Shipbucket

The recent debate on the Type26 has been interesting. Times of change are always difficult logistically for the forces.
However form another forum it looks like BaE has signed a contract to support 127mm Oto Melara's in the UK so the door could be open to them to be the gun armament on the type26 and refit for the type 45. It's a shame that the devlopment of the 155mm based on the AS90. But that set me thinking what other modern Land guns could have made it to arm frigates and destroyers. To me the obvious ones are the British 120mm L30 CHARM rifled gun from the challanger MBT and the 120mm Rheinmetal smooth bore. The L30 would have been more complicated as it uses 2 piece ammunition. Thease could be interesting as as far as I remember thease guns were both developed to fire on fairly flat trajectories.

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"There was nothing wrong with Titanic when she left the Shipyard" Tim McGarry Belfast Comedian

Well, tank guns have higher muzzle velocities than artillery pieces, given that they are direct fire weapons. I always thought that the best way to think of a modern tank is like a shield and lance combo; power over a short range, and the use of the two together is what is important.

Anyway... back O/T, IIRC DKB mentions a 105mm tank rifle as being considered for "junk bashing" on a patrol ship, the high MV providing high accuracy and short time of flight out to the short ranges involved.

Interestingly, a discussion with a chap from UD revealed that tanks were used as direct fire support from landing craft in Vietnam... we ended up discussing how the turret from the M8 Armored Gun System (sic) on a coastal craft... He seemed to think it was quite do-able.

RP1

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"Yes siree, the excitement never stops." Togusa, Ghost in the Shell

UD as in 'Utrikesdepartementet' (Sweden's Foreign Office) or???

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My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen

Sorry - United Defence, now part of BAE Systems, just like everything else.

- RP1

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"Yes siree, the excitement never stops." Togusa, Ghost in the Shell

Yeah, a lot of this.

The thing about naval artillery and land artillery is that the intended use is fundamentally different - in theory. Land artillery - specifically howitzers - have one job: lob an explosive shell a really, really far distance over a high arch. That's really not hard to do at all. Naval artillery however not only has to do that job but also punch through other ships' hulls and even engage high-speed aircraft - in theory. So if anything an "optimal" naval gun might more closely resemble the ballistics of a tank cannon.

Allegedly the big-gun OTO products (or what most closely passes for them) - the 76mm and 1277mm - are multi-role as well as most naval guns that size, but AGS throws out any notion of being multi-use out the window and is strictly a ship-mounted howitzer (though of course there's nothing preventing it from engaging other vessels not unlike an old battleship's gun). And MONARCH (the German program to mount Pzh 2000 in a naval installation) and the British equivalent program for AS90 would've had similar "battleship" ballistics as AGS.

...and yet all of these programs designed to produce a relatively ballistically-simple artillery piece have either run into developmental problem after problem or have been outright cancelled. Lots of high-pressure a mount has to deal with.