UK orders 40mm Cased Telescoped cannons

[Belesarius]

Oh my! Cased telescoped Cannon Ammo.

These are for the Warrior upgrade program and their recce replacement vehicle program.

 

http://www.janes.com/article/52685/uk-orders-ctas-40-mm-cannons-for-new-armoured-vehicles

[LoooSeR]

I think we also have similar ammunition under development for new unmanned turrets for Armata/Kurganets/Bumerang vehicles. Although we are behind. 

[Khand-e]

I think we also have similar ammunition under development for new unmanned turrets for Armata/Kurganets/Bumerang vehicles. Although we are behind. 

 

Just buy Chinese 30mm ammo imo, they already have vastly improved 30mm variants.

 

Telescoped cases are heresy.

[Collimatrix]

 

Telescoped cases are heresy.

 

 

They are.  Part of what makes the 40mm CTA gun interesting is that the ammunition isn't actually telescoped:

 

Note that there is no propellant ahead of the driving band of the projectile.

[Xlucine]

A better pic:

 

It's a shame that the HE doesn't have conventional fusing and airburst in the same package

[Collimatrix]

The breech design of this cannon is interesting:

 

It takes up less room inside the turret than most comparable autocannons, so it should be easier to refit to existing turrets.

 

I'm sure they dream of a Bradley up-gun contract.

[Walter_Sobchak]

"The Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot - Tracer (APFSDS-T) is able to penetrate more than 140 mm of RHA (Rolled Homogeneous Armour) at 1500 m."

 

Damn.  You could chew up a lot of cold war era tanks with that.  

[Collimatrix]

Another great photo showing both the penetration capabilities of this round, and the fact that it isn't actually telescoped.

[Xlucine]

I'm sure they dream of a Bradley up-gun contract.

 

*ahem*

 

(I'm sure many people in the UK & french defence industry are really fucking angry about page 17)

 

 

"The Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot - Tracer (APFSDS-T) is able to penetrate more than 140 mm of RHA (Rolled Homogeneous Armour) at 1500 m."

 

Damn.  You could chew up a lot of cold war era tanks with that.  

 

 

There was a power point presentation on the web with this slide in it:

IIRC it was on DTIC, but I CBA to try and find it again. Plugging the values from the pdf I linked into L-O broadly agrees, so you might take out a T-44 upper glacis at muzzle if you're lucky

[Xlucine]

It's a shame that the HE doesn't have conventional fusing and airburst in the same package

 

I am proven wrong - looking at their website, it turns out that the airbursting round does have PD capability. And they've added a specialised AA round to the inventory!

[Collimatrix]

For those who have not heard the Moderately Sane Rambling of Collimatrix ™ live over teamspeak, the problem with telescoped ammunition is that it produces highly accelerated barrel wear compared to traditional ammunition.  This report by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense explains in some detail.

 

Money quote:

 

 

The higher propellant charge of the cased telescoped ammunition produces higher temperatures and heat input to the barrel. These conditions have reduced barrel life of conventional barrel material to an unrealistically low level. Barrel life is reduced mainly by melting and erosion. Whereas the minimum replacement schedule of a conventional gun is approximately 10,000 to 15,000 rounds, cased telescoped ammunition guns with state-of-the-art barrel technology yield a barrel life of about 200 rounds. The difference in barrel life between a conventional and cased telescoped ammunition gun is two orders of magnitude.

 

 

This problem has been solved in the most recent telescoped ammunition programs... by not making the ammunition telescoped anymore, and just saying it is.  You can see similar shenanigans going on with the latest LSAT ammo:

 

Which then makes you think, hey, wait a second, this configuration is no more space efficient than a conventional cartridge case!

 

And it's not.  I'm not sure how they're making this stuff more compact, but it must have to do with improved propellants.

[Xlucine]

You've got some advantage, since propellant can sit up to the cannelure or so (where normally you'd find just the thin brass walls holding the boolit still)

[Sturgeon]

It's really weird that The Firearm Blog keeps picking up stuff we talk about on this forum. Do you think one of their writers lurks here or something?

[LoooSeR]

It's really weird that The Firearm Blog keeps picking up stuff we talk about on this forum. Do you think one of their writers lurks here or something?

Yeah, i hope we will find this hack fraud. Terrible, terrible human!

[Belesarius]

It's really weird that The Firearm Blog keeps picking up stuff we talk about on this forum. Do you think one of their writers lurks here or something?

Someone else beat you to it with the .300 blackout article I sent you on FB tho.  I posted that here too.

[Collimatrix]

It's really weird that The Firearm Blog keeps picking up stuff we talk about on this forum. Do you think one of their writers lurks here or something?

 

 

The thought had occurred to me.

[Sturgeon]

The thought had occurred to me.

 

colli cannot into joke