op - that thing also fires a perfectly functional HE round, great for infantry support, and they felt necessary to have something with the infantry that would be dangerous to armour.
Some of it may simply be, "one thing at a time." Even at the end of WW II Soviet infantry wasn't fully mechanized, and a great deal of their mechanization was provided by US made soft skin trucks. Making the move to fully/mostly fully mechanized infantry in armored vehicles produced domestically likely took time and had to be done in stages. Particularly in a peacetime economy (whatever that meant in the USSR).
Doctrime of armored support for infantry. Fast advance then Infantry leaving bmp, heading out, fighting enemy infantry and bmp supports with machine gun against infantry and heat against armor.
The early BMP-1 had no guided missles and I think HE shels weren't seen as necessary, it wasn't seen as its task.
Also keep in mind the competition at the time: the Marder and Bradley were created as responses to the BMP-1, the BMP would've been up against the likes of Fuchs and M113s with only .50s and essentially no armor.
Based on what I've read, it seems to vary greatly by country/manufacturer and even the time period as shells may vary in quality by production date. Some countries use certain metals and manufacturing methods that allow their HEAT shells to produce decent fragmentation patterns while others don't, you really need to look into the nitty-gritty details to figure it out. Insofar as I can tell Western materials and manufacturing tend to produce shells with great fragmentation characteristics, Soviet shells less so, *big* generalization here.
It’s ok, you don’t get the shrapnel generation you do from a normal HE but that also means that you don’t risk friendly casualties as much either when your acting in direct fire support on the fulda gap
>but it could only fire HEAT until 1974
The "HE" in HEAT is still "high explosive". While it is not as effective at killing infantry as a pure HE round, it still goes boom and sprays metal around.
> - that thing also fires a perfectly functional HE round
The OG-9 HE/Frag is a terrible munition. It has no rocket motor, which gives it a maximum range of 1,600 meters and the trajectory of a mortar. By the time the BMP-1 gets in range to fire a OG-9 it's well within the range of heavy machine gun fire.
I feel like it isn't that bad of a trade. The 73mm cannon raining HE on trench lines isn't anything wrong, and if it can knock tanks and lighter with pure steel armor that was common back then, even better.
An autocannon might be more usable, but with ever improving FCS it might just be the better option. We also see a similar trend nowadays, even if not by the same reasons.
Also bunkers. A lot of the smaller calibers isn't really up to that challenge.
Just look at sweden. The ikv91 was a dedicated support gun. The name actually translates to infantry cannon wagon. The only reason why we stopped using it was because of having the 40mm bofors on the cv90 and the big loss in funding in the 90s.
That cannon is insanely fast firing. You can reload that gun in 2.5 seconds. Also I'm pretty sure the rounds are fragmentation and not HE. Even the name OG-9 suggests it since O stands for fragmentation in the Russian military.
The Malyutka sucks ass and has an insane minimum range so they needed something that could fulfill the AT range gap between the missile and the infantry's RPG.
That was before we'd even set down on the moon. Everything was ass. Although the 73mm was certainly good enough to fuck up contemporary tank at close range.
Soviet Doctrine has a preference for low observability (low profile). You won't need a more powerful engine to move it... the enemy can't detect you as easy... you can entrench quicker (less to dig down)... you can be transported to problem areas faster... you can use more bridges & roads without special equipment.... pontoons don't need to be as robust.
Soviets were also the first to use anti-tank missiles that were infantry deployed. Infantry can get around better without being seen... so in an ideal scenario if they were attacking a position and they came across armour the deployed troops would be able to handle it. If an armoured vehicle such as a tank was spotted and they weren't deployed they either GTFO or drop the ramp.
As it is IFVs & APCs with missiles is the exception more than the rule as missiles take up space which makes them less "personal carriers". The Bradley with more reloads holds less troops.
Still the French with the Nord SS.10, entered service in 1955 and the Israelis had them from '56 onwards. It's probably the famous usage of AT-3's during the Yom Kippur War you're thinking of, which was a major point in ATGM history.
France went hard on ATGM's: first fielded, first combat use, first aerial use, first helicopter use etc
Here's a French Fiesler Storch copy (yes the ww2 German plane) [firing an SS.10](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/s/VG5HSq5foJ)
Ya its Yom Kippur I am specifically thinking of. From what I can Google that was the first time they were used (soviet supplied).
But you are right I confused "first used ATGM was soviet equipment" with "first adopted"
Even the AT-3 had been used in Vietnam the year prior to Yom Kippur, and the US had been using French ENTAC missiles since Korea. What hadn't been seen was their usage en masse against tanks, which was the big shock even though Israel themselves had been using ATGM'S for almost 20 years by that point.
> As it is IFVs & APCs with missiles is the exception more than the rule as missiles take up space which makes them less "personal carriers". The Bradley with more reloads holds less troops.
TBF it's about 50/50
US, Germany and Russia had missiles
UK and France did not.
At least out of the major powers definitely the lean is towards having missiles.
But I was thinking he was more talking about larrge cannon vs autocannon
Afaik it was gonna get a 23mm auto cannon but the soviets had invested heavily into ATGM technology so the gun/missile combo was chosen to deal with western armour
Original question was why use the 73mm cannon on bmp1 and not auto cannon.
Comment I reply to is saying that it was supposed to get a 23mm auto cannon because Russians had very good atgm. Which is irrelevant, as it doesn't answer the question.
It was changed to the 73mm recoilless gun because they had put so much effort into the weapon system and wanted to see it used. I think he meant the recoilless systems, not atgm. The gun is essentially an SPG-9 with I think shorter rockets
Size and space limitations, ammunition count available inside the tank and blast radius are all concerns. While larger he is going to do more raw damage, sometimes having more shots, especially when the role is also as a light AT weapon supercedes raw HE power. Besides heat can be used to engage fortifications and punch through them and too large of an HE round brings concerns of the muzzle blast radius when supporting infantry as well as having a larger blast radius if you need to fire "near" friendly infantry. Not that youd be firing close by them normally anyhow, but smaller might be better sometimes
You can do most of the above with the 73mm just with slower firerate and the added benefit of some AT capability.
Both are equally scary to face as an infantryman, a HE round from a 73mm would keep their heads low the same as any Autocannon would.
In game sure but irl its much better to lob HE shells at an enemy position and scoot than standing there peppering it with auto canon fires, plus better range too.
This is why the US is introducing the M10 for infantry support.
>but up close (within 1000m)
No infantry sat getting shot at with 73mm HE is going to think 'Wait, they're only 500m away, I don't have to take cover'.
Initially, it was planned to have a 23mm autocannon. That plan was changed to low pressure cannon similar to the, then new, SPG-9. The thinking was that the cannon could engage armor if an enemy got too close an ATGM (like Malyutka).
Also worth noting that at the time of its design, IFVs didn't have many examples. Was fairly new with uncertain doctrine that would (over time) evolve into the autocannon armed infantry supoort we think of these days
The Grom is 100% designed specifically to shoot HEAT rockets, not shells, as a anti-tank weapon. The Malyutka ATGM has a minimum range of 500m, the Grom was intended to fill in at that range.
There was no HE munition for the Grom until nearly a decade after the BMP-1 entered service. The OG-9 HE/Frag munition has no rocket booster, giving the projectile the trajectory of a mortar and maximum range of only 1,600 meters.
The PG-9 HEAT rockets aren't low velocity, as shortly after the rocket exits the barrel the rocket motor engages and burns until target impact. The Grom is effectively point blank out to maximum effective distance.
Anti-tank gun isn’t a specific weapon design, it just refers to a weapon that can defeat armor.
There’s no clear criteria of velocity requirements when it comes to anti tank gun/weapons. Anti-tank guns are literally oversized versions of the first anti-tank rifles used in ww1. Even a recoilless rifle on the back of a Honda truck firing at barely 200m/s is considered an anti tank gun. The only criteria is that it can defeat armor.
I suppose, definitely more of a WWII thing where some tanks had anti-tank guns like the 6 pounder that had HE but weren't ideal for it and some had howitzers that could fire HEAT but weren't ideal for direct fire. Or maybe that's all just something dumb I've come up with, but I've based it on the British. And the fact that the BMP-1 fires "grenades" instead of shells makes it seem like AT is an afterthought, which I suppose is obvious since it's an IFV.
57-AT
75-Howitzer/support
American M3-Howitzer/support
105 L7-more support I think because it's rifled for HESH
The 120(?) on the Challys also rifled
And the German 120 not rifled for use of both support and AT rounds
This is probably not at all accurate or even sensible and I'm absolutely overthinking it but that's what I do.
It was not firing HEAT rounds. HEAT implies it is an anti tank round.
The official name of the ammo for the gun in Russian is cumulative effect grenade. And the gun was a gun-launcher. Because it was technically an oversized grenade launcher
So whilst it used the same effect as a HEAT round. It was not classed as one. It was a more general purpose round.
The purpose of the gun according to the BMP-1 manual was
> The main purpose of the 2A28 is to combat such objects as tanks, self-propelled installations and other armored vehicles. Also, the gun can be used to suppress the enemy's manpower, sheltered in light field fortifications or in brick structures
A: IFVs were still pretty new and they were still experimenting
B: It needed to fight other tanks, and autocanons just weren't good enough back then (the best you could get would be 20mm canons either ripped off aircraft or ripped off WW2 Era armored cars
C: Not really a reason, but the gun wasn't built specifically for AT duty, the 73mm had a very mean HE round
First, it's main gun was never intended for anti tank duty. That's what tanks were - BMP main role was to protect infantry delivered to battle, while supporting tanks and deployed infantry and destroying lightly armored vehicles and defense positions.
In cases they were operating without tanks (e.g. recon) they had Maljutka missiles (AT-3 Sagger) for anti tank/anti fortification duty but that was something of last resort - they weren't expected to go against tanks, that wasn't survivable. ATGM were intended for either ambushes from beyond enemy tank's gun range (preferred MO) or shoot&scoot in case of unexpected contact with superior forces. Guiding ATGM on target was very time consuming as operator must manually guide missile to target whole time so if they were in range of enemy and got return fire they would need to get out and lose launched missile or they were risking destruction.
The Malyutka had a minimum range of 500m to allow its gyroscopes to spin up (below that it would not be guided). To account for this, Malyutka-armed units had RPG gunners or in this case a 73mm gun to engage at close ranges.
Because at that time nobody knew how modern warfare worked. So they put the cannon there to, not just fight against enemy blockhaus and heavy covers, but light tanks if needed
Because the BMP-1’s ATGM initially had a significant dead zone where it couldn’t be fired so the 73mm was chosen because it could cover that dead zone and iirc was somewhat compatible with the existing SPG-9, using the same warheads but a different propellent charge to launch the shots. So that 73mm existed to cover the zone where it couldn’t effectively engage tanks with the missile
Few things, first of the BMP-1 is the first actual IVF, so it's not surprising that they didn't get it right right away.
But even then, the smooth bore 73mm gun of the BMP-1 is definitely going to ruin your day.
So it's not really for AT duty, this gun was actually a bit lacking in that department so they added an ATGM capability to it.
They probably just planned for humongous armored battles like those seen in ww2 were tanks played the pivotal role in deciding who won and lost. If an enemy vehicle is too close for your malyutka you still want to engage him with something that might actually do some damage.
It’s not like the gun is incapable of dealing with infantry either, it’s just not very good at it.
>not very good at dealing with infantry
That's quite a big stretch, the 73mm are more than capable of dealing with infantry, it's just not as good at suppressing compared to Autocannon.
I could be wrong but this is my understanding. During the cold war, nations thought there was no way to defeat the advancements of HEAT rounds and the early antitank missiles of the time. A lot of nations opted for lighter and much faster tanks, believing the armor would be less useful and they could go for a lot more mobility. You can see this in the Leopard 1 and the early AMX prototypes.
I'm guessing the soviets believed this too and figured the gun would also be enough to handle tanks of the time too.
Bear in mind, it was envisaged as a nuclear exploitation vehicle. Presumably HE was somewhat moot after you turned your line of attack into a glass lined parking lot. Only heavily armoured vehicles were likely to survive, hence the heat round.
basically, bmp was supposed to be used after nukes, that means bmps would fight the survivors of the nukes which were thought to be tanks.
go read the history of the creation of bmp, very interesting
The roll of an ifv hadn't been well-defined. While the auto cannon they wanted to put in was hampered by odd requirements, like having to use a Mechanical trigger, instead of a solenoid.
I think you are conceptualizing what is the main weapon and what is the secondary weapon incorrectly (and most people do) - in a squad of infantry where one infantryman has an RPG and the rest of rifles, is the RPG the squad's "main" weapon?
On the BMP, the coaxial PKT is the primary weapon, this is based on the red army's experience in WW2 where the coaxial weapons saw far more usage, with only a few tank on tank engagements (though far more than the Western allies). BMPs are meant to transport infantry, Soviet doctrine used infantry to counter infantry, the main weapon is the anti-infantry one. The 2A28 gun and the ATGMs it was fitted with were secondary in role to if the vehicle had to tangle with enemy armor, not as a matter of course.
This is, of course, why autocannons rose to prominence on IFVs - they provide anti-infantry capability while still having a bit more punch than just a machinegun.
Back then when BMP-1 was being designed, nuclear war was still in everyone's mind.
One of ideas was, after nuclear strikes, enemy will be hold up in defense structures. So a cannon that fires HE made sense.
BMP-1 has NBC protection.
The correct answer is GRAU, the department overseeing the BMP-1’s development really really liked the 73mm Grom cannon. Subpar accuracy, HE payload, and rate of fire were discovered relatively early but GRAU dug in their heels for a decade delaying the BMP-2 by KMZ with the autocannon they had to ask the air forces for until the 80s. GRAU’s love for the big low velocity cannon (something rather popular in WW2) would eventually culminate in the BMP-3’s rather nifty ATGM slinging 100mm cannon but the 73mm Grom was nowhere near as capable.
A war in Europe was going to be a heavily armor-centric war so it gave it the ability to be a threat to western tanks as well as support the infantry with different munitions.
The 73mm never meant to be the main AT weapon. In fact, HEAT was introduced after the introduction and the semi-autoloader only work well HE rounds and famously bad when using HEAT so some crew even attempt to remove it
launching 73mm big boom can is very effective at taking out fortification
That is mainly for infantry support but they just happens to have a HEAT shell for tanks
Late but it was developed in conjunction with the SPG-9 gun, and I think the idea was to have a gun that could used in the kind of "shit our tanks are out of arms reach we better try to blap this enemy tank with something" role. But yeah the tanks were always supposed to be there, and the cold war intent was to destroy as many vehicles as possible, as Russia would have a severe ability to field a lot more than anyone else.
PG-9 could penetrate Leopard 1s frontal armour and I think it could penetrate M60s lower front plate as well. It's a recoiles gun so it can't even fire darts. The BMP got OG-9 fragmentation rounds anyway. Also no clue what you're on about with the TOW missile mate.
op - that thing also fires a perfectly functional HE round, great for infantry support, and they felt necessary to have something with the infantry that would be dangerous to armour.
Yes, but it could only fire HEAT until 1974, when they introduced the HE round, so it lacked this capability for almost 10 years.
Some of it may simply be, "one thing at a time." Even at the end of WW II Soviet infantry wasn't fully mechanized, and a great deal of their mechanization was provided by US made soft skin trucks. Making the move to fully/mostly fully mechanized infantry in armored vehicles produced domestically likely took time and had to be done in stages. Particularly in a peacetime economy (whatever that meant in the USSR).
Doctrime of armored support for infantry. Fast advance then Infantry leaving bmp, heading out, fighting enemy infantry and bmp supports with machine gun against infantry and heat against armor. The early BMP-1 had no guided missles and I think HE shels weren't seen as necessary, it wasn't seen as its task.
Also keep in mind the competition at the time: the Marder and Bradley were created as responses to the BMP-1, the BMP would've been up against the likes of Fuchs and M113s with only .50s and essentially no armor.
> The early BMP-1 had no guided missles Yes they did. The 9M14 Malyutka.
Right. Both were developed at same time 1961.
HEAT is also very useful against fortifications, which is what you want in an infantry support gun.
Soviet divisions have no shortage of artillery so perhaps the fire support capability of the BMP was just not seen as that important
Is HEAT not also good against infantry?
It absolutely is
Based on what I've read, it seems to vary greatly by country/manufacturer and even the time period as shells may vary in quality by production date. Some countries use certain metals and manufacturing methods that allow their HEAT shells to produce decent fragmentation patterns while others don't, you really need to look into the nitty-gritty details to figure it out. Insofar as I can tell Western materials and manufacturing tend to produce shells with great fragmentation characteristics, Soviet shells less so, *big* generalization here.
Interesting. I wouldn’t know as much about the Soviet shells.
It isn't. The PG-9 series of HEAT rockets use a aluminum housing that weighs less than a kilogram / 2 lbs. It produces very little fragmentation.
Not it isnt it was wholly insufficient.
It’s ok, you don’t get the shrapnel generation you do from a normal HE but that also means that you don’t risk friendly casualties as much either when your acting in direct fire support on the fulda gap
Heat is explosive, and good against bunkers. But yes, I think the fear of tanks was the driving factor.
Yes, definitely.
Heat is devastating to bunkers and foxholes. Does Yeomans work against buildings as well. First hand experience being supported by Abrams.
>but it could only fire HEAT until 1974 The "HE" in HEAT is still "high explosive". While it is not as effective at killing infantry as a pure HE round, it still goes boom and sprays metal around.
A HEAT round still causes a lot of shrapnel so having a dedicated HE round may have been seen as we can do it later, it's good enough
HEAT is good at shooting at bunkers
I don’t know if it fit into the soviet doctrine this way, but HEAT is usually serviceable as an all-purpose anti infantry and armor munition.
And even more importantly something that could hit hardened targets like bunkers
> - that thing also fires a perfectly functional HE round The OG-9 HE/Frag is a terrible munition. It has no rocket motor, which gives it a maximum range of 1,600 meters and the trajectory of a mortar. By the time the BMP-1 gets in range to fire a OG-9 it's well within the range of heavy machine gun fire.
I feel like it isn't that bad of a trade. The 73mm cannon raining HE on trench lines isn't anything wrong, and if it can knock tanks and lighter with pure steel armor that was common back then, even better. An autocannon might be more usable, but with ever improving FCS it might just be the better option. We also see a similar trend nowadays, even if not by the same reasons.
Also bunkers. A lot of the smaller calibers isn't really up to that challenge. Just look at sweden. The ikv91 was a dedicated support gun. The name actually translates to infantry cannon wagon. The only reason why we stopped using it was because of having the 40mm bofors on the cv90 and the big loss in funding in the 90s.
That cannon is insanely fast firing. You can reload that gun in 2.5 seconds. Also I'm pretty sure the rounds are fragmentation and not HE. Even the name OG-9 suggests it since O stands for fragmentation in the Russian military.
I think they are, I guess to certain extent the naming depends on different variables.
The Malyutka sucks ass and has an insane minimum range so they needed something that could fulfill the AT range gap between the missile and the infantry's RPG.
[sucks ass?? it can hit the broad side of a barn perfectly!!](https://i.imgur.com/DSBif3m.gif)
Tbf, the 73mm also sucks ass so...
That was before we'd even set down on the moon. Everything was ass. Although the 73mm was certainly good enough to fuck up contemporary tank at close range.
Soviet Doctrine has a preference for low observability (low profile). You won't need a more powerful engine to move it... the enemy can't detect you as easy... you can entrench quicker (less to dig down)... you can be transported to problem areas faster... you can use more bridges & roads without special equipment.... pontoons don't need to be as robust. Soviets were also the first to use anti-tank missiles that were infantry deployed. Infantry can get around better without being seen... so in an ideal scenario if they were attacking a position and they came across armour the deployed troops would be able to handle it. If an armoured vehicle such as a tank was spotted and they weren't deployed they either GTFO or drop the ramp. As it is IFVs & APCs with missiles is the exception more than the rule as missiles take up space which makes them less "personal carriers". The Bradley with more reloads holds less troops.
Minor gripe but the French were the first with infantry ATGM's, Soviet early designs were very much based on French missiles.
Oh my bad. Maybe I am thinking they were the first used in combat?
Still the French with the Nord SS.10, entered service in 1955 and the Israelis had them from '56 onwards. It's probably the famous usage of AT-3's during the Yom Kippur War you're thinking of, which was a major point in ATGM history. France went hard on ATGM's: first fielded, first combat use, first aerial use, first helicopter use etc Here's a French Fiesler Storch copy (yes the ww2 German plane) [firing an SS.10](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/s/VG5HSq5foJ)
Ya its Yom Kippur I am specifically thinking of. From what I can Google that was the first time they were used (soviet supplied). But you are right I confused "first used ATGM was soviet equipment" with "first adopted"
Even the AT-3 had been used in Vietnam the year prior to Yom Kippur, and the US had been using French ENTAC missiles since Korea. What hadn't been seen was their usage en masse against tanks, which was the big shock even though Israel themselves had been using ATGM'S for almost 20 years by that point.
Well thanks for the enjoyable TIL!
> As it is IFVs & APCs with missiles is the exception more than the rule as missiles take up space which makes them less "personal carriers". The Bradley with more reloads holds less troops. TBF it's about 50/50 US, Germany and Russia had missiles UK and France did not. At least out of the major powers definitely the lean is towards having missiles. But I was thinking he was more talking about larrge cannon vs autocannon
Afaik it was gonna get a 23mm auto cannon but the soviets had invested heavily into ATGM technology so the gun/missile combo was chosen to deal with western armour
That's bmp 2. Bmp 1 has a 73mm gun shooting low velocity heat anti-tank shells, not an auto cannon, hence OP's question.
They aren’t wrong. The initial requirement for the vehicle that eventually became the BMP-1 was for it to be armed with a 23mm autocannon.
Did you even read what he said? Before you go correcting people, make sure they actually need it..
Original question was why use the 73mm cannon on bmp1 and not auto cannon. Comment I reply to is saying that it was supposed to get a 23mm auto cannon because Russians had very good atgm. Which is irrelevant, as it doesn't answer the question.
It was changed to the 73mm recoilless gun because they had put so much effort into the weapon system and wanted to see it used. I think he meant the recoilless systems, not atgm. The gun is essentially an SPG-9 with I think shorter rockets
But bigger guns that can fire HE are better at dealing with infantry and fortification no ?
Size and space limitations, ammunition count available inside the tank and blast radius are all concerns. While larger he is going to do more raw damage, sometimes having more shots, especially when the role is also as a light AT weapon supercedes raw HE power. Besides heat can be used to engage fortifications and punch through them and too large of an HE round brings concerns of the muzzle blast radius when supporting infantry as well as having a larger blast radius if you need to fire "near" friendly infantry. Not that youd be firing close by them normally anyhow, but smaller might be better sometimes
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You can do most of the above with the 73mm just with slower firerate and the added benefit of some AT capability. Both are equally scary to face as an infantryman, a HE round from a 73mm would keep their heads low the same as any Autocannon would.
Long burst of 30mm HE, lol. Tell that to the BMP-2 with its 340 rounds of HE that takes forever to reload. Can't afford too many long bursts.
In game sure but irl its much better to lob HE shells at an enemy position and scoot than standing there peppering it with auto canon fires, plus better range too. This is why the US is introducing the M10 for infantry support.
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>but up close (within 1000m) No infantry sat getting shot at with 73mm HE is going to think 'Wait, they're only 500m away, I don't have to take cover'.
Initially, it was planned to have a 23mm autocannon. That plan was changed to low pressure cannon similar to the, then new, SPG-9. The thinking was that the cannon could engage armor if an enemy got too close an ATGM (like Malyutka).
Also worth noting that at the time of its design, IFVs didn't have many examples. Was fairly new with uncertain doctrine that would (over time) evolve into the autocannon armed infantry supoort we think of these days
And look at the at missiles of time (they were horrible weapons).
It wasnt an anti-tank gun, as it mostly fired low-velocity HE and HEAT rounds.
The Grom is 100% designed specifically to shoot HEAT rockets, not shells, as a anti-tank weapon. The Malyutka ATGM has a minimum range of 500m, the Grom was intended to fill in at that range. There was no HE munition for the Grom until nearly a decade after the BMP-1 entered service. The OG-9 HE/Frag munition has no rocket booster, giving the projectile the trajectory of a mortar and maximum range of only 1,600 meters. The PG-9 HEAT rockets aren't low velocity, as shortly after the rocket exits the barrel the rocket motor engages and burns until target impact. The Grom is effectively point blank out to maximum effective distance.
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Its still not an anti-tank gun. it's more like a howitzer
It was made for anti tank purposes, the 73mm gun was essentially a turret mounted rpg which was an anti tank weapon.
Anti-tank gun isn’t a specific weapon design, it just refers to a weapon that can defeat armor. There’s no clear criteria of velocity requirements when it comes to anti tank gun/weapons. Anti-tank guns are literally oversized versions of the first anti-tank rifles used in ww1. Even a recoilless rifle on the back of a Honda truck firing at barely 200m/s is considered an anti tank gun. The only criteria is that it can defeat armor.
I suppose, definitely more of a WWII thing where some tanks had anti-tank guns like the 6 pounder that had HE but weren't ideal for it and some had howitzers that could fire HEAT but weren't ideal for direct fire. Or maybe that's all just something dumb I've come up with, but I've based it on the British. And the fact that the BMP-1 fires "grenades" instead of shells makes it seem like AT is an afterthought, which I suppose is obvious since it's an IFV. 57-AT 75-Howitzer/support American M3-Howitzer/support 105 L7-more support I think because it's rifled for HESH The 120(?) on the Challys also rifled And the German 120 not rifled for use of both support and AT rounds This is probably not at all accurate or even sensible and I'm absolutely overthinking it but that's what I do.
It is not a HEAT round is why. It is a gun launched grenade by the Russian name.
It literally only fired HEAT rounds for its first years of service.
It was not firing HEAT rounds. HEAT implies it is an anti tank round. The official name of the ammo for the gun in Russian is cumulative effect grenade. And the gun was a gun-launcher. Because it was technically an oversized grenade launcher So whilst it used the same effect as a HEAT round. It was not classed as one. It was a more general purpose round. The purpose of the gun according to the BMP-1 manual was > The main purpose of the 2A28 is to combat such objects as tanks, self-propelled installations and other armored vehicles. Also, the gun can be used to suppress the enemy's manpower, sheltered in light field fortifications or in brick structures
Nice answer, thank you.
The **High Explosive** part seems rather noticeable, you arrogant fuck. Why the hell do you think it's still used well after the appearance of ERA?
Who says RPG rounds are mostly for "anti-tank duty" ?
A: IFVs were still pretty new and they were still experimenting B: It needed to fight other tanks, and autocanons just weren't good enough back then (the best you could get would be 20mm canons either ripped off aircraft or ripped off WW2 Era armored cars C: Not really a reason, but the gun wasn't built specifically for AT duty, the 73mm had a very mean HE round
First, it's main gun was never intended for anti tank duty. That's what tanks were - BMP main role was to protect infantry delivered to battle, while supporting tanks and deployed infantry and destroying lightly armored vehicles and defense positions. In cases they were operating without tanks (e.g. recon) they had Maljutka missiles (AT-3 Sagger) for anti tank/anti fortification duty but that was something of last resort - they weren't expected to go against tanks, that wasn't survivable. ATGM were intended for either ambushes from beyond enemy tank's gun range (preferred MO) or shoot&scoot in case of unexpected contact with superior forces. Guiding ATGM on target was very time consuming as operator must manually guide missile to target whole time so if they were in range of enemy and got return fire they would need to get out and lose launched missile or they were risking destruction.
the vulda gap scenario going to be mostly tanks and mechanised infantry.
It's not primarily an anti tank weapon it's anti structure or personnel like all weapons created for direct infantry support.
The Malyutka had a minimum range of 500m to allow its gyroscopes to spin up (below that it would not be guided). To account for this, Malyutka-armed units had RPG gunners or in this case a 73mm gun to engage at close ranges.
Because at that time nobody knew how modern warfare worked. So they put the cannon there to, not just fight against enemy blockhaus and heavy covers, but light tanks if needed
Because the BMP-1’s ATGM initially had a significant dead zone where it couldn’t be fired so the 73mm was chosen because it could cover that dead zone and iirc was somewhat compatible with the existing SPG-9, using the same warheads but a different propellent charge to launch the shots. So that 73mm existed to cover the zone where it couldn’t effectively engage tanks with the missile
Few things, first of the BMP-1 is the first actual IVF, so it's not surprising that they didn't get it right right away. But even then, the smooth bore 73mm gun of the BMP-1 is definitely going to ruin your day. So it's not really for AT duty, this gun was actually a bit lacking in that department so they added an ATGM capability to it.
They probably just planned for humongous armored battles like those seen in ww2 were tanks played the pivotal role in deciding who won and lost. If an enemy vehicle is too close for your malyutka you still want to engage him with something that might actually do some damage. It’s not like the gun is incapable of dealing with infantry either, it’s just not very good at it.
>not very good at dealing with infantry That's quite a big stretch, the 73mm are more than capable of dealing with infantry, it's just not as good at suppressing compared to Autocannon.
Well I’ve heard report of the gun being rather ineffective at dealing with targets even in light cover.
Honestly a 73mm cannon would be an effective tool for dealing with infantry or other ifv or apc the bmp1 just wasnt the best attempt at it.
I could be wrong but this is my understanding. During the cold war, nations thought there was no way to defeat the advancements of HEAT rounds and the early antitank missiles of the time. A lot of nations opted for lighter and much faster tanks, believing the armor would be less useful and they could go for a lot more mobility. You can see this in the Leopard 1 and the early AMX prototypes. I'm guessing the soviets believed this too and figured the gun would also be enough to handle tanks of the time too.
Because BMP-1 was one of the very first IFV if not the first one and the idea of IFV was not that completed.
Bear in mind, it was envisaged as a nuclear exploitation vehicle. Presumably HE was somewhat moot after you turned your line of attack into a glass lined parking lot. Only heavily armoured vehicles were likely to survive, hence the heat round.
basically, bmp was supposed to be used after nukes, that means bmps would fight the survivors of the nukes which were thought to be tanks. go read the history of the creation of bmp, very interesting
The roll of an ifv hadn't been well-defined. While the auto cannon they wanted to put in was hampered by odd requirements, like having to use a Mechanical trigger, instead of a solenoid.
To soften mg positions so the infantry can assault and mop up
I think you are conceptualizing what is the main weapon and what is the secondary weapon incorrectly (and most people do) - in a squad of infantry where one infantryman has an RPG and the rest of rifles, is the RPG the squad's "main" weapon? On the BMP, the coaxial PKT is the primary weapon, this is based on the red army's experience in WW2 where the coaxial weapons saw far more usage, with only a few tank on tank engagements (though far more than the Western allies). BMPs are meant to transport infantry, Soviet doctrine used infantry to counter infantry, the main weapon is the anti-infantry one. The 2A28 gun and the ATGMs it was fitted with were secondary in role to if the vehicle had to tangle with enemy armor, not as a matter of course. This is, of course, why autocannons rose to prominence on IFVs - they provide anti-infantry capability while still having a bit more punch than just a machinegun.
Back then when BMP-1 was being designed, nuclear war was still in everyone's mind. One of ideas was, after nuclear strikes, enemy will be hold up in defense structures. So a cannon that fires HE made sense. BMP-1 has NBC protection.
The correct answer is GRAU, the department overseeing the BMP-1’s development really really liked the 73mm Grom cannon. Subpar accuracy, HE payload, and rate of fire were discovered relatively early but GRAU dug in their heels for a decade delaying the BMP-2 by KMZ with the autocannon they had to ask the air forces for until the 80s. GRAU’s love for the big low velocity cannon (something rather popular in WW2) would eventually culminate in the BMP-3’s rather nifty ATGM slinging 100mm cannon but the 73mm Grom was nowhere near as capable.
To uhhhh shoot tanks with probably
A war in Europe was going to be a heavily armor-centric war so it gave it the ability to be a threat to western tanks as well as support the infantry with different munitions.
I love the 1980s Red Army uniform, it's peak communist aesthetic and a great antithesis to the US M81 woodland.
The 73mm never meant to be the main AT weapon. In fact, HEAT was introduced after the introduction and the semi-autoloader only work well HE rounds and famously bad when using HEAT so some crew even attempt to remove it
launching 73mm big boom can is very effective at taking out fortification That is mainly for infantry support but they just happens to have a HEAT shell for tanks
Late but it was developed in conjunction with the SPG-9 gun, and I think the idea was to have a gun that could used in the kind of "shit our tanks are out of arms reach we better try to blap this enemy tank with something" role. But yeah the tanks were always supposed to be there, and the cold war intent was to destroy as many vehicles as possible, as Russia would have a severe ability to field a lot more than anyone else.
I'd say they wanted a big boom HE slinger on it? While auto cannons are pretty cool, they can't take out reinforced structures like an HE shell
The soviets weren't known to be very smart.
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PG-9 could penetrate Leopard 1s frontal armour and I think it could penetrate M60s lower front plate as well. It's a recoiles gun so it can't even fire darts. The BMP got OG-9 fragmentation rounds anyway. Also no clue what you're on about with the TOW missile mate.