Soviet era reserve vehicles.

But they have the grenade launcher for anti personnel so why replace with 23mm lol.

That is the question... a grenade launcher would compliment a flat shooting high velocity gun but the muzzle velocity of the 30m grenade launcher is less than 200m/s... there is a new grenade that will reach 2.1km or so but most rounds go to about 1.8km or so.

The 14.5mm is a threat to light armour out to about 2km including aircraft and fires its rounds at 1km/s, but then the 23mm round is a similar size but of much larger calibre.

Previously I would have said the difference is that the 23mm round has an enormous and much more effective HE payload travelling at about 700m/s which is not super flat but certainly is not a rainbow either. The extra mass means more momentum so while it will slow down fairly rapidly while supersonic when it gets to subsonic speeds it will tend to travel much further than a lighter round going faster initially.

The point is that it is a flatter shooting round and should be able to reach to much greater ranges than the grenade launcher so it could possibly be worth it at a time when the 14.5mm is starting to struggle with full calibre rounds to penetrate a lot of targets on the battlefield because most HATO vehicles are designed to be resistant to it.

The shift however is with the APFSDS rounds for the 57mm and 30mm calibres of different types we have seen including 57mm grenade calibres.

An APFSDS round for the 23mm would be even more powerful than a similar round for the 14.5mm calibre... the larger diameter tube means it could operate at higher pressure and push more energy down the barrel, so you get a heavier projectile/penetrator and a faster moving dart.

The problem is that you need separate belt feeds because the trajectory of the HE round is going to be totally different than the trajectory of the APFSDS round so a mixed belt would mean one type of round hits and the other type misses completely. Changing between belts means changing trajectory scales or ballistic tables... which makes sense anyway simply because neither round would be multi purpose, so you would fire one or the other but not both and the presence of the 30mm grenade launcher means soft targets can be engaged immediately... so I suspect most of the time the APFSDS rounds would be loaded and if there is no time to change then the grenade launcher is used... a twin belt feed mechanism that allows push button feed and push button changes of feed with the separate elevation of the two weapons you could in fact line up the target and calculate angles and have both weapons elevate and start firing with the grenade launcher at a target at 1,500m and then change the KPB to 23mm HE in a second or two and then start firing with that too and the 23mm rounds would probably still land first...

But they have the grenade launcher for anti personnel so why replace with 23mm lol. I always thought the brdm-2 needed a grenade launcher along with its 14.5mm simple things like this can make a difference. I know some don't like it see OT as out dated and prefer mrap and other armoured 4x4 but for me these are still useful and they have one advantage over the armoured 4x4 and mrap and that's that they swim proper amphibious

I totally agree, the 30mm would fully compliment either a 23mm gun or a 14.5mm gun, and those upgraded models recently sold to a CIS country with the bolted on extra armoured plates... I reckon they could go a step further and make them proper box tiles that contain cavities and ceramic armour to massively increase protection but also boost buoyancy to perhaps even improve amphibious potential.

It also had modern night vision equipment, but I don't think they fitted a grenade launcher.

I like the fixed model fitted to the upgraded BMP-2 at the back of the turret that can elevate but doesn't need to traverse... but the BRDM-2 turret is not big enough to fit it centrally as it would interfere with a centrally mounted main gun.

I would think and enlarged turret with the entire rear half being a magazine for 30mm or 40mm grenades... you could get 600 in there if you wanted to... with light armour skin front and back and isolated from the turret inside with a 40mm or 30mm grenade sitting on the top of it offset to one side so it is not shooting grenades into the barrel of the main gun when the main gun is elevated and the grenade launcher is shooting at closer targets.

Effectively the current rear of the turret armour would have a tiny 5mm air pocket and then the armoured inner skin of the ammo bin and then the grenades loaded in one continuous belt... and then an outer skin that is rifle calibre bullet proof... and then a gap of 20mm and then another 15mm thick plate to protect it from small arms fire. Ceramic panels could be slid down the 20mm gap if required.... and a metal cage frame around the rear that contains smoke grenades firing forward that you can strap gear to if you want as well...

I could use it for hunting in areas with rivers and lakes...

Do they use the belly wheels much?

I would think I would talk to an experienced operator to find out how often they are used because they would add weight and complication... if they never get used I would get rid of them and increase the internal height space inside the vehicle... perhaps keep the same height and use it for fresh water or buoyancy... ropes or tools or equipment...

GarryB wrote:

But they have the grenade launcher for anti personnel so why replace with 23mm lol.

That is the question... a grenade launcher would compliment a flat shooting high velocity gun but the muzzle velocity of the 30m grenade launcher is less than 200m/s... there is a new grenade that will reach 2.1km or so but most rounds go to about 1.8km or so.

The 14.5mm is a threat to light armour out to about 2km including aircraft and fires its rounds at 1km/s, but then the 23mm round is a similar size but of much larger calibre.

Previously I would have said the difference is that the 23mm round has an enormous and much more effective HE payload travelling at about 700m/s which is not super flat but certainly is not a rainbow either. The extra mass means more momentum so while it will slow down fairly rapidly while supersonic when it gets to subsonic speeds it will tend to travel much further than a lighter round going faster initially.

The point is that it is a flatter shooting round and should be able to reach to much greater ranges than the grenade launcher so it could possibly be worth it at a time when the 14.5mm is starting to struggle with full calibre rounds to penetrate a lot of targets on the battlefield because most HATO vehicles are designed to be resistant to it.

The shift however is with the APFSDS rounds for the 57mm and 30mm calibres of different types we have seen including 57mm grenade calibres.

An APFSDS round for the 23mm would be even more powerful than a similar round for the 14.5mm calibre... the larger diameter tube means it could operate at higher pressure and push more energy down the barrel, so you get a heavier projectile/penetrator and a faster moving dart.

The problem is that you need separate belt feeds because the trajectory of the HE round is going to be totally different than the trajectory of the APFSDS round so a mixed belt would mean one type of round hits and the other type misses completely. Changing between belts means changing trajectory scales or ballistic tables... which makes sense anyway simply because neither round would be multi purpose, so you would fire one or the other but not both and the presence of the 30mm grenade launcher means soft targets can be engaged immediately... so I suspect most of the time the APFSDS rounds would be loaded and if there is no time to change then the grenade launcher is used... a twin belt feed mechanism that allows push button feed and push button changes of feed with the separate elevation of the two weapons you could in fact line up the target and calculate angles and have both weapons elevate and start firing with the grenade launcher at a target at 1,500m and then change the KPB to 23mm HE in a second or two and then start firing with that too and the 23mm rounds would probably still land first...

But they have the grenade launcher for anti personnel so why replace with 23mm lol. I always thought the brdm-2 needed a grenade launcher along with its 14.5mm simple things like this can make a difference. I know some don't like it see OT as out dated and prefer mrap and other armoured 4x4 but for me these are still useful and they have one advantage over the armoured 4x4 and mrap and that's that they swim proper amphibious

I totally agree, the 30mm would fully compliment either a 23mm gun or a 14.5mm gun, and those upgraded models recently sold to a CIS country with the bolted on extra armoured plates... I reckon they could go a step further and make them proper box tiles that contain cavities and ceramic armour to massively increase protection but also boost buoyancy to perhaps even improve amphibious potential.

It also had modern night vision equipment, but I don't think they fitted a grenade launcher.

I like the fixed model fitted to the upgraded BMP-2 at the back of the turret that can elevate but doesn't need to traverse... but the BRDM-2 turret is not big enough to fit it centrally as it would interfere with a centrally mounted main gun.

I would think and enlarged turret with the entire rear half being a magazine for 30mm or 40mm grenades... you could get 600 in there if you wanted to... with light armour skin front and back and isolated from the turret inside with a 40mm or 30mm grenade sitting on the top of it offset to one side so it is not shooting grenades into the barrel of the main gun when the main gun is elevated and the grenade launcher is shooting at closer targets.

Effectively the current rear of the turret armour would have a tiny 5mm air pocket and then the armoured inner skin of the ammo bin and then the grenades loaded in one continuous belt... and then an outer skin that is rifle calibre bullet proof... and then a gap of 20mm and then another 15mm thick plate to protect it from small arms fire. Ceramic panels could be slid down the 20mm gap if required.... and a metal cage frame around the rear that contains smoke grenades firing forward that you can strap gear to if you want as well...

I could use it for hunting in areas with rivers and lakes...  

Do they use the belly wheels much?

I would think I would talk to an experienced operator to find out how often they are used because they would add weight and complication... if they never get used I would get rid of them and increase the internal height space inside the vehicle... perhaps keep the same height and use it for fresh water or buoyancy... ropes or tools or equipment...

Yeah saw some with caged armour and various rockets. Check out the Azerbaijan variant. ZKDM is fitted with a new turret armed with a double-barrel, 23 mm GSh-23 cannon, one 7.62 mm PKT machine gun, one 30 mm AGS-17 grenade launchers, four 57 or 80 mm rocket launchers and two smoke grenade launchers mounted on each side of the vehicle. The turret is remotely controlled by the gunner and fitted with fire control system. includes day/night sight, a TV vision system with a maximum range of 1,000 m, and GPS navigation system GLONASS

I've seen Iraqi version with zpu-2 mounted (twin 14.5mm) and Cuba has cut the roof off and used as 120mm mortar carriers. As for belly wheels never seen it being used but belarusian caiman have theirs removed maybe that's a sign that they aren't used much and better to just get rid.

I suspect that might be a way forward... the remote unmanned turrets they are developing for Tigr-M and other vehicles could within reason be attached to the BRDM... but turrets with bulky ammo like 82mm mortars might need more internal space than is available.

The twin barrel 23mm gun has a rate of fire of about 50 rounds a second (3,000rpm) which is probably a bit high for anything other than shooting at air targets.

If they can limit the bursts to 5-10 rounds then perhaps they would be rather effective... imagine a group of troops standing out in the open ...a 10 round burst could be fired in a tenth of a second... a mere tap of the trigger and ten 23mm HE shells on their way to land in a cluster all around those troops... spread in a cluster around the point of aim like a cluster bomb with the rounds going off almost at the same time... quite devastating.

The single barrel KPB will be lighter and would take a full second to fire 10 rounds but that one second is not long enough to take cover so ten explosions a second would be effective enough and a half second burst of 4-5 rounds would probably reduce the ammo consumption too... but less effective against airborne targets...

I would think combinations of rifle calibre and HMG and light cannon along with auto grenade launcher weapons would be best... with stabilisers and night vision thermals and the new box shaped aircraft rocket pods it should achieve reasonably good accuracy out to reasonable distances for suppressing point or area targets.

GarryB wrote:I suspect that might be a way forward... the remote unmanned turrets they are developing for Tigr-M and other vehicles could within reason be attached to the BRDM... but turrets with bulky ammo like 82mm mortars might need more internal space than is available.

The twin barrel 23mm gun has a rate of fire of about 50 rounds a second (3,000rpm) which is probably a bit high for anything other than shooting at air targets.

If they can limit the bursts to 5-10 rounds then perhaps they would be rather effective... imagine a group of troops standing out in the open ...a 10 round burst could be fired in a tenth of a second... a mere tap of the trigger and ten 23mm HE shells on their way to land in a cluster all around those troops... spread in a cluster around the point of aim like a cluster bomb with the rounds going off almost at the same time... quite devastating.

The single barrel KPB will be lighter and would take a full second to fire 10 rounds but that one second is not long enough to take cover so ten explosions a second would be effective enough and a half second burst of 4-5 rounds would probably reduce the ammo consumption too... but less effective against airborne targets...

I would think combinations of rifle calibre and HMG and light cannon along with auto grenade launcher weapons would be best... with stabilisers and night vision thermals and the new box shaped aircraft rocket pods it should achieve reasonably good accuracy out to reasonable distances for suppressing point or area targets.

i was rather impressed with the ZKDM upgrade quite a lot fire power for such a small vehicle. but on the point of 82mm ammo, there is actually quite a lot of room in the BRDM behind the gunners position ive been inside one plenty of room to carry a decent amount of ammo. 82mm automatic mortar would be ideal, and their is already anti armour rounds available 100mm penetration i read somewhere they had developed long ago 150mm penetration and i am sure they could increase that to 200mm at least. or design in a way to accommodate something like a spg-9 which is 73mm being 82mm you could increase the distance the round would be effective to, 1.5km-2km with same penetration as PG-9VNT 550 mm or 400 mm behind ERA thats decent enough against IFV, mrap, older gen tanks, and disable modern tanks (tracks etc). Bulgaria made a HE-Frag round with a stated distance up to 7,500m but i suspect that would be similar to the T-12 100mm anti tank gun HE-frag round that has a range of 8km indirect, i would imagine direct for spg-9 to be 2-2.5km

Interesting idea about anti armour ammo for the 82mm but I suspect such ideas might be eclipsed by the new Bulat mini missile... I would expect it would have a range of up to 5-6km and tandem full calibre HEAT warhead of perhaps 65-75mm calibre should manage a 500-600mm penetration performance at zero degrees.

AFAIK the range of the Vasilek mortar is about 4km indirect, with a 2km semi direct fire mode (ie direct fire but significant drop from boresight point of aim...

Like the 120mm gun/mortar used on Vena and Nona you could have HEAT rounds and shells with bag propellent charges with improved range and performance... replacing the four bomb clips with a sort of belt feed would be interesting, but I think primarily it would be anti personel with HE bombs fired in bursts... 4kg HE bombs at about 120 rounds per minute cyclic would be pretty devastating.

Not being a flat shooting weapon you could park it behind cover and lob half a dozen shells to saturate an area and then leave before the first round hits the ground with just one vehicle.

A roof mounted 12.7mm kord and 40mm Balkan on one side and some Bulat missiles on the other...

Will be interesting to see what they do to upgrade the SPG-9 to improve its performance without making it too expensive to use.

I would expect an upgrade of the sight to add thermal night vision and a laser range finder with a ballistic computer so you lase the target and it will generate a point of aim to assure a hit.

Improvements to the rounds could include better fragmentation pattern, more HE, higher velocity... perhaps a ramjet sustainer to flatten the trajectory... the RPG-7 uses a rocket motor to reduce flight time and flatten the trajectory to target... but on the RPG-7 the rocket motor is 40mm.

The RPG-16 increased the calibre of the rocket motor to about 57mm, and reduced the diameter of the warhead to 57mm so the whole round sits inside the tube.

The RPG-29 like the SPG-9 has a warhead the same calibre as the rocket motor...

Will be interesting to see what they do.

GarryB wrote:Interesting idea about anti armour ammo for the 82mm but I suspect such ideas might be eclipsed by the new Bulat mini missile... I would expect it would have a range of up to 5-6km and tandem full calibre HEAT warhead of perhaps 65-75mm calibre should manage a 500-600mm penetration performance at zero degrees.

AFAIK the range of the Vasilek mortar is about 4km indirect, with a 2km semi direct fire mode (ie direct fire but significant drop from boresight point of aim...

Like the 120mm gun/mortar used on Vena and Nona you could have HEAT rounds and shells with bag propellent charges with improved range and performance... replacing the four bomb clips with a sort of belt feed would be interesting, but I think primarily it would be anti personel with HE bombs fired in bursts... 4kg HE bombs at about 120 rounds per minute cyclic would be pretty devastating.

Not being a flat shooting weapon you could park it behind cover and lob half a dozen shells to saturate an area and then leave before the first round hits the ground with just one vehicle.

A roof mounted 12.7mm kord and 40mm Balkan on one side and some Bulat missiles on the other...

Will be interesting to see what they do to upgrade the SPG-9 to improve its performance without making it too expensive to use.

I would expect an upgrade of the sight to add thermal night vision and a laser range finder with a ballistic computer so you lase the target and it will generate a point of aim to assure a hit.

Improvements to the rounds could include better fragmentation pattern, more HE, higher velocity... perhaps a ramjet sustainer to flatten the trajectory... the RPG-7 uses a rocket motor to reduce flight time and flatten the trajectory to target... but on the RPG-7 the rocket motor is 40mm.

The RPG-16 increased the calibre of the rocket motor to about 57mm, and reduced the diameter of the warhead to 57mm so the whole round sits inside the tube.

The RPG-29 like the SPG-9 has a warhead the same calibre as the rocket motor...

Will be interesting to see what they do.

The only advantage the 82mm mortar has over the bulat is that it's also a mortar.

As for new spg-9 it will be interesting I definitely think range and sights etc will have to be part of it, penetration is adequate. But overall it has to be cheap, with frag rounds if they do make one with similar range to Bulgarian version then have frag rounds with proximity fuses could be used to target uav heli low flying aircraft etc.

The problem is that to remain cheap you need cheap ammo, while improvements to performance that add capability often make the ammo more expensive.

A case in point the American 20mm grenade launchers... they looked at the Soviet 30mm grenades and realised that it is the side walls that create the fragments so a small calibre round can be effective if the body is made long enough and what they learned with the Soviet 40mm underbarrel grenades is that an air burst grenade is vastly more effective than one that explodes on impact.

They thought they could use technology to be the commies so they used highly precise Swiss electronic timers in their grenades so the grenade launcher is pointed at the target and with the laser rangefinder and ballistics computer the distance calculated and therefore also time to impact. To get a 2m airburst above the target the angle of the weapon is increased by a tiny amount and a tiny fraction of a second is taken off the time of flight speed. That amount of time is passed to the round by induction coil as it leaves the muzzle to set the electronic fuse to get the round to explode over target.

The launcher at the time was about 20K dollars which is actually quite cheap for a US weapon but the ammo was very expensive whether used in direct fire or air burst mode.

The Soviets got their underbarrel 40mm grenades to airburst by adding a small charge in the nose that blew the round up into the air on impact with a short delay fuse and then the main charge goes off at between 1.5 and 2m elevation at any range... no expensive launcher and no expensive timing electronics that can resist the violence of being launched to 200m/s from a tube less than 50 cm long.

For their 30mm ammo they use rear facing optical sensors and shine a laser on the rounds when they want them to explode... all the complex electronics is in the vehicle and is reused over and over... the rounds have relatively cheap light sensors facing back at the gun firing them so they can't be blinded by the enemy target they are approaching...

A similar optical detecting band around an 82mm mortar bomb or 82mm shell the gun fires would be you could detonate them at the ideal moment without the enormous cost of making them guided.

Of course Bulat could possibly be loaded and fired from an 82mm tube if required... it is clearly bigger than 57mm calibre but also less than 82mm calibre too.... the missile carried by the BMP-3 (100mm rifled gun, MT-12 100mm smoothbore gun, and 100mm rifled gun of the T-54/55, and also the 115mm smoothbore gun of the T-62 all use the same missile... in the larger calibre it uses a sleeve to fill the barrel... for Bulat they could do the same... the high elevation potential of a mortar would allow interesting options in terms of trajectory choices.... a rapid climb to altitude with a booster section added and then a laser beam controlled trajectory out to targets who knows how far away...

Anti armour 82mm bombs and shells would be limited to direct fire range of perhaps 1.5 to 2km range, so for targets at greater distances a tube loaded and launched Bulat could reach targets further away.

An 82mm anti armour shell could be elongated and have two full calibre warheads spaced apart so that the gap between could have a solid rocket booster like a Kornet missile has to flatten the trajectory for targets less than 3km away.

Could be used against bunkers or hardpoints.

The real value of the 82mm mortar would be its ability to rapidly deliver quite decent sized HE bombs over ranges where small arms return fire is not so effective... and because of the trajectory can fire from behind cover in indirect engagements perhaps with drone support... even just a tethered drone hovering 50m above the vehicle itself...

As for new spg-9 it will be interesting I definitely think range and sights etc will have to be part of it, penetration is adequate. But overall it has to be cheap, with frag rounds if they do make one with similar range to Bulgarian version then have frag rounds with proximity fuses could be used to target uav heli low flying aircraft etc.

The SPG-9 ammo could be improved by replacing the rocket motor booster with a simple ramjet... it wouldn't even need to be a scramjet.. accelerating the round up to mach 3 or mach 4 and holding that speed for a few seconds could extend its useful range to 5-6km for area targets... as you say the key is to keep the price per shot down while maximising accuracy and power and range. Anti air rounds with proximity fuses would be interesting... a proximity fuse would make shooting at air targets useful... with standard rounds a miss by 1cm means a total miss and also a threat to friendly ground forces where that round lands and explodes.

I would think using the laser range finder to also set off the warhead on command might be useful too... even just a simple thing like a dual laser range finder that can range the out going missile in real time and the target... when the distance to the missile is 1-3m less than the distance to the target flash a coded laser signal to set off the round next to the target.

That round could be designed with a forward facing fragmentation warhead under an aerodynamic cone to reduce drag... when it explodes it sends a shower of fragments like 3mm ball bearings forward at very high speed in a narrow but expanding cone... set it off 5-10m before impact to blast a kg of bbs at the target like a super shotgun... most light structured drones would be shattered... and you could also use it against soft targets like troops in the open... devastating.... and not particularly expensive in terms of ammo.

A fragmentation charge down the core of the rocket to fragment the motor section too would increase damage as well without increasing cost too much...

For a big object like a helo you could flash a code to the rocket as it is going out, to penetrate 2m into the structure before exploding (based on time delay after impact).

Nice.

The MTLB and MTLBu families of tractors are very widespread in Russia including the GTSM family of vehicles.

Used as transports or towing vehicles for a range of weapons... and also in civilian use to explore the Arctic and Siberian far east...

The basic vehicle was also used instead of BMPs in places of very soft ground like swamps and deep snow because while their fire power was not as good and it armour was just bullet proof its mobility was excellent and it was widely used as an artillery tractor too.