Soviet era reserve vehicles.

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...

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.

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.