(Source: Ordnance Technology)
To understand this problem, we need to first look at the advantages and disadvantages of smoothbore guns. Compared with rifled guns, the main advantages of smoothbore guns are: there is no rifling in the barrel of the artillery, and it can launch kinetic energy projectiles with a large length-to-diameter ratio, and has a strong ability to penetrate armor; smoothbore guns have a higher bore pressure and rapid acceleration of projectiles in the barrel. , No rifling resistance, the projectile muzzle velocity is also high; compared with the rifled gun, when the projectile muzzle velocity is the same, the smoothbore barrel can be designed to be shorter, and the short barrel is easier to achieve balance and stability, which can improve the shooting accuracy during travel ; Smoothbore gun shells have no sliding belts, which reduces the quality of the shells; the resistance in the smoothbore gun bore is small, and there are no problems such as in-bore ablation, the gun barrel has a long service life, and the processing technology of the shell and the barrel is relatively simple.
The disadvantage of smoothbore guns compared to rifled guns is that they can only fire tail stabilized bullets. When the shooting distance is long, the projectiles and tail fins are affected by external factors and the projectiles are scattered, so long-range shooting accuracy Low.
Early tank guns were mainly rifled guns. Under the technical conditions at the time, the performance of the rifled gun was much better than that of the smooth-bore gun, and it was destined that the rifled gun was the mainstream of the development of tank guns at that time. From the specific development of tank gun models, until the 1960s, the field of tank guns was still the world of rifled guns. At that time, the tanks of many Western countries, Japan, India and other countries were equipped with 105mm rifled guns, while the Soviet Union was mainly equipped with 100mm rifled guns. The famous British L7 105mm rifled gun has become the finest rifled tank gun.
The first to break the convention was the Soviet Union. It applied the smoothbore gun to the tank for the first time and developed a 115mm smoothbore gun with a barrel length of 55 times the caliber for the T-62 tank. The tank gun has the characteristics of high initial velocity and low ballistics, and can fire stable armor-piercing shells with a large length-to-diameter ratio tail. At that time, traditional rifled guns could only fire a rotating stable shelling armor-piercing projectile with an aspect ratio of less than 5. When the Soviet tank gun uses the stabilized hollow-core armor-piercing shells of the tail, the maximum thickness can reach 450 mm, and its power far exceeds the power of the Western 105 mm rifled gun and the British L11 120 mm rifled gun. It is precisely because of the excellent firepower performance of the T-62 tank smoothbore gun that Western countries are forced to switch to the smoothbore gun. Since then, the smoothbore gun has been out of control. In the field of tank guns, it has continued to conquer the city and almost dominate the rivers and lakes and become the mainstream of tank guns. .
The representative of the mainstream smoothbore guns in the world today are the Soviet 2A46 series of 125 mm smoothbore guns and the German Rh120 series of 120 mm smoothbore guns, which are widely used in various tank models in various countries around the world. For example, South Korea’s K2 main battle tank uses a German 120mm smoothbore gun.
However, smoothbore guns do not completely dominate the world. Not all tanks now use smoothbore guns. There are still a few countries that insist on developing rifled guns. The representatives are the strongest in the field of rifled gun technology, Britain and British weapons. Traditional India, the British "Challenger" series tanks and the Indian "Arjun" main battle tank still insist on using the 120mm large-caliber rifled gun as the main weapon. The "Challenger" 1/2 uses the L15 and L30 120mm rifled guns respectively. For the United Kingdom, insisting on using rifled guns is not only easy to use, with mature technology and low development risk, but also the accuracy of the rifled guns at long range is better. . The second is that the rifled gun is more suitable for firing the shredded shells used by British tank soldiers.
