[Official] Armata Discussion thread #5

The fact that both the HE round and the APFSDS round were displayed on the same table is no proof that they are both intended for the Kurganets gun.

But look at them. They both fit the same gun chamber. They are physically the same shape and clearly the same calibre too.

The 57mm S-60 gun round has a bottle shaped shell case that is totally different because more propellent is needed to move the HE round at higher speeds to make it effective. For shooting at aircraft then reasonable velocity is needed. The 23x115mm cannon used in the MiG-21 and MiG-23 and late model Mi-24s the muzzle velocity is about 700m/s so it doesn't need to have enormous velocities... the american equivalent is the 20mm round used in the Vulcan cannon... it uses a subcalibre round with a muzzle velocity of just over 1,000m/s... the Soviet round only moves at 700m/s because its HE capacity is enormous... they could have loaded it with a light subcalibre round like the americans did and their round would be even faster... but they don't want to punch small calibre holes in air targets... they want to launch bombs to blow bits of the target up with each hit and the low velocity means very very high rate of fire so they effectively get a shotgun blast of rounds all round the point of aim making hitting a fast moving target much more likely.

I think the HE round is certainly for that application, while the APFSDS round is for the other gun.

But we know the other gun is based on the 57mm AA round the S-60 fires and is not the same shape as the round on the table.

Seems to be the case indeed. High ballistic cannons are needed against fast and distant targets mainly.

Grenade launchers trade muzzle velocity and range for heavier payloads and bigger bangs... if you were in a BMP-2M and you saw an enemy helicopter approaching you wouldn't think of using your 30mm grenade launcher as your first choice... the higher velocity of the 30 x 165mm cannon makes a lot more sense despite being the same calibre. If the target is jinking and manouvering you would most likely use the Kornet missile to take it down.

LShO-57 is the only reference I have seen. Since it is not a high-ballistics cannon, I assume the 2Axx number does not apply.

The 73mm gun of the BMP and the 100mm rifled gun of the BMP-3 are not high ballistics cannons either but they have 2A designations... 2A28 for the 73mm gun which is just really a closed end SPG-9 recoilless rocket launcher really... if you looked at the rounds they fire they look the same..., and the 100mm gun is the 2A70 (sorry... recently been calling it the 2A80 but just looked it up and it is the 2A70 gun).

I wonder what the rate of fire of this weapon is, possibly way higher than the 2A91, in case the 3ОF91 HE round is used, due to the much reduced loads. That should more than compensate for the reduced ballistic performance in most of the cases.

I would expect the firing rate of the AA gun will be much higher due to the size of the propellent case, while this grenade launcher I would expect the rate of fire with the HE round would be low but the APFSDS round could have a higher rate of fire because of its much larger propellent content and high muzzle velocity.

Look closer to the picture. You could see low pressure HE round 3OF91 with short shell, as it has less powder to fire it. At the bottom you could see high pressure APFSDS round 3UBM21 with regular longer shell for high pressure guns. In front of it is displayed 3BM76 dart from APFSDS round. dart itself is actually to long to be placed in short low pressure shell.

the concept behind the western telescopic ammo is that the round for normal rounds is the same size, so a HE round has a bullet the same size as the AP bullet even though the AP bullet might be a small dart held by a Sabot. The idea with the telescope ammo is that a HE round normally does not need to be super high velocity like an AP round so in terms of capacity or shell volume a HE round might be 50 percent and propellent might be 50 percent, while in the same volume an APFSDS round might be 2% of weight for the dart penetrator and maybe 10 percent more the lightweight Sabot and the remaining 88% can be propellent because an APFSDS round is all about speed.

What the Russians have done here is say... well for our BMPs we had a 100mm grenade launcher with a huge projectile with a big heavy HE round with a small stub propellent case because when you are shooting at ground targets muzzle velocity doesn't matter but the weight of the HE shell does so dial up the weight and dial down the propellent as far as you can with it still getting to target. Their problem wasn't the 100mm though it was the 30mm no longer penetrates enemy IFVs at useful ranges and carrying 20 100mm guided missiles for any armoured target you come across is just not cost effective.

The solution is an old 57mm high velocity gun used by the navy and the army... it has excellent shell capacity for air targets and lots of volume for APFSDS rounds and even guided rounds, but the shells are big and take up room. The competition was a 45mm telescoped round. The ammo is more compact but there really isn't enough space for a guided round.

We also have a 57mm grenade launcher with straight walls and a small stub propellent case and a big long heavy projectile like the 100mm round but for shooting down aircraft you want reasonable velocity because it improves range. The S-60 round would have projectiles maybe a quarter the weight of the 57mm grenade rounds but the grenade rounds will only reach maybe 5-6km while the S-60 rounds could be airbursting target 12km away.

The solution for arming the new BMPs can either be the S-60 type AA gun with big ammo, or the 57mm grenade launcher... but the grenade launcher wont work because you can't fire anti armour rounds and a BMP needs to be able to shoot enemy IFVs with its gun and kill them... the obvious solution is to take the idea of a telescope round and take it a step further. The HE round is a big long projectile with a short stub propellent case. The chamber fits the round but you could use a different shell case with a much longer brass section the length of the HE round that holds the Sabot and the APFSDS round inside it along with propellent that fills the entire area where the HE projectile is on the HE round. It is taking the telescoped case idea and instead of applying it to a gun round applying it to a grenade launcher round.

Imagine a 30mm grenade launcher grenade... technically 30x19mm with a big long projectile and a short stubby propellent case... now imagine replacing that 19mm long propellent case with a much longer case...

Look at this page:

http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/special-weapons-and-ammunitions/special-grenade-launchers-and-ammunition/gpd-30/

You could easily have a propellent case four times longer... so with basically a 20mm case at the moment that means an 80mm long shell case... perhaps 100mm long propellent case... fill that case up with propellent and put a tiny dart in the front end held in place by a sabot... as long as the mechanism and barrel were designed to take the pressure you could have an APFSDS round.

I know what you are saying... you wouldn't need an APFSDS round on a 30mm grenade launcher... because the 30x165mm gun on a BMP-2 is already more powerful than it would be anyway... but lets say that 57mm grenade is 250mm long... wouldn't you agree that even if the 57mm grenade launcher round had the same dart penetrator as used in the 30mm APFSDS round or perhaps double the weight that the tube 57mm wide and the length of that 57mm grenade and propellent case in propellent is going to give you a very high speed penetrator.

It is not shooting aircraft so its grenade rounds don't need to be fast movers so the bigger HE capacity of the 57mm grenade makes the gun more appealing against the majority of targets. The only problem is that normally grenade rounds are not so useful against hard targets but this APFSDS round means it is.

The ammo is also more compact than the S-60 AA ammo which means more rounds carried in less space.

The S-60 round and more traditional gun make sense for shooting at air targets... less HE with more speed make sense against air targets and the much bigger case capacity and bottle shaped propellent case means even rounds that run the full length of the shell case can have propellent around them to blow them down the barrel whereas the straight sided rounds for the 57mm grenade do not.

except they are both 57mm grenades and can fire old 3OF91, because they look so different judging by their structure shown on the photos...

Keep in mind that even a 125mm shell only has a tiny stub case with a combustable propellent portion.

With a HE round you use the propellent stub which has a small metal stub and the rest is propellent and the projectile is basically a HE bomb... the autoloader loads the bomb and then puts the propellent stub in behind.

With an APFSDS 125mm round you still use the propellent stub... the same stub used to launch the HE round but the APFSDS round needs to move as fast as possible so the APFSDS dart with its sabot to hold it in the barrel has even more propellent around it so it effectively doubles the propellent with a much lighter projectile so the result is the APFSDS round moves at a muzzle velocity of 1.7-1.8km/s and the HE round moves at 900m/s or 0.9km/s.

This 57mm grenade is the equivalent of taking that two piece 125mm round and cutting all the propellent off the propellent stub and cutting it down to the metal stub and attaching a bigger heavier projectile to it. It means instead of moving at 900m/s it might be moving at 300m/s or less.

The target wont care... in fact a 30kg 125mm shell hitting the target at 300m/s will do more damage to the target than a 20kg 125mm shell hitting the target at 900m/s.

The problem is that sometimes targets are armoured and the only way to defeat them is with a penetrator and their solution for the 57mm grenade launcher is to take away that enormous HE projectile that probably weighs 6 or 7kgs that might have had 0.5kg of propellent to blow it down range and replace it with a 800 gramme metal penetrator with a 250 gramme sabot, which means the projectile is just over 1kg and the other 5-6 kgs the round weighs can now be propellent to generate the maximum velocity possible to make it penetrate armour to a decent range...

I think it is very clever.

That straight walled 57mm calibre round lying on the table is the same shape as the HE grenade round standing up... the difference is the size of the propellent charge and case but as with the 125mm gun as long as they are physically the same size these are both one piece rounds that should fit in the same chamber and ammo mag and ammo handling system and fire from a gun designed to fire the round.

In comparison for AA use such a heavy low speed round would be useless against air targets that are moving.

A grenade launcher low velocity HE round can easily still be made to air burst but it would make sense to destroy hovering drones or troops out in the open.... it would be useless for shooting down cruise missiles or incoming hellfires.

A higher velocity round like the S-60 round would be needed for shooting at aircraft all the time.

They could mix the 57mm guns in BMP units like they mixed BMP-1 and BMP-2 vehicles with a HE powerful 73mm gun and the 30mm cannon that was good for other things. The 57mm grenade launcher and 57mm gun compliment each other... the grenade launcher offers a much bigger HE punch, but the gun will deliver a good HE round to targets twice as far away... grenade to 6km and gun to perhaps 12-14km range. The APFSDS round for the grenade launcher would be effective against all sorts of light vehicles. The APFSDS round for the gun will probably be better because it simply has more case capacity for more propellent.

In the past the S-60 had HE rounds and AP rounds designed to be ballistically similar so you could mix different rounds in the same clip and both would fly to the same point of aim. With new ballistic computers they can have higher velocity better penetrating AP rounds as well as slower heavier HE rounds, and also some APHE rounds to punch into ground targets before exploding inside... very effective.

Air burst rounds are ideal for use against aircraft and troops with no top cover and of course small fragile drones so it would make sense if they have a command detonation system for 30mm cannon shells to also use that with 57mm gun rounds and 57mm grenade rounds... the gun rounds would also be used on ships and possibly aircraft too.

I know that there is going to be quite a few variants coming forward and in terms of SP mortar systems 120mm will be the main choice in the Russian armed forces, the 240mm tulpan is already SP and 82mm(in the form of 2B9 valselik will likely be mounted on various other vehicles. But I wonder will the 160mm be mounted in SP I know that it's still used in very small number in mountainous areas, could be a chance to mount it on kurganents or heavy ifv T-14 mounted system

The 120mm still hits like a hammer and apart from minor range increases or accuracy improvements I think it will continue to get the job done... I mean they were using it during WWII and when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union they used all they could capture and produced their own ammo and introduced it into service themselves because it has excellent fire power for its size and weight.

The 240mm takes that power to another level but that other level is at the expense of a lot more weight and much much heavier ammo... 130kgs is not the sort of weight any human could manually load with... the 16kg 120mm bomb is just the right mix of not too heavy to load manually but also heavy enough to do some serious damage.

The 240 was too heavy to take in to the mountains but while they could take their 120mm mortars fortifications in mountains sometimes needed a bigger bomb.

The 160mm mortar has a 40kg bomb which is very powerful more than twice as powerful as the 120mm weapon and the weapon itself is still able to be broken down into loads and carried by horse or camel up a hill.

The thing is that if you are mounting it on a vehicle heavier makes sense and lighter makes sense to but middle weight might not make sense so much.

Small light vehicles with 82mm mortars would be excellent platforms... especially with their battle management system meaning any ground or air unit could find and call targets, so having lots of artillery platforms around the place would be useful...  they don't need to be wheel to wheel lined up any more... you might have 20 vehicles scattered all over the place and a target called might get 6 of those vehicles in range so they all receive target data and their guns auto aim at the target and the propellent booster load added all ready to fire on command... all different distances and angles and different propellent loads... and when the command comes it will go to each in order so they don't fire at once but all their shells land at the same time so there is no time to take cover after the first bomb explodes.

Having 82mm and 120mm vehicles means more fire power...  240mm means very specialised heavy targets can be engaged... especially when the tube artillery equivalent of 203mm is not really widespread either. For the 160mm mortar the 152mm guns now fire 70kms plus with a shell of similar weight... soon 170km...

Garry sometime is not necessary to argue, i have provided the link to the procurement contract for that specific round in mine previous post where is clearly specified that the round is for the АПГБ

I am not arguing... merely trying to explain and even understand myself what they are doing and why...    

If someone mean an up-to-date medium caliber ammunition could refer to an AHEAD type with programmed (time delay) fuses; even more advanced than those are the new ammunitions with remote command for detonation where the onboard systems compute the optimal time and order for the detonation of each round while in flight toward the target's area in response to the variations of its position, at the outermost limit of the range of guns such as 57 mm gun the time of arrival to the area can be several seconds and therefore the increase in efficiency in comparison with foreign time-programmed fuses of previous generation is substantial.

The new methodology do not suffer the limits of atmospherical conditions.

Also being on the platform you can make the timing mechanism much more precise because it will not be destroyed in use like the timing mechanism in AHEAD type rounds... being in the firing platform you can also monitor the incoming target and your outgoing shells and just set them off at the best time as it is observed... rather than as part of the guess at firing.

Would you mind explaining why a bigger propellent content makes rate of fire higher?

The round exits the barrel faster and the recoil mechanism would be actuated more vigorously...

An MG-42 has a bolt made up of two components... one of which can be removed to make the bolt lighter and move faster which dramatically increases the rate of fire. The idea is that the same machine gun can be used against ground troops at a lower rate of fire but when firing at aircraft you take off part of the bolt making it lighter and the rate of fire with the same ammo goes up dramatically.

I would expect on an average machine gun replacing a standard round which is almost all projectile and only a tiny amount of propellent with a tiny projectile and an enormous propellent load will increase the speed the mechanism recoils. Assuming it doesn't recoil further with the higher speed round then the rate of fire should be increased.

Note with the Kedr/Klin submachine guns they modified one to fire the PMM version of the 9x18mm makarov round. The PMM had a smaller and lighter projectile and a bigger propellent charge... the difference was not enormous, but the weapon that used the improved round had to have grooves in the chamber to increase friction on firing to hold the bolt closed until the bullet left the barrel. The lighter higher velocity ammo increased the rate of fire by quite a bit and the effective range was described to have gone from 100m with the PM round the PM Makarov pistol fires to 150m with the PMM round the PMM Makarov pistol fires.

Of course it might cope with the higher velocity round by allowing it to recoil further which would actually reduce the rate of fire but odds are it will be firing 2-3 rounds per second anyway which should be plenty for ground targets and armoured targets.

The AGS-30 and AGS-40 both manage 400 RPM, interesting since the calibre increase between them does not reduce the rate of fire, this should point out to the barrel's load not being the limiting factor for them.

The 40mm weapon has a recoiling barrel by the look of it... I don't think you can compare it with the AGS-30 as it seems to use a different mechanism...

BTW, this link goes in detail and has valuable information on the topic of our discussion:

Just realised those line drawings of the 57mm grenade launcher ammo handler.... it is a chain gun... I think Russias first perhaps?

Anyway... it is important to show the different ammo of the three guns... one is a dedicated AA gun and uses  57mm calibre rounds from the S-60 AA gun whose ammo looks like this:



But the old ammo is obsolete and new requirements for air burst and armour penetration requirements means new ammo is developed including this guided round:



But one of the other guns as used on the PT-76/57 and will also likely be carried on the new BMPs also uses this round because it will have a potent anti armour round and be able to reach drone and air targets out beyond 8km with its gun.

The other gun is the 57mm grenade launcher that uses this round:



But it also uses the APFSDS round shown in another photo on a table that has the same external dimensions but has a large Sabot and tiny dart projectile and the rest is propellent.


The dimensions of the grenade above are not precisely known but the calibre is 57mm or about 6cms. Just looking at the grenade above the actual stub case is about 1 and 1/3rd calibre long... which would make it 80mm long. If you look at the length of the round where the calibre is full width it appears to be four calibres long which is about 240mm... so a telescoped round based on this round could have a shell case 240mm long that is essentially a straight walled tube 57mm in calibre that is 24cm long. The sized dart and sabot you could fit in there could be quite big yet still leave more internal space for propellent than a 30x165mm round could possibly fit... making it much more powerful... ie higher velocity and heavier longer projectile which should mean better anti armour performance...

Stationary targets don't require expensive guided shells, but moving targets can be hit with one guided shell that might take hundreds of dumb shells to hit...

Air burst shells are good for aircraft or drones but also enemy troops hiding behind frontal cover... for instance 3km away you see a group of enemy troops in Syria take cover behind a brick wall. You could try shooting through the wall but if they are far enough back from the wall they can move down the wall and because you can't see them they will be safe. Instead of you lase the distance to the wall and add 5 metres and then aim above the wall and fire you will have your shells exploding directly above their heads... the wall they are hiding behind offering no protection at all...

12cm penetration at 1.5km is rather good for an APHE round... that would penetrate a Tiger or a Panther tank from the front... and it probably has a rate of fire of 120 rpm...

That is also a good point too... with rockets being an interesting alternative to some types of artillery... not only existing ground based types of rocket artillery but also new aircraft rocket designs that will be fitted to light vehicles too and perhaps even unmanned ground platforms...

57mm and 80mm and 122mm rockets mounted in pods could be towed on light trailers or on the back of light wheeled vehicles for mobility.

They could be a low cost direct fire addition to some vehicles... for instance an APC might get a fire power boost to its HMG and rifle calibre machine gun light turret with a top mounted 20 shot 80mm rocket launcher used as a direct fire weapon against soft targets in the open, or perhaps a 40 tube launcher pack with 57mm rockets for use against enemy troops or barricaded positions...

Do we know what this new methodology is based on? It needs to control separately each round (there may be a relatively big number of them flying to the target), with minimum complexity requirements to the fuze and with immunity to EW close to the target and far from the command.

Information about the 30mm airburst ammo suggests a back looking light sensor that detects laser beams... induction coils around the barrel muzzle perhaps setting the frequency of the laser beam detected for each shell as it passes through with the laser then directed at the shells to set them off as they get close to the target... changing "colour" to set off the different rounds.

This is already used for guidance beams for the Kornet missile and similar weapons (Bulat) where the laser beam consists of quadrants of colour so when looking back at the beam coming from the launcher the missile can determine where it is in relation to the point of aim and can manouver itself to get back on target on its own.... a bit like the light and mirror system for landing an aircraft on an aircraft carrier...

I am not so knowledgeable to know just from looking, why do you think is a chain gun? What could be the reason for using a electric mechanism? It may indeed allow for very different fire rates for very different ammo as I was suggesting, otherwise I don't know. It is not like Russian cannons are not reliable.

Sorry, I am mistaken... for some reason I was thinking the ammo handling system used a chain drive.

AFAIK the Americans invented and are primary users of chain powered guns, which are externally powered weapons that have the advantage of being independent of ammo power or recoil and allow fully variable rates of fire.

The Soviets AFAIK have not bothered with such a design... for guns with rounds that fail to fire in the chamber they have side wall squib rounds that blow a hole in the side of the ammo propellent case wall and ignite the propellent manually if the primer fails.

Even most of their modern gatling guns are gas powered rather than electric motor driven.

Which makes them smaller and lighter and spool up to proper cyclic rate much faster...

From the loader patent drawings the APFSDS and HE rounds have the same size, ca. 35 cm long. In a very reduced space they manage to fit 180 rounds (117 HE and 63 APFSDS), substantially more than the Derivatsiya manages in a turret with full-hull depth. Very smart.

And that is the reason it makes sense... the grenade rounds are so small there is no penetration into the troop compartment unlike with the larger 57mm round, which needs the space under the turret for the much larger and bulkier ammo.

Not really, you can program a shell to explode after entering a stationary target like a house.

They already have SAPHEI rounds... in fact they have the RPO-M which blows a hole in the side of a building that then blows thermobaric explosive into the structure and detonates as it enters... where older models you need to fire the rocket through a window to get it inside or it would explode on the outside.

Smart fuses are already in service in Russia that detect how the target reacts to impact so a soft target like a house wall or soil bunker will delay detonation until the round exits the wall and is no longer meeting resistance, while a round which is stopped dead like against armour will set off a precursor charge to blow a hole through the armour for the main charge to enter and explode inside.

What is interesting with this compact 57mm grenade round it means they can have a grenade launcher with a very powerful HE bomb but also an APFSDS round more powerful than 30 x 165mm ammo so that 30mm cannon that was carried by special forces to use against MRAPs will clearly be replaced by a 57mm gun with the HE firepower of an 82mm mortar and the AP ability that exceeds a 30mm cannon and with compact ammo that fits in the turret it is mounted on so it could be added to an Armata tanks turret with external ammo for use against light targets that don't require a 125mm hit out to 6km or so. It could also be fitted to a BRDM-2 type vehicle offering more HE fire power and more AP fire power than a 30mm cannon but without penetrating into the hull... so you could still have a couple of troops in the BRDM-2 as well as the equivalent of an 82mm mortar and an AP round more powerful than a 30mm cannon can fire.... awesome.

Like a scaled down Vasilek auto mortar... with a more powerful bomb and an APFSDS round as well.