125mm vs 120mm tank guns?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I have been doing searches but came up with nothing.

In any case, I was hoping to find technical comparisons between the German Rheinmetall L55 120mm and the Russian 2A46M 125mm guns. Vasiliy Fofanov's page doesn't say much on the 2 guns so I was hoping someone else could.

[Sea Skimmer]

You won’t find reliable data to make a comparison with, certainly not on the internet; and even if you paid 10 grand for the latest Janes publication on the subject you’d get penetration curves which are basically just estimates based on one or two manufacturer’s claims. Suffice to say though that even the L44 120mm NATO gun is more powerful then any Russian 125mm gun, provided that it is firing top of the line ammo.

Ammo makes a huge difference, and depending on the composition of the projectile higher velocity may not provide increased penetration performance. As I understand it one of the big reasons for the Germans going to an L55 gun was because it works better with tungsten ammo. Depleted uranium projectiles reach maximum effectiveness at the velocities alreacy achieved by the L44 weapon.

The Russians have been planning and developing a 152mm gun for a long time to readdress this firepower shortfall, and the Ukraine already has a 140mm and supercharge 125mm gun on the market for the same reason.

Back in the 80s NATO also tested a 140mm gun to combat a expected new generation of Soviet supertanks. However the gun mainly served to prove that 140mm tank guns are just not very practical (a complete round of ammo weighed 80 pounds) and in the end improved 120mm ammo reached 75% of the penetration required for the 140mm gun.

Recently an image also emerged of a proported test firing of a Chinese 140mm gun on a Type 99 tank but that remains unconfirmed. With a defcit of development of new main battle tanks in the world, it’s unlikely that we’ll see any major firepower increases in the near (10 year or so) future.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Are Russian 125mm cannons inferior because of poorer metallurgy and stress tolerances?

[K. A. Pital]

Some stuff can be found on btvt, as usual.

[Vympel]

Are Russian 125mm cannons inferior because of poorer metallurgy and stress tolerances?

That was more or less true back when the 125mm smoothbore was initially deployed up to the late Cold War (being a very old gun). Not really anymore, the latest versions that equip current production T-90s and in-service T-72B/T-80B upgrades are built to a much higher standard. I believe the latest is 2A46M5.

A problem is because the ammunition is two-piece, the penetrators for APFSDS aren't as long for Russian guns as they are for Western 120mm. They have been rectifying this- first by modifying the autoloaders to take larger rounds.

[Sea Skimmer]

Are Russian 125mm cannons inferior because of poorer metallurgy and stress tolerances?

As I understand it, the difference is in propellant technology. It’s not easy to make such high energy high velocity charges that are still relatively compact. Larger calibers just you increase the mass of the projectile rather then trying to force out even higher velocities from the same size chamber. If we didn’t need to pack these guns into tank turrets, everyone could build much more powerful anti tank guns.

One thing that is clear through is that at closer ranges even the best western tank is still not proof against the best Russian 125mm gun and shells. The stuff export customers have gotten and used in war is pure junk compared to what was produced for Soviet and Russian forces. Steel and some bad tungsten vs. depleted uranium and good tungsten.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

So it boils down to ammunition and propellants? How inferior is Russian propellant technology?

I'm also under the impression that the larger Russian caliber guns are pretty much tight wraps or did Ukraine decided it was too desperate for cash?

[Sea Skimmer]

So it boils down to ammunition and propellants? How inferior is Russian propellant technology?

You'd need an internal ballistic expert to tell you that. Ammo isn’t the only factor, but it is the biggest.

I'm also under the impression that the larger Russian caliber guns are pretty much tight wraps or did Ukraine decided it was too desperate for cash?

The Ukrainian guns are purely for export, they’ve been shown off whenever possible with published specifications. The Russian guns are kept hidden away.

[K. A. Pital]

The btvt author (Andrei) says the barrel energies and penetration for the Rh L44 and 2A46M-1 are similar:

The construction and characteristics of the guns are similar in many ways. Both 120mm RhL44 and 125mm 2A46M-1 have thermal protection cover, quick-split joints of the barrel and the breach, symmetrical recoil brakes, wedged semi-automatic breech-mechanisms. The maximum barrel energy of both is also similar: 93,16 megajoules for 2A46M and 92,18 megajoules for RhL44, and this gives similar initial speed for the AP undercaliber shells: 1750m/s and 1650m/s.

The AP of the German DM43 shells is around 500mm from 2000m, the Russian BM32 shell over 500mm from 2000m. The Leopard 2A6 DM-53 projectiles fired from the L55 gun have an increased speed to 1750m/s, which is comparable to the Russian 3BM-44M, that gives an armor-piercing result of up to 700mm from 2000m.

Translated that bit for you from the "T-80U vs. LEO2" article I linked to above.

[brianeyci]

What I don't understand is why "got the bad stuff" at all. Is it the cost? I do not think so, Saddam Hussein or whoever would have gladly paid whatever they wanted, I bet developing nations would pay whatever they asked for top of the line equipment and experienced trainers to teach them the ropes about vehicle maintainence etc.

Sell enough knockoffs and your customers won't come back. What is the point. Imagine if Saddam's tanks killed American tanks in the Persian Gulf War in a 1 to 1 or a 1 to 3 or even something obscene like a 1 to 5 ratio. Don't they know the mantra the customer is always right, am I missing something here. What about the Indian built tanks are they buying knockoffs too.

If I was Putin I'd sell advanced equipment to whoever wanted, especially if I believed that America overstepped its boundaries with the Iraq war as Putin has openly stated. Hell I'd sell the most advanced stuff to Iran, send Russian advisors there en masse, and say I was preventing an American invasion. What a publicity stunt. What is stopping this, the Iranians can't pay?

[Gunhead]

It was never Saddams intention to go toe to toe with an advanced western army. His T-72s were equipped to fight older russian tanks such as the T-55 and T-62. Against such opposition they would have held all the edges. No stop gap measures would have improved the chances of the Iraqi armored forces. They were also light years behind in tank doctrine, communications and had very poor combined arms command.

The desert war was also the first battle in 20 years where modern tank technology was fielded. There was little hard data on the performance of these new breeds of combat vehicles in a real fight, so it's not that hard to believe Saddam really thought he could make it work.

-Gunhead

[Coyote]

One of the biggest problems with the comparisons we have is, as has been brought up here, pretty much all the opportunities to observe East vs West gunnery has been by proxy wars-- and there are way too many discrepancies to factor in to make them reliable indicators of how good one particular system is when stacked against another.

Training can be good (Israeli) or awful (Arab).
Maintenance can be good (Israeli) or excellent (Russians working for Arabs)
Technology compared can be latest technology (Arab) or older (Israeli) but used well.
Tech used can be so heavily modified to local conditions (Yugoslav civil war) that the correlations to the outside world are near pointless.

There have been, AFAIK, no direct contests between properly used and maintained Russian tanks with Russian crews & quality ammo against properly used and maintained US/European tanks with their Western crews & quality ammo. A proper, fair comparison has never taken place so it remains the realm of theorists.

[Sea Skimmer]

What I don't understand is why "got the bad stuff" at all. Is it the cost? I do not think so, Saddam Hussein or whoever would have gladly paid whatever they wanted, I bet developing nations would pay whatever they asked for top of the line equipment and experienced trainers to teach them the ropes about vehicle maintainence etc.

Then you have little comprehension of how limited developing nation’s military budgets are. In fact most nations which bought Soviet equipment had no alternative at all for heavy weapons. The Soviets would accept raw material and weak currencies as payment that would be laughed at by any western company. Egypt rearmed in-between 1967-1973 mainly by ceding its cotton crops to the communist for example. Saddam had enough money to buy some western equipment, and did, but western tanks where not in the budget.

Most Iraqi T-72s are in any case a locally produced variant known as the ‘Lion of Babylon’. These tanks are probably the worst version of the T-72 ever. The US captured a number of them loaded with steel training ammo.

Sell enough knockoffs and your customers won't come back.

History says otherwise in this regard. The only major client state I can think of that they lost was Egypt, but that was because the entire political situation between them and Israel changed and suddenly the US was offering matching military aid.

What is the point. Imagine if Saddam's tanks killed American tanks in the Persian Gulf War in a 1 to 1 or a 1 to 3 or even something obscene like a 1 to 5 ratio. Don't they know the mantra the customer is always right, am I missing something here. What about the Indian built tanks are they buying knockoffs too.

First off, modern Russia, and the Soviet Union which supplied Saddam are NOT the same by any stretch. The Soviets essentially produced three grades of equipment. First they had the top of the line stuff, tanks like the T-64 and T-80, which were never exported to anyone. Then they had second rank stuff like the better versions of theT-72 which went to the mass of the Soviet Army and Warsaw Pact states. Then they had extra downgraded ‘monkey models’ which armed the less trusted Warsaw pact states, and floated on the export market. The T-72s nations like Iraq and Syria got would fall under this last category.

Keeping Soviet technological secretes secret was far more important then providing the best weapons to the useful idiots the Soviets had for allies. Anything that left the Warsaw Pact was certain to end up in some western laboratory.

Modern Russia is much more willing to sell its best weapons, but because of limited funding it has not constantly developed new weapons at the rate the Soviets did.

If I was Putin I'd sell advanced equipment to whoever wanted, especially if I believed that America overstepped its boundaries with the Iraq war as Putin has openly stated. Hell I'd sell the most advanced stuff to Iran, send Russian advisors there en masse, and say I was preventing an American invasion. What a publicity stunt. What is stopping this, the Iranians can't pay?

Iran has bought some modern Russian air defense and other equipment in recent years but funding certainly is very limited. The entire Iranian defense budget is only about 7-8 billion USD and only a fraction of that is actual hard currency that could be used for overseas purchases. Most of the money in any defense budget goes simply into maintaining and training what you already have.

[Pelranius]

I think one of the reasons Saddam didn't buy any Western tanks was because of a general arms embargo on the combatants of the Iran Iraq war.

He did look at some Brazillian tanks, but the Gulf War broke out before he signed any deals.

[Sea Skimmer]

I think one of the reasons Saddam didn't buy any Western tanks was because of a general arms embargo on the combatants of the Iran Iraq war.

He did look at some Brazillian tanks, but the Gulf War broke out before he signed any deals.

I think you’re confusing Iraq with Saudi Arabia on that, the Saudis announced a agreement to buy the EE-T1 Osório from Brazil in 1989, but never signed a contract. Then the Gulf War broke out and the US stepped in and sold them about 300 M1 tanks.

Brazil did supply Saddam with a light of wheeled light armored vehicles, rocket launchers and other weapons, and several Brazilian firms went bankrupt when the Iran-Iraq war ended. By the time this tank was available for sale, Saddam already had local T-72 manufacturing underway and as early as 1982 Iraq was assembling imported kits.

[Pelranius]

I believe that Saddam Hussein assembled his T-72s out of spare parts made in Poland because of the UN sanction, though.

The current Chinese arms sales policy is quite similar to the Soviet one. The PLA keeps the top of the line stuff for itself, though they do occasionally sell stuff like the J-10 to Pakistan (if Janes is to be believed) and the PLZ-45 self propelled howitzer to Kuwait. The stuff they offer is usually knockoffs of the T-54s, sundry Cold War era frigates and older SAM systems.

Though the lack of high end stuff such as the NORINCO ZTZ-99 tanks or Song SSKs on the international market could be a tacit agreement with the Europeans that long as China gets dual use technology, they won't undercut EU prices by offering their state of the art for sale (the most of the reason would probably be due to the PLA penchant for secrecy).

[Sea Skimmer]

I believe that Saddam Hussein assembled his T-72s out of spare parts made in Poland because of the UN sanction, though.

That's more or less how the 1982 kits worked, but the tanks built from 1989 on are actually manufactured in Iraq with only some imported equipment going into them.

The current Chinese arms sales policy is quite similar to the Soviet one. The PLA keeps the top of the line stuff for itself, though they do occasionally sell stuff like the J-10 to Pakistan (if Janes is to be believed) and the PLZ-45 self propelled howitzer to Kuwait. The stuff they offer is usually knockoffs of the T-54s, sundry Cold War era frigates and older SAM systems.

Amusingly the PLZ-45 was so good the PLA couldn’t afford to buy it. Kuwait only bought it to get China to vote to continue sanctions on Iraq.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The PLZ-45 is so good? How is it so? From what I read, it has some 45" caliber cannon that was based off some.. Gerald Bull technology.

[Pelranius]

The Kuwaitis liked it enough to order a follow up batch of 72 guns, including support units like targeting radar and ammo resupply vehicles.

Ghetto edit: The PLA didn't really adopt much of the PLZ-45 (they have a few) because most of their divisional artillery is in 152mm.

And it's 74 guns, in 2001. My bad.