2 gun tanks

[starfury]

the main battle tank with a 2 cannons seems rather popular, SC siege tank, C&C mammoth tank, soviet heavy and mammoth tank

is there any practical advantages to building these giants with their twin guns, they do only seem to require more loaders but overall does not need more crew. Modern MBT's only have a single cannon.

[Faram]

Guess they look cooler that way

Two main guns in a tank turret is pointless, you can only aim at one point.

[HRogge]

the main battle tank with a 2 cannons seems rather popular, SC siege tank, C&C mammoth tank, soviet heavy and mammoth tank

is there any practical advantages to building these giants with their twin guns, they do only seem to require more loaders but overall does not need more crew. Modern MBT's only have a single cannon.

Yes, they are much easier to recognize in a game...

[HRogge]

the main battle tank with a 2 cannons seems rather popular, SC siege tank, C&C mammoth tank, soviet heavy and mammoth tank

is there any practical advantages to building these giants with their twin guns, they do only seem to require more loaders but overall does not need more crew. Modern MBT's only have a single cannon.

Yes, they are much easier to recognize in a game...

[Sea Skimmer]

Two guns? Ba, nothing can beat the T-35 with five turrets, two mounting two anti tank guns, and mounting two heavy machine guns arranged in a square with a fifth turret with a 3 inch howitzer in the middle firing over them. Sure the armor is about 15mm thick on the front, half that one the sides, and the only time they went into action they ran out of fuel before finding the Germans, but still five turrets just cant be beat.


In reality though, having two heavy guns is a bad idea. You need a huge increase in tank size to hold them and sufficient ammo, mobility is going to suck. The off center nature of the weapons would make aiming a pain, and of course you can only aim one gun at a time. You also have a huge increase in cost as a result, you going to be looking at a 2 for three or four replacement scale, and the smaller tanks are going to beat the big ones ten out of twelve times. You also end up with more weaker frontal armor as a result of having two large off center holes in the armor. For the most apart, a crew can already reload faster then targets can be found anyway.

The advantage of hitting a target tank with two guns is non existent, better to get one solid hit then two glancing ones, which is what would happen. And if you really need the added firepower, NATO is working on a new 140mm gun, which could be carried by the Leo2, Challenger II or M1A2, and the Ukraine already has on mounted on a T-84 for sale, you can also buy the gun separately.

I really cant think of any time when two guns would be useful or pointful except if your enemy has countered your two barreled 95 ton tank with a 500 ton tank mounting a 12 inch howitzer along with a couple Silkworms converted for anti tank use…

Basically, two gunned tanks suck and are stupid.


[/i]

[Bob The Great]

The only reason I can think of is that two guns effectively doubles the tanks rate of fire. This only applies if the tank has fairly slow loaders, though. Once the loader gets fast enough, having two of them firing as fast as they could consecutively would make the tank unable to recover from the recoil after each shot.

If the guns are fired simultaneously, that nullifies the rate of fire advantage, and it becomes simpler to have a single larger gun that does the same job, but uses only one loader, one barrel, and one magazine.

[Master of Ossus]

The problem with two gun tanks is the recoil of the two weapons limits the size of both bores. The only advantage is not rate of fire in large weapons, but a marginal benefit in reliability. Only in very small weapons is the rate of fire significantly greater, and it is often actually slower (if you need a loader, then he has to man both weapons at once, unless you add a second one which becomes inefficient).

[Sea Skimmer]

The only reason I can think of is that two guns effectively doubles the tanks rate of fire. This only applies if the tank has fairly slow loaders, though. Once the loader gets fast enough, having two of them firing as fast as they could consecutively would make the tank unable to recover from the recoil after each shot.

If the guns are fired simultaneously, that nullifies the rate of fire advantage, and it becomes simpler to have a single larger gun that does the same job, but uses only one loader, one barrel, and one magazine.

A human can already load a 120mm gun eight to twelve times per minute, depending on the model of weapon and the loaders skill. To keep a 14 tank-company firing at that rate for one minute would require it to be attacked with at least a regimental sized attack in the open.

The only enemies who could realistically masse these numbers against a Western army, the only people in a position to buy such expensive tanks, is China, and 75% of their tanks are T-54 clones.. Real big threat there..

There entire modern armored force could be wiped out by a brigade of Western armor in 15 minutes..

[starfury]

There entire modern armored force could be wiped out by a brigade of Western armor in 15 minutes..

all too true, the only modern chinese tanks are the type 85/80/90 which are barely T-80 quality and are even more rare.

What about Russia, they had a larger armored force, and better second-line tanks, T-72 etc, still like China, the modern fleet is very small relative to the main army, the T-80/T-90 being as rare as the variants of the type 80.

the combined modern forces of both countries is barely equal to small portion of the the western powers, they just had a lot of junk from the 1960's and 1970's.

[Master of Ossus]

The other issue with very large bore weapons being mounted two-guns to a tank is that if you can kill something with a single hit, you really don't need to fire twice. The rate of fire is also affected by how quickly a gunner can pick out and target an enemy vehicle/building/whatever.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Having one large weapon is always better than two light weapons, at least as it comes to tanks. There are issues of aiming, weight, and power. For example, two 37mm cannons will do very little to a T-34's glacis, but a single 75mm will penetrate easily. The newest MBT guns are following the "bigger is better" philosophy, with NATO using a new 140mm (as Sea Skimmer said) and Russia supposedly coming out with a smooth-bore 152mm high velocity gun. It'll be a wonder if we ever see the tank that's supposed to mount it, though.

Tanks in computer games seem to have double-barrelled punch on a regular basis, but that's just because concept artists think that they look cool. Off-hand, the only successful tanks with multiple main guns that I can think of would be SPAA... but they shoot at aircraft and sometimes infantry.

[Jack Lain]

But what if the weapons were designed for two distinctly different purposes?

A main cannon and anti-personnel or some other round type?
Perhaps the second barrel is for small yield nukes? Which cannot be used in the main gun?

Yeah I'm reaching... sigh.

[Sea Skimmer]

But what if the weapons were designed for two distinctly different purposes?

A main cannon and anti-personnel or some other round type?
Perhaps the second barrel is for small yield nukes? Which cannot be used in the main gun?

Yeah I'm reaching... sigh.

Tanks already have this neat second gun anti personal system know as the coaxial machine gun..
France tried mounting a 20mm cannon as coaxial weapon on the AMX-30, but the ammo took up to much space, and the intended targets, BTR-60s, got replaced by BMP's with much better armor.

Jumping up to a 25mm cannon, or the 30mm, which is really needed to frontally kill modern IFV's, would be impossible without a significantly larger tank turret, and thus a bigger tank. You could easily add five to ten tons to the size of the tank, all for the ability to slowly kill things, which will then have time to shoot back, rather then just blasting them with the main gun.



Starfury, notice I said enemies. I don’t regard Europe/NATO/America going to war with Russia as a remotely likely event, especially since within the next five years they will be the world's largest oil exporter. War with China however is a real possibility, though also somewhat remote.

The Russians do have a big tank fleet, something like 20,000 modern vehicles IIRC, however the number that could be made operational and massed at any stop would be perhaps a thousand. A big force, and a major threat to a Western Division, but not a realistic one.

[Darth Wong]

Also remember the effect of off-axis recoil. A normal single-gun turret has the axis of recoil going directly through the centre of the turret, which in turn is the axis of turret rotation.

A two-barrelled gun turret, on the other hand, has each gun's axis of recoil going to one side of the axis of turret rotation. Therefore, the recoil will tend to make the turret rotate, putting heavy strain on the turret rotation motors and linkages.

[TrailerParkJawa]

Dont forget that 2 tank guns would make the turret bigger which just means more for the enemy too shoot at.

As for launching a second specialized projectile, the Israeli Merkava mounts a mortar to do stuff like that.

Ive never heard if its really used though.

[Sea Skimmer]

Having one large weapon is always better than two light weapons, at least as it comes to tanks. There are issues of aiming, weight, and power. For example, two 37mm cannons will do very little to a T-34's glacis, but a single 75mm will penetrate easily. The newest MBT guns are following the "bigger is better" philosophy, with NATO using a new 140mm (as Sea Skimmer said) and Russia supposedly coming out with a smooth-bore 152mm high velocity gun. It'll be a wonder if we ever see the tank that's supposed to mount it, though.

Tanks in computer games seem to have double-barrelled punch on a regular basis, but that's just because concept artists think that they look cool. Off-hand, the only successful tanks with multiple main guns that I can think of would be SPAA... but they shoot at aircraft and sometimes infantry.

Yes, I wonder if anyone knows what they plan to mount that thing on. It started out as the weapon for the T-96 in an unmanned turret, but that project died in the mid 1990s. The Black Eagle upgrade for the T-80U adds a bunch of turret room, reportedly it will be available for export with the 152mm smoothbore but the Russian army may not be buying that model. It can also take a 140mm and NATO 120mm in addition to the 125mm gun off the T-90. The ammo is also now kept separate from the crew by an armor blast door like on the M1 expect for when the auto loader is actually ramming it.

Black Eagle pic with 125mm gum



Speaking of Russian tanks and spin offs, take a look at this thing



One of a number of Ultimate T-72's upgrades coming out. Its Czech and in addition to armor and fire control upgrades, it mounts pair of 20 or 30mm cannon on the roof for AA, with 750 or 500 rounds of ammunition depending on cannon size.

Then there's this, the T-84-120 also know as Oplot. Basically the T-84 with a NATO 120mm

One last picture for those who would claim airborne armor is not practical

[img]http://www.aviationpics.de/preview/t-80 ... ng%20in%20

[Sea Skimmer]

last picture fixed...

[Jack Lain]

Man, that last pic is awesome! I wonder if they hit?

Well, the only argument I have left (other than it looks cool) is that perhaps, with energy type weapons the double barrel is possible. -?- But that is sci fi.
I guess if you really wanted to do a double barrel, the smart way would be to stack the guns on top of each other, not side by side. Increase the turrent upwards, not outwards.

Certainly based on what everyone is saying, it isn't possible with modern day munitions. Unless you add crew, enlarge the tank, or accept a slower rate of fire. So there seems little doubt, execpt for cool factor, that double barrel tanks are basically false.

[RayCav of ASVS]

Man, that last pic is awesome! I wonder if they hit?

Well, the only argument I have left (other than it looks cool) is that perhaps, with energy type weapons the double barrel is possible. -?- But that is sci fi.
I guess if you really wanted to do a double barrel, the smart way would be to stack the guns on top of each other, not side by side. Increase the turrent upwards, not outwards.

Certainly based on what everyone is saying, it isn't possible with modern day munitions. Unless you add crew, enlarge the tank, or accept a slower rate of fire. So there seems little doubt, execpt for cool factor, that double barrel tanks are basically false.

Energy weapons would make twin turret tanks very feasable, especially if they have small or no breaches. They could be mounted on independent sockets so that both weapons can score direct hits on the same targets, or even direct hits on different targets in the same salvo! Reloading would not be a problem, as well as recoil, and size problems would be minimal. The only problem would be the slight increase in size that the additional gun would bring, but no problem if it's small enough. With energy weapons, a twin turret tank would actually be not only very feasible, but incredibly versitle. It would rule the battlefeild! MWHAHAHA!

As for current tech...seriously when I saw this thread I thought Manji was up to his usual tricks

It's a really dumb idea, but I won't repeat what others have already said. It works on warships simply because the scale not only allows it but makes it absolutely necessary; but tanks simply can't handle it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Man, that last pic is awesome! I wonder if they hit?

Well, the only argument I have left (other than it looks cool) is that perhaps, with energy type weapons the double barrel is possible. -?- But that is sci fi.
I guess if you really wanted to do a double barrel, the smart way would be to stack the guns on top of each other, not side by side. Increase the turrent upwards, not outwards.

I doubt they hit anything, or that they even had a live round loaded. At that elevation the gun would be firing to a range greater then it could reach on a level surface, so the fire control computer likely would not work..

As for stacking guns, very bad idea. That would add at least three feet to the height of the tank, and unbalance it, it would have greatly reduced mobility from that alone, and then you have the added weight of having to cover a much much larger area with armor. That requires a bigger engine which in turn needs a bigger tank to support it all ect…

Plus, in combat you want as low a profile as possible. The M1 is pretty good, but you can see the extremes the Russians have gone to, by the time the T-72 rolled out, the driver had to be Five six or shorter to fit!