Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1258433
SUPERSHORT 50x335 mm Supershort round is another, interesting offering. It is a telescopic round made through changing the caliber of the 35x288 mm KDA rounds. Its roots date back to the German R&D effort concerning the Marder 2 vehicle that was to be fitted with a dual-caliber (35/50 mm) externally-powered weapon. The Rh503 was developed in the 1990s and it underwent extensive testing over that decade. Its performance was very high. Weighing just 522 kilograms it could withstand 25,000 shots in a single lifecycle, with a MTBF higher than 5,000 shots. It had a rate of fire at the level between 150-400 RPM. The 50 mm Supershort rounds have muzzle energy levels of 1,000 kJ which translates into extremely good penetration capacity - 180-220 mm RHA at 1000 m (plate at an angle of 60 deg). The MP-T round contained 190 g of explosives. The Americans expressed their interest in the German system as early as in 1990 (gun and ammunition). The technology and ammunition have been shared completely with General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products until 2003. There, since the very start, the solution has been a serious contender among the options proposed as the FCS armament. For multiple reasons, the German Puma IFV has been fitted with a classic 30 mm gun. However, the German ammunition has been appreciated only in the US, as a proposal for the Bushmaster gun. Currently, the German round competes with the 40 SuperShort. The military, however, expects the 50 mm round to become the ultimate „long-term solution". FATE OF 30 MM So, is the fate of the 30 mm round certain? Unfortunately, the increase in the caliber is not a simple matter. A larger caliber does not always translate into an actual increase of the firepower. It turns out that marketing magic does not correspond with the reality of the battlefield. The weapons are rarely used as per designers' assumptions. Shooting the gun without checking the target distance, firing bursts that are longer than needed, firing „in advance", to hit targets that have been erroneously recognized - these things do happen on the actual battlefield and they are usually caused by the huge stress exerted on the troops in combat. The expected ammunition consumption, with regards to quantities needed to destroy or neutralize the given targets, is nowhere near the reality. The total quantity of ammunition carried inside the vehicle could be higher, with extra rounds being loaded onto the platform. However, the quantity of rounds that is ready-to-use is the critical issue here. Programmable rounds are not a golden bullet as well, at least not to the extent that is suggested by the marketing brochures. First, rounds as such are expensive. Due to some errors associated with the contemporary fire control systems and programming units, it is recommended that programmable rounds are fired in 3 to 5-shots bursts. Secondly, to use rounds as such effectively, one needs to precisely select the moment and height over the target at which the projectile is to explode. This, on the other hand, creates a requirement for an advanced fire control system coupled with a laser rangefinder and weather sensors. A solution as such does not differ from FCSs usually implemented in the case of 3rd generation MBTs. FCS as such have a ridiculous price tag, constituting 30- 40% of the entire value of the platform. The „large caliber illusion" has first been noted, in publicly available documents, by the Americans who were considering different options when it came to the modernization of the M2 Bradley. They were thoroughly testing all of the ammunition systems mentioned above, both in a stand-alone setting, as well as in a form of prototypes installed on the vehicles itself, also executing a series of simulated scenarios. The necessity to fit an alternative gun (different than the 25 mm gun) in the existing turret, along with ammunition, was an obvious limitation here. For the 25 mm rounds, 300 rounds have been available immediately. In the case of 40 mm CTAI and 50 mm Super Short the turret could only have accommodated 93 rounds. 40 mm Super Short was somewhere in between (180 rounds), along with the 35 mm round, with a slightly smaller quantity. The test results were a major disappointment for the fans of innovation - 35 mm, 40 CTAI, and 50 SS rounds have turned out to be two-fold inferior to the 25 mm and 30 mm. The 40 mm Super Short turned out to be the best, but solely because 180 rounds were available immediately. The conclusion Propozycja modyfikacji BWP BWP Borsuk www.fragoutmag.com