Original title: "artillery evolution history" of Rhine chariot
Korean K2 tank equipped with Rh-120/L55 smooth bore gun. Information picture
Not long ago, at the 2024 International Armored Vehicle Conference held in London, UK, Rhine Metal BAE System Land Group and the British Defense Equipment Support Center announced that the first "Challenger 3" prototype P1 had been launched from the Telford factory. It is worth noting that this latest "Challenger" tank abandoned the L30-A1 120 mm rifled gun that has always been favored by the British, and instead used the Rh-120/L55 smooth bore gun developed by German Rhine Metal Company.
Artillery power is an important performance index of modern main battle tank gun. When using projectiles of the same technical level, artillery with better performance is more lethal.
Compared with the classical Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun, the Rh-120/L55 smooth bore gun is about 1 meter longer than the former. With the lengthening of the tank barrel and the adoption of the new DM63 tail fin stabilized shelling penetrator, its armor piercing performance has also been greatly improved.
As the brand product of Rhine Metal, Rh-120 series smooth bore guns were introduced by the United States, France, Italy, South Korea and other countries. What's so special about it? What kind of development will be ushered in in the future? Please see the interpretation in this issue.
Come from behind and strive to become a new generation of "classic cannon"
On the battlefield, artillery was once known as the "God of War". Today, the form of war has undergone earth shaking changes. To what extent can the armored cannon, as a symbol of the industrial era, affect today's battlefield? In fact, from cannons to rockets, from mortars to tank guns, artillery has never been absent from the modern battlefield.
For the tank, artillery is the embodiment of its powerful combat power, and is also the most important part of the tank. Thanks to the blessing of artillery, the tank has gradually developed from a "mobile fort" in the early days of its invention to a "mobile fort", which is more lethal in the battlefield.
The tank gun is different from the conventional gun. It emphasizes the armor piercing ability and requires high accuracy, especially the first round hit rate. Jason Fleming, a British military expert, said: "Only a country with the world's top industrial level can build a qualified tank gun." The tank gun is the "ceiling" of related industrial manufacturing fields because of its complex forging process and technical difficulties. Its development not only tests the military level, but also has strict requirements for a country's heavy industry level. At present, only a few countries in the world have the ability to independently develop tank guns.
As an inventor of tanks, Britain was a pioneer in the field of tank guns. The L7 series 105mm rifled gun produced by the British Royal Arsenal is recognized as a "classic gun", and the main battle tanks of most western countries have been equipped with this gun. Compared with Britain, Germany started the development of tank guns later but came from behind. The Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun of Rhine Metal is beyond the "classic gun".
After World War II, Germany was divided into two parts, and West Germany was at the forefront of the confrontation between the two sides in the Cold War. For this reason, West Germany urgently needed an aggressive main battle tank to counter the heavy armor of the Soviet Union. "How to turn tanks into real offensive weapons?" This became an urgent problem for West German military enterprises at that time. Relying on the successful experience of developing "Carl" heavy mortar, Rhine Metal finally shouldered the burden.
In 1958, Rheinmetal obtained the production authorization of the UK's L7A3 105 mm rifled gun. On the basis of L7A3, Rheinmetal made bold innovations - increasing the barrel diameter, removing the rifling, and moving the smoke hole of the gun backward... With the help of the "German Gunsmith", the performance of the Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun has caught up comprehensively and is rated as the "strongest tank gun in Europe" by the outside world.
The ballistic performance of Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun is about 60% higher than that of L7A3, but its shell size and recoil force are almost the same as those of L7A3. Among the 120 mm caliber tank guns of the same era, L44 has the shortest barrel, the lightest full weight, and the smallest chamber, but its killing power has never decreased. The gun can also launch a tail fin stable sabot piercing projectile with depleted uranium alloy core, which can penetrate the front armor of all active tanks at that time.
Once the Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun came out, it created a series of new records and became the "best" product that foreign customers competed to buy. By the early 1990s, Rheinmetal's Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun had become a new generation of standard tank gun in the western world after L7A3.
Keep pace with the times, pursue greater power and never stop
The times are developing, and the rivals are also making progress. In 1990, the T-80U main battle tank jointly developed by the Soviet Kilov Factory and the Molozov Design Bureau appeared in the Red Square parade. The 2A46M-1 125mm smooth bore gun equipped with T-80U not only has high shooting accuracy, but also can launch a new generation of 125mm armor piercing projectile, with excellent armor piercing performance.
The breakthrough made by the Soviet Union in the field of tank guns put pressure on Rhine Metal. Rheinmetal decided to develop a new tank gun that could compete with its performance. At first, they planned to develop 140 mm smooth bore gun under the influence of the concept of "caliber is justice". Limited by the technical level at that time, and considering the impact of large caliber artillery on the recoil force, the number of ammunition and tank structure, we had to change to a compromise plan. The L55 smooth bore gun based on the upgrade of the Rh-120/L44 smooth bore gun came into being.
The tank gun is to be powerful, fast and accurate. With the same caliber, the L55 barrel is 1.32 meters longer than the L44 barrel, which gives the projectile longer acceleration time, faster initial velocity, longer range and higher accuracy. Compared with L44, this gun is unique in that it can launch a new type of DM63 tail fin stable armor piercing projectile, which can easily penetrate 770-800mm vertical steel armor at a distance of 2000m, and its battlefield lethality has been significantly improved. Remarkably, the Rh-120/L55 smooth bore gun adopts technologies such as barrel autofrettage, electroslag remelting and barrel chrome plating, which can fully extend the life of the gun, withstand the firing of up to 650 shells, and its service life is much longer than that of ordinary tank guns.
In June 2022, a new generation of German tank KF51 "Panther" was unveiled at the European Satori Defence Exhibition. Its Rh-130/L51 smoothbore gun made the world focus on its R&D company Rhine Metal again.
Upgrading from 120mm to 130mm is not just about making the gun barrel thicker. In order to improve the power of the new tank gun, Rheinmetal adopts new high-strength steel, improved chrome plating technology of the inner chamber, digital control technology, and larger propellant chamber space to enable the Rh-130/L51 smooth bore gun to obtain higher muzzle speed, longer firing distance, and better armor penetration. The gun is also equipped with a vertical sliding tail mechanism and a heat insulation sleeve, which can withstand a high bore pressure of 880 MPa. In addition, the gun is equipped with a muzzle calibration reference system, which can provide higher accuracy for tank continuous firing.
Compared with the Rh-120/L55 smooth bore gun, the power of the Rh-130/L51 smooth bore gun is increased by nearly 50%. The armor piercing projectile equipped with the Rh-130/L51 smooth bore gun adopts the semi combustible cartridge technology, which greatly increases the kinetic energy of the projectile when launched, and the armor piercing power is about 1.5 times that of the Rh-120/L55 smooth bore gun.
From Rh-120/L44 to Rh-120/L55, and then to Rh-130/L51, Rhine Metal has kept up with the pace of the times to bring forth new ideas. Although it has not reached perfection, its craftsmanship spirit of assiduous pursuit and excellence in the pursuit of greater power of artillery is worth reading by the world.
New Trend of Tank Gun Development
Throughout the history of tank development in the world, the main development trend of traditional tank guns is the replacement of rifled guns and smooth bore guns, and the increasing caliber. With the continuous change of battle style, battlefield environment and target characteristics, the performance requirements of tank guns in modern warfare are also increasingly high. Therefore, how to develop the next generation tank gun has become a problem that many military enterprises, including Rhine Metal, must face and solve.
The tank has the advantages of firepower, mobility and protection, and its development is also subject to the mutual restriction of these three elements. Although it is the simplest technology and lowest cost idea to increase the caliber of tank gun in order to improve the effectiveness of tank fire attack. However, the larger caliber tank gun will undoubtedly bring more weight, and will also significantly occupy the tank's protection and maneuver space, reduce the tank's shell load, and affect its fire sustainability. According to analysis, once the M1A2 "Abrams" main battle tank of the United States is replaced with Rheinmetal's Rh-130/L51 smooth bore gun, its tonnage will exceed 70 tons, and its flexibility in the battlefield will be greatly reduced.
It can be seen that changing to a larger caliber tank gun is not the best solution to improve the effectiveness of tank fire.
In the future war, the new concept tank gun may take the initiative in the war. Military enterprises have carried out research on the new concept tank gun.
One is the electromagnetic tank gun. It is an advanced kinetic energy killing weapon made of electromagnetic launch technology. Unlike the traditional gun, which applies the pressure of propellant gas to the projectile, the electromagnetic tank gun uses the ampere force generated by the electromagnetic field in the electromagnetic system to accelerate the metal projectile to achieve the kinetic energy required to hit the target. Compared with the tank gun driven by traditional gunpowder, the electromagnetic tank gun has a high muzzle speed, which can greatly improve the tank range, and can accurately control the projectile speed and range by changing the current; Its projectile is small and light, which is easy to realize automatic loading and reduce the burden of later supply; There is no flame, smoke, sound and recoil force, which is conducive to concealed operations, and can directly hit the target with greater kinetic energy, with great killing power. During World War II, Rhine Metal Corporation had explored the electromagnetic gun technology, but because of the limitations of the technology at that time, it failed to make breakthrough progress.
The second is electrothermal chemical gun. It is a development idea of combining electromagnetic launch technology with traditional launch technology that the high-temperature and high-pressure plasma generated by arc discharge and the working medium properly selected generate rapidly expanding gas to accelerate the projectile launch. Its advantages are high muzzle velocity, long range and high muzzle energy; The barrel technology of the traditional tank gun is adopted, which is relatively mature and easy to be popularized and applied on the basis of the existing tank gun; Using the power technology of the electromagnetic gun, it has a variety of power supply systems to choose from. At the same time, the requirement of input power level is lower than that of the electromagnetic gun, which is convenient for the miniaturization of the power supply system.
The third is the laser gun. It can use powerful directional emission laser beam to directly damage or disable the target. The laser gun is very powerful, and can be called the "king of guns". The laser gun can launch 1000 "light bombs" in one second, and light bombs are extremely powerful "strong beams". At the beginning of 2013, Rheinmetal developed a "Skyguard" laser gun. This type of laser gun can cut off a steel beam 1000 meters away. It was the most powerful laser weapon developed at that time. If you want to achieve greater transcendence in the development of tank guns, laser guns may be a more advanced technical idea.
On the whole, as an important weapon and equipment of the modern army, tanks will still exist for a long time. The battlefield is changing rapidly. Only by constantly upgrading the tank gun can a new front be forged. Whether Rhine Metal Company or other military enterprises, who can constantly innovate in the fierce competition, who is expected to forge the next generation beyond the classic "firepower iron fist".
