg HE rounds against ground and air threats at about 15 rounds per minute... devastating...

Ooh, I thought the mention of 'rocket' was a translation thing but it could be they actually do mean aerial 57mm unguided rockets.

The classic Soviet rocket pod is for 57mm rockets

My understanding is for unguided rockets from the 57mm rockets that they stopped using because the small payload was considered not so effective, through 80mm, 122mm, and the big 240mm and 266mm rockets as well.

Guidance might make the 57mm rockets effective again, and bring them back as effective weapons of war but if the target is a car or truck I would think 80mm would be more effective and practical.

The Russian/Soviet equivalent was called Ugroza and was a special rocket... this seems to be something you add to existing rockets to turn them into guided weapons... a sort of cheap mass produced add on that can be used on standard rockets with the fire control system of the aircraft lasing the target when needed... which as you could imagine would be ideal for UCAVs or helos or attack aircraft or whatever... you could even add a rocket pod to a tank turret or armoured vehicle.

They have shown rectangle rocket pods for helos and aircraft and land vehicles.... this sort of thing has enormous potential... especially for making cheap rockets more effective.

News about SPAAG "Derivation-Air Defense"

The newest Russian self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (ZSU) "Derivation-Air Defense" received an optoelectronic aiming complex of Belarusian development. TASS on Thursday during the 9th international exhibition of weapons MILEX 2019 said a source in the defense industry of Belarus.


The combat vehicle "Derivation-Air Defense" is equipped with a detection and aiming system of OES OP developed by the Belarusian enterprise" Peleng", said the source.

According to him, the ECO EP provides a panoramic view of the area and a sector review that provides detection and recognition of air, ground and surface targets at any time of the day. “Thus, the Derivation-Air Defense will be able to deal with all types of threats on the modern battlefield,” the agency’s source said.



The new station also allows for the use of 57mm guided munitions. “OES OP is capable of controlling the guidance of a guided artillery projectile in a laser beam control channel. Thus, the Derivation-Air Defense will be able to use guided ammunition,” the source added. According to him, the station's sensors include a laser range finder, a television camera and a thermal imager.


OEC OPO electronic sighting system at the MILEX 2019 weapons exhibition :copyright: Dmitry Fedyushko / TASS

ZSU "Derivation-Air Defense" was developed by the Petrel Research Institute (part of the Uralvagonzavod Corporation of the Rostec State Corporation). It was first demonstrated at the 2018 Army Forum in August last year. The self-propelled anti-aircraft gun was created on the chassis of the infantry fighting vehicle BMP-3 and equipped with a module with an automatic gun of 57 mm caliber.

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