Twin barrel tanks?

[Waylander]

And they heat up differently.
On hot days and after alot of shooting one should zero a normal tank barrel to keep getting good hit results.
I bet that two barrels don't behave completely the same in the sun and after some shooting so with the first zeroing done on the run goes your perfect alignment of the two guns.

If one really want's to have two barrels just let the FCS sort them out with a simple switch. Much easier.

 

[ricwine]

Already discounted

Hey I wonder, how many tanks (including artillery platforms etc.) where build or are still in use which feature twin barrels?

And why is the feature so rare, what are the biggest disadvantages? It strikes me as something that with todays computer-aided gyroscopic systems could feature a very high rate of fire.

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The human factor has got to be the most important. Who is going to control 2 targeting/surveilance systems. ~Remotely operated turrets are awesome.
And yet the requirement is for information overload. To aim specifically would require 1 crewman for 1 main weapon and maybe a co-ax surely not?

And the all up weight would be difficult to add to future armour at this point. With IED the new challenge that needs to be defeated. Extra armour and space is again being stretched.

+ I am under the impression that a lot of experience in combat. Has revealed that wheeled armour is taking over from tracked vehicles. Another thread maybe, but relevance here for monster heavy tanks and IFV types.

Twin barrels are to be aimed at what. If you take hordes of chinese tanks. And then double the numbers before your eyes. You could justify a tank with two main guns. But yet again the answer is here. ATGM are prevelant but still a niche" system.

So we go from WW1 tanks. Multi weaponed ( sponsons, barbettes and turrets with limited movement. Excluding some machine gun turrets. then inter war Land Ship, types of heavy armour. Rail tanks/cars. Through to ww2 with the KV1 and turret mounted machine guns.

The point missed on this forum is that modern sensors have replaced multiple weapons. Night vision and lasers spot your targets. New armour and anti projectile systems ( such as the Israeli Trophy, on this sites homepage )
These are the multiple weapon systems that have evolved to meet new threats. The real threats of today. Why have multiple machine gun turrets. Are the Mongol hordes or Zulus attacking. A humerous folly I know, but you understand my point.

Most importantly, the cost and logistics. Most armies struggle to arm a sizeable chunk or there force structure, with modern systems. Who can afford to deploy armour bristling with twin barrels and multiple weapon stations. So a semi trained guy with a $2000.00 rocket launcher can demolish it from the sixth floor of a deserted building.

Summary: No twin barrels because there are no two headed gorgons anymore. No two headed/brained crewmen to operate. And no double dollar bills to pay for it all. Seriously....

Post Summary: Evolution in armour ( tanks, ifv, mrap ) will be in armour solutions, certainely novel vehicle designs. Such as modular weapons and body configurations. Smaller lighter and easier to deploy. Easier to maintain in the field. Cheaper to operate and run over the long term.

postcript: I deliberately avoided quoting facts and figures. And too much technical language. Some of the replys are execellent on specifics. This was a broader argument that was answered from myself.

 

[Waylander]

Recent conflicts have not shown that smaller, wheeled vehicles are the way to go in the future.

They have shown that wheeled vehicles have their place but if serious work needs to be done, than heavy tracked AFVs are needed.

Be it Desert Storm, the conventional phase of Iraqi Freedom, the heavy fighting in Falluhja, the deployment of MBTs and IFVs to Afghanistan, the second Chechen war, the Georgian conflict etc.

Heavy armour and mech forces are still relevant despite the light-airportable mafia and will stay so for quite some time.

 

[IronsightSniper]

Hell, if you want to deal with a horde of Chinese MBTs, take a TOR Missile system's TELAR and replace it's 9M330 SAMs with Khrizantema (AT-15) ATGMs, that'd solve any case of en massed armor formations.

 

[ricwine]

Back to basics. 1 vs 2

Recent conflicts have not shown that smaller, wheeled vehicles are the way to go in the future.
They have shown that wheeled vehicles have their place but if serious work needs to be done, than heavy tracked AFVs are needed.
Be it Desert Storm, the conventional phase of Iraqi Freedom, the heavy fighting in Falluhja, the deployment of MBTs and IFVs to Afghanistan, the second Chechen war, the Georgian conflict etc.
Heavy armour and mech forces are still relevant despite the light-airportable mafia and will stay so for quite some time
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None of which has shown the need for twin barreled guns. The zu57 was a Soviet era t54/55 spaag. Armed with twin 57mm guns. I believe its rate of fire was too slow even for these smaller callibre weapons.

Heavy armour will not disappear anytime soon. But even the latest generation of MBT are all smaller than the M1/ Challenger/Leopard2/T80 types.

Battle damaged tanks are akward to recover and repair. Try adding 2 120mm+ to a turret and see if that helps. Also ammo would need not to be reduced for a twin gun design. More likely increased. And where are they going to design in extra ammo lockers?.

My basic argument is that modern and future developments are already on the public arena. Soft kill such as ECM and stealth designed into vehicle bodys. Unmanned turrets. Smaller more effect multi purpose missiles and rockets. Even less crew, 4 down to 3 crewmen. No idea why they would add a 5th crewmember. Unless he has 4 arms and 8 eyes. To control all those turrets.

Recoil of two main guns has to be an issue as well. the turret would look more like a Paladin or model of SPG. Which as there turrets are uesally light weight not armoured to MBT levels . Tells its own story.

Lastly, turreted guns were for salvo fire. With super accurate missiles and tanls weapons. 2 is pointless.

Hope that is easy to follow !.

 

[Feanor]

Hell, if you want to deal with a horde of Chinese MBTs, take a TOR Missile system's TELAR and replace it's 9M330 SAMs with Khrizantema (AT-15) ATGMs, that'd solve any case of en massed armor formations.

Unless those armored formations have abundant air support. Not to mention that you have to find those armored formations first.

 

[kato]

Unless those armored formations have abundant air support.

Or networked artillery support...

Quite seriously? Why a Tor? It's a huge vehicle. Not what you even remotely want for anti-tank work. I'd take a 30-year-old Jaguar 1 with its 20 HOT 2 missiles, 12-round revolver magazine for automatic under-armour reload, decent non-emitting sensor systems and minimized visual signature over that any day.

 

[Feanor]

Or the real Khrizantema on its BMP-3 chassis.

 

[IronsightSniper]

Uh, no comment :V

But in general, unless you're willing to create a tank capable of supporting multiple turrets in an outlandish fashion (I have 6 120 mm L/55s in a revolver in my mind), you can't beat the sheer rate of fire, range, and destruction of Missiles.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

But in general, unless you're willing to create a tank capable of supporting multiple turrets in an outlandish fashion (I have 6 120 mm L/55s in a revolver in my mind), you can't beat the sheer rate of fire, range, and destruction of Missiles.

Well there is another parameter which was why NATO armies were looking at re-introduction of a lot of anti-tank guns in the 1980s. That is time of flight. NATO testing showed that the high time of flight of ATGMs to target massively reduced the engagement opportunities of each anti tank unit against advancing tanks. Because each launcher could only guide a single missile at a time this significantly reduced their rate of fire. An anti-tank gun with high velocity shells was able to engage many more advancing vehicles in the available time frame. To overcome this handicap the US started work on the hyper velocity missile which unfortunately had a massive firing signature in smoke and flash so was never going to be a survivable weapon on the battlefield.

 

[kato]

For sheer firepower, i'd still go with the VT1-2 as one of the ultimate vehicles on the battlefield. Even if only a single prototype existed.

Coincidentally a twin barrel (gun) tank. Twin vertically stabilized 120mm/L44 auto-loaded guns firing at a combined 20-24 rpm on the move. Quad turbo 12V engine with 2175 HP peak power (50 HP/ton!), with two APUs enabling completely silent moves between positions in the field if necessary. Front silhouette only 7.2 m² at 2 meters overall height - on a shortened MBT70 hull, with no such fancy useless stuff like turrets. Completely automated FCS - TC or gunner entered target, FCS would fire automatically whenever the guns were lined up with it. Fully redundant optics with two PERI R12 360-degree IR sights.

Intended to wait in cover for as long as possible, build a wall of steel against the enemy line, and then after the first salvo literally wade into the enemy, firing indiscriminately left and right.

For 1975 that would probably have been the king of the battlefield. Or, hell, at any point since then too...

 

[My2Cents]

For sheer firepower, i'd still go with the VT1-2 as one of the ultimate vehicles on the battlefield. Even if only a single prototype existed.

Coincidentally a twin barrel (gun) tank. Twin vertically stabilized 120mm/L44 auto-loaded guns firing at a combined 20-24 rpm on the move. Quad turbo 12V engine with 2175 HP peak power (50 HP/ton!), with two APUs enabling completely silent moves between positions in the field if necessary. Front silhouette only 7.2 m² at 2 meters overall height - on a shortened MBT70 hull, with no such fancy useless stuff like turrets. Completely automated FCS - TC or gunner entered target, FCS would fire automatically whenever the guns were lined up with it. Fully redundant optics with two PERI R12 360-degree IR sights.

Intended to wait in cover for as long as possible, build a wall of steel against the enemy line, and then after the first salvo literally wade into the enemy, firing indiscriminately left and right.

For 1975 that would probably have been the king of the battlefield. Or, hell, at any point since then too...

It was a design study during the development of the Leopard 2. The last attempt in Germany to revive the cannon armed tank destroyer. Excellent firepower and heavy frontal armor, but it is unable to fire on the move and the whole vehicle has to stop and pivot to traverse the guns (no big deal at the time, fully stabilized tank gun fire controls were still a decade away).

It would have been excellent for a defense retrograde in Europe, but only fair on offense, at best. The Swedish S-tank’s big brother.

Question: Did they copy the S-Tank design feature of halving 2 drivers, 1 for forward and the other for reverse? The idea was to allow the tank to keep the heavily armored bow pointed toward the enemy while displacing/retreating to the next firing position.

 

[kato]

it is unable to fire on the move

It was able and fully intended to fire on the move. They invented some kind of "waggling", in which the tank would generally move in such a zig-zag way that the guns move left and right constantly. The FCS was supposed to fire off the shot automatically when the crosshairs crossed the target set by TC or gunner. Was called "taktische Wedelfahrt" (tactical wedel drive - the ski term was applied) and "Zieldurchgangsverfahren" (target passage method). This kind of driving was supposed to make it harder for enemy tanks to target it.

Question: Did they copy the S-Tank design feature of halving 2 drivers, 1 for forward and the other for reverse?

Nope. Only German armoured vehicle that did that was the Luchs, copied from the WW2 Sd.Kfz. 231. The three crew of the VT1-2 sat side-by-side on a semi-stabilized platform between the guns, completely separate from the combat and engine compartment located behind them.

 

[My2Cents]

It was able and fully intended to fire on the move. They invented some kind of "waggling", in which the tank would generally move in such a zig-zag way that the guns move left and right constantly. The FCS was supposed to fire off the shot automatically when the crosshairs crossed the target set by TC or gunner. Was called "taktische Wedelfahrt" (tactical wedel drive - the ski term was applied) and "Zieldurchgangsverfahren" (target passage method). This kind of driving was supposed to make it harder for enemy tanks to target it.

Can you supply reference links for the "taktische Wedelfahrt" (tactical wedel drive)?
Are there any results from actually tested it, or did it die in the conceptual stages?

It sounds like one of those weird ideas with interesting implications and alternative applications.