In recent years, China has made rapid progress in the field of truck gun technology, continuously developing and rapidly equipping three of the world's most advanced vehicle-mounted guns, including a 155 mm heavy truck gun and two 122 mm light truck guns, and fire support capabilities at all levels have entered a new era. Various truck guns were also deployed in large quantities in the western highland area, thus greatly surpassing the Indian army in terms of firepower. Now, India can not sit still, but also to develop truck guns, in addition to several 155 mm truck guns, India has also introduced a 105 mm light truck gun.
India has just "developed" a 105 mm ultralight truck gun code-named "Dapeng Goldenfinch". A 37-caliber 105mm Indian Field Gun (IFG) was mounted on the chassis of an Indian-made Tata 715 off-road light truck, which was an Indian imitation of the British L13 105mm towed howitzer.
The new truck gun was developed by the Indian Barret Forging Company, which is a forward gun in terms of structural principles, using the soft rear seat technology of "front shock shot", which can reduce the recoil force by 70%. The gun has a forestroke and a re-entry machine, before firing, the forejector pushes the barrel to move rapidly forward, and when the impulse of the barrel moving forward reaches the limit, the gun fires and fires the projectile, and the recoil generated at this time can be offset with the forward impulse.
When the gun is fired, the effect of the gunpowder gas produced by the combustion and expansion of the propellant on the recoil part will first counteract the impulse energy in front of the barrel, and then recoil, and the recoil resistance at this time will be further reduced, and the recoil resistance will be reduced by 70%.
However, the "front shock" technology of this vehicle-mounted 105 mm howitzer is not independently developed by India, but the technology imported from the Menders Group of the United States. In 2000, the American Mandex Group developed a 105 mm Hawkeye ultralight truck gun mounted on a Humvee.
The Hawkeye gun is based on the U.S. army's active M119 105 mm light howitzer, and its prototype is the British L119 105 mm howitzer, which was equipped with British Army units in 1974. It was decided by the U.S. Army in 1985 and began equipping the U.S. Light Infantry Division, Airborne Division, Air Assault Division, and Marine Corps in December 1990. It has a history of more than 40 years.
In order to install this 105 mm howitzer on the Hummer, it was modified with a light weight of the forward gun technology, the muzzle brake was eliminated, and the "soft recoil" principle was adopted, which could offset 70% of the recoil and reduce the weight of the gun mount by 50%, making it able to be loaded on light vehicles such as humvees. The gun is capable of 360° rotational ring fire, and when firing rapidly, the rate of fire is 10 to 12 rounds per minute. When shooting continuously, the rate of fire is reduced to 6 rounds per minute. The reaction time is very fast, and it can be fired within 15 to 20 seconds.
The U.S. military initially intended to replace the 120 mm vehicle-mounted mortar with the Hawkeye. But the U.S. military finally weighed it up and did not purchase it. In desperation, the American Menders Group exported this forward gun technology abroad. As a result, India's unjust head immediately introduced the forward gun technology, willing to be a guinea pig, and launched a sample gun after a simple combination with a domestic truck.
In fact, the forward gun is not a cross-era technology, it existed 100 years ago. To be fair, the perfectly designed forward gun is a very clever soft recoil cannon that can be fired with maneuver or even without a hoe. But the perfectly designed foreforement has so far not existed.
The United States in the past decade to design several models of front gun, the last did not enter service, the main problem is that the front gun re-entry mechanism is more complex, including card lock mechanism, fixed speed firing and mounting mechanism, front shock absorber, rear shock absorber, re-entry brake and rear puller, such a complex structure in high-intensity artillery warfare is easy to fail. The forward gun needs to fire in the forward movement of the barrel, so there is a problem of blind fire and delay in the firing of ammunition, and it is difficult to accurately control the firing time.
Due to the above reasons, the reliability of the front gun is relatively low. In addition, the forward gun fired in the movement of the barrel, causing the barrel vibration to be relatively special, resulting in a rather large shooting intensity and shooting deviation, which is an unsolvable problem at present, that is, the United States does not have any good tricks.
(A front-facing 130 mm cannon developed by an East Asian country 50 years ago)
China has also studied the front gun, and as early as the end of the 1970s, it developed a lightweight front gun with a 130 mm cannon, but it was abandoned because it was too complex and the performance indicators were not perfect. Similarly, the development of forward guns by the US military was finally abandoned. The abandonment of China and the United States and other countries has made the front gun a niche technology.
We also did not use the forward gun technique, and still made a light 122 howitzer on the raptor. India is a bit into the magic, because the technical conditions of the vehicle gun itself are very loose, it is completely possible to eliminate the need for a sword to take the side, under the traditional artillery firing route, you can develop a vehicle-mounted gun with excellent performance and meet the needs, which can achieve the range, accuracy and other hard indicators to the extreme, rather than ultra-light and ultra-light.
At present, our army is equipped with tracked 155 mm self-propelled howitzers and 155 mm vehicle-mounted howitzers in artillery brigades, tracked 122 mm howitzers in heavy synthetic brigades, 122 mm 8X8 wheeled self-propelled howitzers and 122 mm vehicle-mounted howitzers in medium synthetic brigades, and PCL-171 light 122 mm vehicle-mounted guns in light synthetic brigades and airborne brigades. Thus, China's ground artillery has stepped into the era of mechanization in one fell swoop and led the world.