120mm vs. 125mm

B

benaakatz

Active member
Is there any real difference between these?

Why does Russia opt for the 125mm while Western nations stick with the 120mm?
 
benaakatz said:
Is there any real difference between these?

Why does Russia opt for the 125mm while Western nations stick with the 120mm?
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LoL just to show theire citizens that russian tanks are better .
Russia always using a bigger caliber then NATO kind'a I think they still thinking they are in a cold war
 
Why shouldn't they use that calibre? They dont need to follow Nato standards.
I dont think these 5 mm make any real difference.
 
bigger means better

quite amazing, isn't it? There we had the bigger, but definitely not better german A7 tank in WWI, various attemts to get better by making things bigge, from overheavy tanks like the russian Klim-Woroshilov, over Königstiger and Maus to Monstrosities like the Rat. Than, after WWII we build lighter hardware, 20 and 30mm autocannons have been fine for decades, the 105 mm maingun was fine for decades, and now we are back to?
Yup. getting bigger, the MBTs get heavier, the guns bigger calibres, I wondeer when its time for Big Berthas rebirth.
 
cisco said:
quite amazing, isn't it? There we had the bigger, but definitely not better german A7 tank in WWI, various attemts to get better by making things bigge, from overheavy tanks like the russian Klim-Woroshilov,
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Which was also the single most scare vehicle Germans encountered in 1941 and single handedly stopped entire brigades for hours.
cisco said:
over Königstiger and Maus to Monstrosities like the Rat. Than, after WWII we build lighter hardware, 20 and 30mm autocannons have been fine for decades, the 105 mm maingun was fine for decades, and now we are back to?
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Actually the 105mm was never fine, the West was behind Russia in tank design for decades and there was a ridiculous minimalistic approach to armaments.
cisco said:
Yup. getting bigger, the MBTs get heavier, the guns bigger calibres, I wondeer when its time for Big Berthas rebirth.
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150mm are coming, Koreans have an option to build it into their tanks, Americans and Germans are quietly considering a new generation of tanks with a 150mm main gun, Russians too though in their case its more of wishfull thinking.
 
back to the roots than

>150mm are coming, Koreans have an option to build it into their tanks, Americans and Germans are quietly considering a new generation of tanks with a 150mm main gun, Russians too though in their case its more of wishfull thinking.<

Hope Krupp (I think its Rheinmetall now) didn't lose the blueprints for the Big Bertha. Ansd maybe we can mount some 400 mm guns on the ne frigates. The MONARC Project looked quite promising, but still a small Calibre if we want to do it as bigger as better way.
 
cisco said:
>150mm are coming, Koreans have an option to build it into their tanks, Americans and Germans are quietly considering a new generation of tanks with a 150mm main gun, Russians too though in their case its more of wishfull thinking.<

Hope Krupp (I think its Rheinmetall now) didn't lose the blueprints for the Big Bertha. Ansd maybe we can mount some 400 mm guns on the ne frigates. The MONARC Project looked quite promising, but still a small Calibre if we want to do it as bigger as better way.
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There's no point for these kinds of guns, anti-ship missiles can make a mangled mess of any ship in a manner which makes capital ships artillery look weak.

As for railway guns, the whole idea was to deliver a big boom over a massive range, today we can do that with improved explosives in 120-150mm artillery and with rocket propelled shells they can reach over 50km of range so beyond the cool factor huge artillery calibers are useless both on land and on the sea.
 
Well, the diameter doesn't make much of a difference when talking about penetration VS other tanks. Have you ever seen our service SABOT rounds? It's a hell of a lot smaller than 120mm. When speaking of ammunition penetration VS tanks, the length of the DU penetrator is what's important. As most of you probably know, our APFSDS ammo discards the SABOT "petals" once it leaves the tube, so 120mm, vs 125mm is not as important as you may think. The only rounds we have that take up the full 120mm is the HEAT and the canister. The others (MPAT, MPAT-OR, SABOT) have discarding petals, so the 120mm size is not really even descriptive of the round. The major difference is theirs is rifled for accuracy and ours is fin stabilized. All this talk of increasing sized cannons neglects the fact that we put a 105mm gun on the M1 before the Germans showed us just how accurate the M256 can be. We most certainly have a more diverse array of 105mm ammo (APFSDS, APDS, HEAT, HEP, WP, APERS) and that is especially true since the revival of the 105mm on the Stryker MGS. Our guns are getting bigger? Then why does the newest gun system the Army has only have a 105mm? Because that's all it needs, and that's all it can handle.
 
What newest gun system? You're talking about this airmobile tankette? it has a 105mm because its designed as an infantry support weapon and is not supposed to fight tanks.
 
All the vehicles in Stryker Brigade Combat Teams are based around the infantry support role, but that doesn't stop them from having an ATGM variant as well does it? I'm not suggesting that the MGS is designed to go face to face with main battle tanks, and I never said that. You do realize that that 105mm guns were used on the origional M1 (as well as the M60, the Merkava Mk I and Mk II, ) which WERE designed to face other tanks? I was talking about the weapon (which I thought this thread was about) not the vehicle per se, since 120mm guns are used on several vehicles (M1, Leo, the L30 on the Chally, the L11A5 on the Cheiftan, Merkava Mk III, the KMDB gun and many more) and 125mm guns are used on several vehicles including the T-72/T-90 series and the T-64/T-80 series. I was talking about weapons (like the OP) not vehicles, so I hope I've made that clear. I'm a tanker and I definately know that Strykers don't fight tanks. As a side note though, they do issue KE ammo for Strykers so I guess someone thinks they might see an armored vehicle (bigger than an APC which we shoot HEAT at) at some point right? I mean KE rounds are not the most effective thing VS infantry and light vehicles right? Or am I missing something else?
 
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19kilo30K4 said:
All the vehicles in Stryker Brigade Combat Teams are based around the infantry support role, but that doesn't stop them from having an ATGM variant as well does it?
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And unless they're facing a monkey model T-72 or something similar they will get murdered, its a topic for a whole different thread but Strykers are not meant to fight tanks and are unlikely to survive an encounter with anything even relatively modern.
19kilo30K4 said:
You do realize that that 105mm guns were used on the origional M1 (as well as the M60, the Merkava Mk I and Mk II, ) which WERE designed to face other tanks?
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Yup, soon enough it was changed into 120mm, as for Israelis they didnt need anything more for Arab tanks at the time.

Caliber matters, of course the velocity and ammo but ultimately caliber matters which is why both US and Germany messed around with a 150mm, especially given that modern 3+ gen MBTs have hard times penetrating each other frontally.
 
Yeah, the Stryker MGS would get slaughtered in a tank battle.
It wasn't built for that. It was built for tank duties other than fighting other tanks. It is what the name implies: a mobile gun system.
 
The 105mm was fine for its time, that time is the 1960s. Today, a 105mm would have a hard time against any real opponent. APFSDS-DU goes a long way to even the match but still, a 105mm just dosent have the abilety to punch a hole in the frront armor of tanks designed from the 1980s and onwards. A Merkava Mk 4 would seriously laugh at a 105mm round, unless someone came out with somthing new in the last year:)

There is no major diffrence between 125 and 120, the question is the design of the penetrator adn the materials, as well as the length of the gun itself. A 55 calibers long 120 with DU rounds is certinly more lethal than any 125mm i know of.

As far as future guns I am not sure if size is the solution. I hope they field ETC guns in 15 years time. If it takes longer they should look into 140mm as an intrim solution. Loading 140mm rounds would probably require an automated loader which, exept for the Leclerc, most western tanks dont have as a policy...
 
Ugh, I stated at least two times that I understand that Strykers were not made to fight tanks. I'm a tanker in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. I am familiar with how tanks are employed. I know that is not their intended purpose, and I said so more than once. (see "I'm not suggesting that the MGS is designed to go face to face with main battle tanks, and I never said that." and "I definately know that Strykers don't fight tanks"). I'm not going to argue a point I already made. I think some of us are making the same points but in different ways. Do I think 120mm smoothbore is great? Hell yeah I do, I command an M1A2 SEP V2 Abrams and I love it!
 
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I wasent critisizing you, I was just giving my opinion. And we should chat once I would love to hear about te M1A2 from a TC. I comanded a rust box known as the Merkava Mk II and wouldent replace it for anything:)
 
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