The rifled gun can effectively ensure the stability of the projectile and improve the range by installing different numbers of rifled in the barrel. Most modern guns are rifled guns.
With propellant as energy source, barrel-launched weapons that fire projectiles with a caliber of more than 20 mm have various types of artillery and are equipped with various ammunition, which can shoot at ground, water and air targets, annihilate and suppress effective forces and technical weapons? Destroy various fortifications and other facilities, destroy various armored targets, and complete other special shooting tasks.
Artillery can be divided into ground suppression guns, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, tank guns, aviation guns, naval guns and coastal guns according to their uses. Among them, ground suppression artillery includes cannons, howitzers, cannon howitzers and mortars, and some countries also include rockets. Anti-tank guns include anti-tank guns and recoilless guns. According to the ballistic characteristics, it is divided into cannon, howitzer and mortar. The gun has low trajectory, long barrel and high muzzle velocity, generally less than 45. It is suitable for shooting armored targets, vertical targets and long-range targets with fixed or sub-packed shells and modified charges. Anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, tank guns, aviation guns, naval guns and coastal guns all have the ballistic characteristics of artillery. The howitzer has curved trajectory, short barrel, low muzzle velocity and shooting angle of 75. It is suitable for shooting horizontal targets with sub-packed shells, with large modified charge and great ballistic maneuverability. Mortar trajectory is curved, barrel is short, muzzle velocity is low, shooting angle is 45 ~ 85, and there are a lot of disguised charges, which are suitable for shooting targets behind bunkers. According to the movement mode, it can be divided into self-propelled artillery, towed artillery, mule-horse towed artillery and mule-horse loaded artillery. According to the structure of gun bore, it can be divided into linear gun and smooth gun.
As early as the Spring and Autumn Period, China had already used a projectile weapon-fire. At the latest, after gunpowder was used in the military in the 10 century, it was used to eject gunpowder packs and shells. At the latest in the Yuan Dynasty, China had produced the oldest firearms. /kloc-after gunpowder and firearms spread from China to the west in the 3rd century, artillery began to develop in Europe. /kloc-in the first half of the 0/4th century, Europe began to manufacture artillery that fired stone bullets. In order to improve the adaptability of artillery firepower, modern artillery is equipped with various long-range grenades, anti-tank mines, anti-tank submunitions, artillery-guided projectiles, chemical projectiles and nuclear bombs (see nuclear weapons) in addition to ordinary grenades, armor-piercing projectiles, flares and smoke bombs, so that artillery can suppress and destroy various targets ranging from several hundred meters to tens of thousands of meters.
smoothbore cannon
A musket means that there is no rifling in the barrel. Generally, the caliber of this gun is not very large, but it can launch gun-launched missiles at low cost.
The main difference between a smooth-bore gun and a line-bore gun lies in the rifling, and the main function of the rifling is to give the warhead the ability to rotate, so that the warhead can still maintain the established direction after being shot under the action of centripetal force, thus improving the hit rate.
Early guns were basically smoothbore guns, because it was difficult to cast rifling in the barrel. /kloc-At the beginning of the 8th century, with the improvement of manufacturing technology, rifled guns began to develop, and gradually replaced the status of smooth-bore guns because of the substantial increase in hit rate. 19 18 years, Britain developed 8 1mm mortar. In this family's mortars, because they need to slide to the bottom of the gun by their own weight, hit the needle at the bottom of the gun, and then ignite the projectile to fly away from the muzzle, they have always used the smoothbore barrel. In addition, most guns use rifled barrels.
In fact, in order to improve the hit rate, smoothbore guns can also use shells with tails to achieve high hit effect, just like mortar shells. The firing pressure and temperature of mortar are relatively low, and the tail of the shell is also convenient to manufacture. However, in the large-caliber howitzer with high firing pressure and temperature, it is necessary to use expensive materials to make the tail. This greatly increases the launch cost. Therefore, in all kinds of large-caliber howitzers mainly used for long-range fire suppression, the barrel with low launch cost is always used.
However, after World War II, with the continuous improvement of the status of the tank family in the world military, all countries began to vigorously develop tanks, among which the artillery loaded on the tanks was comprehensively studied. Due to a lot of experience in tank warfare in World War II, when researching and designing new tanks, all countries think that the main opponent of tanks is still tanks. Therefore, how to find ways to improve the power of domestic tank guns and make them have an advantage in future tank games has become the main task of tank designers in various countries. In this research topic, the smooth-bore gun with higher initial firing speed began to enter the designer's sight. The new type of tail-stabilized shell-piercing gun has the characteristics of high initial velocity and good ballistic stability, which can give the armor-piercing projectile higher kinetic energy and has obvious advantages over the rifle gun in countering the increasingly thickened tank armor.
At present, 120 mm smoothbore guns are basically used in western countries among the tank families in the world, among which 120 mm RH smoothbore guns of Rheinmetall Company of Germany are the most prominent, and almost become the general guns of the third generation main battle tanks in the west. The 2A46 series 125mm sliding-bore tank guns developed by the former Soviet Union are also world-famous, with more than 65,438+10,000 guns.
At present, there are 125mm and 120mm muskets equipped in China. The former has two series: 48 times caliber and 50 times caliber. It was developed on the basis of the former Soviet T72 main battle tank 2A46 125mm smoothbore gun, but according to official data, it has obviously surpassed the prototype gun. At present, the more advanced 96/99 series main battle tanks in China all use this kind of artillery. 120mm series is mainly equipped on Type 89 self-propelled anti-tank vehicle.
Smooth-bore guns are favored by many countries, mainly because they have many advantages over line-bore guns:
1. First of all, the musket has no rifling, so the production process is simple and the price is low. At the same time, because there is no rifling wear, its barrel life is longer than that of the rifled gun (of course, the high rifling pressure of the smoothbore gun offsets some advantages in life).
2. Because there is no problem that the rifling gun is easy to crack due to the stress concentration at the root of the rifling, the smooth-bore gun can bear higher rifling pressure, which is of great help to improve the muzzle velocity and range of the projectile. However, in order to obtain high muzzle velocity, rifled guns must pay higher rifling pressure, longer barrel length and greater rifling wear, which are limited for tank guns.
3. In order to enable rifled guns to launch APF SD, some countries are equipped with sliding elastic belts to make APF SD unable to rotate. However, due to the poor sealing performance of this structure and the gap of bore pressure, it is difficult to obtain a high muzzle velocity like a musket. The muzzle velocity of China 125 musket is close to 1800 m/s, while the muzzle velocity of L30 on British Challenger 2 is only about 1500 m/s ... and a higher muzzle velocity is very important for modern APFSDS (kinetic energy bomb).
Rifle has obvious shortcomings, but it also has its own advantages:
First of all, rifled guns can fire almost all kinds of existing bombs, and the main types of muskets are only APFSDS and HEAT. The grenades fired by infantry guns have great destructive power to all kinds of hard military targets on the battlefield, but the effect of APFSDS and HEAT is not ideal. Therefore, in the face of various combat tasks on the battlefield, the rifled gun has stronger adaptability.
Secondly, the shell fired by the rifled gun rotates at high speed in flight, and the rotation can maintain axial stability, which is less affected by airflow/wind.
Therefore, it is easier for projectiles to maintain stable direction and higher accuracy in long-range attacks, which is especially beneficial to armor-piercing projectiles and grenades. However, because the stability of the smooth-bore gun is maintained by the tail wing, the accuracy is worse than that of the rifled gun in long-range attack.
From the above brief introduction, we can see that the rifled gun and the smoothbore gun have their own advantages and disadvantages. However, with the rapid development of composite armor and reactive armor, the ability of modern main battle tanks to resist metal jets (armor piercing projectiles and anti-tank missiles) has been greatly improved. Therefore, the armor-piercing projectile /APF SD with stable tail has become the most important type of modern western main battle tanks, and the smoothbore gun has many advantages in launching APF SD. At the same time, tank artillery is a direct weapon with low trajectory, and anti-tank operation is its primary task, while long-range fire suppression should be the task of artillery. In addition, modern muskets can also launch tail-stabilized grenades, so the advantages of linear muskets over muskets are not obvious. Among the new generation of main battle tanks in various countries, only Challenger series tanks in Britain and Middle East countries and Arjun in India have adopted 120mm rifle, and all other countries have adopted this rifle without exception. It is reported that Britain also has plans to replace the L30 rifle on Challenger 2 with its own rifle or the German L55 rifle in the future. Therefore, it can be said that it is the general trend to replace step guns with muskets in the future, and muskets undoubtedly represent tanks.
As early as 1950s, the Soviet Union put forward the concept of the first generation of tanks launching missiles in 1957. The United States began to develop tank-launched missiles from 1958; And successfully developed the world's earliest tank-launched missile "oak stick", using infrared guidance, but the effect is poor. In the 1980s, due to the complexity of missile technology, the cost of missile research was much higher than that of conventional artillery shells, and the development of tank fire control system and advanced photoelectric sensors could also achieve the effect of guiding artillery shells, so western countries gradually gave up the development of tank-launched missiles. Only the Soviet Union has always insisted on developing gun-launched missiles. Later, Sweden, India and Israel studied and equipped gun-launched missiles.