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Anti-aircraft guns are called anti-aircraft guns in English

Artillery firing at air targets from the ground. It has a long gun body, large muzzle velocity, large firing range, fast rate of fire, high shooting accuracy, and most of them are equipped with fire control systems, which can automatically track and aim at targets. Anti-aircraft guns can also be used to fire at ground or water targets.

Anti-aircraft guns are divided into towed and self-propelled anti-aircraft guns according to the mode of movement. According to the caliber, it is divided into small-caliber, medium-caliber and large-caliber anti-aircraft guns. Small-caliber anti-aircraft guns with a caliber of less than 60 mm, medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns with a caliber of 60~100 mm, and large-caliber anti-aircraft guns with a caliber of more than 100 mm. Some of the small-caliber antiaircraft guns are equipped with a trigger fuse to damage the target by direct hit, while others are equipped with a close-to-explosive fuse to damage the target by means of projectile fragmentation. The projectiles of large and medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns are equipped with time fuses and proximity fuses, and the target is damaged by projectile fragmentation. After the 60s of the 20 th century, some countries gradually replaced large and medium-caliber antiaircraft guns with ground-to-air missiles. However, due to the presence of dead zones for firing at low altitudes of surface-to-air missiles, small-caliber anti-aircraft guns were still developed.

History of anti-aircraft guns

In the second half of the 19th century, wars broke out in Western Europe. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, Prussia besieged the French capital Paris in September, cutting it off from all contact with the outside world.

In order to break through the siege, the French government decided to send people to fly out of the city in balloons to contact the outside of the city. At the beginning of October, the Minister of the Interior, Gambida, flew over the Prussian defense line in a manned balloon, carried out propaganda and agitation in the city of Tours, soon organized a new combat unit, and kept in constant contact with the Paris government through balloons. When the Prussian army found out about this, they immediately studied countermeasures and decided to destroy the balloons of these people first. Moltke, Chief of the General Staff of the Prussian Army, ordered the development of a balloon cannon to cut off the link between Paris and Tours.

Soon, such balloon guns were made. It was converted from a cannon with a caliber of 37 mm and mounted on a four-wheeled vehicle that could be moved. In order to track and shoot the balloons that were drifting, several Prussian soldiers operated the artillery, changed the gun position and firing direction, and shot down a lot of balloons, which was named "balloon cannon". It was the prototype of the anti-aircraft gun.

In 1906, the German Ichhardt Arms Company (the predecessor of the Rheinland Arms Company) improved the original balloon cannon installation according to the characteristics of airplanes and airships, and made artillery specially used to shoot planes and airships. This marked the official appearance of the world's first anti-aircraft gun. The designers mounted the gun on the car and adopted protective armor similar to that of modern ship guns. The gun has a caliber of 50 mm, a barrel length of about 1.5 meters, a muzzle velocity of 572 meters per second and a maximum firing height of 4,200 meters.

Two years later, Germany made an anti-aircraft gun with better performance. The caliber of this gun is 65 mm, and the barrel is about 2.3 meters long, which is 35 times the caliber. The muzzle velocity of the grenade is increased to 620 meters per second, the maximum range can reach 5200 meters, and the range of high and low fire and the range of direction are also correspondingly expanded. The gun has begun to use a portal gun carriage and uses a control handwheel to adjust the high and low firing boundaries. With these improvements, the maneuverability of the gun has been greatly improved

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Following the advent of the above two anti-aircraft guns, in 1914 Germany also made 77-mm anti-aircraft guns. In 1915, Russia developed the 76mm anti-aircraft gun, which was an anti-aircraft cannon that could also be used to fire at targets on the ground or on water.

During this period, anti-aircraft guns were also made in industrially developed countries such as France and Italy.

Among the anti-aircraft guns made in the early days, the best performance was the 77-mm anti-aircraft gun made in Germany in 1914. Its outstanding feature was the simple gun tray mounted on a four-wheeled gun mount. The gun tray can be folded up and towed by horses or vehicles when marching, and when fighting, the gun tray can be opened and the gun body can be propped up to shoot in the air. The use of the gun disc not only facilitated the transfer of artillery positions, but also shortened the time from the march to the combat state. Because it uses a control handwheel to adjust the body tube for aiming, and for the first time, it uses a gun dial, so the shooting rate is high.

At the beginning of the First World War, France loaded two biplanes with artillery shells and used them instead of bombs to bomb the hangars of the German army. Then, in November 1914, British planes bombed the German airship hangar, Germany

The country suffered heavy losses.

Due to the special advantages of aircraft, some weapons and ammunition used on the ground, such as artillery shells, grenades, machine guns, rifles, and even pistols, have successively become "aviation weapons" and are equipped on aircraft to attack targets on the ground.

Soon after, the aircraft was equipped with specialized artillery and bombs.

In the face of the air threat, countries began to actively develop new anti-aircraft guns. Emphasis was placed on improving the sighting device of the anti-aircraft gun, which greatly improved its firing accuracy. In the early years of World War I, the average ammunition consumption of an aircraft shot down with anti-aircraft guns was 11,585 rounds, and by the end of World War I, the ammunition consumption had dropped to 5,000 rounds.

From the end of the First World War to the early 30s of the 20th century, anti-aircraft guns and aircraft did not undergo major changes in structure and combat performance, and their development was relatively slow.

Beginning in the 30s, Japan and Germany stepped up their arms expansion and warfare in order to expand their aggression abroad, which in turn accelerated the development of the aircraft industry and the arms industry. By the end of World War II, the period by which the aircraft had undergone a qualitative change in both structure and performance. The original soft structural materials such as wood and cloth have been alloyed with high strength

The flight speed has been doubled to about 500 kilometers per hour, and the flight altitude of the aircraft is generally 8 ~ 10 kilometers.

At the same time, anti-aircraft guns showed no signs of weakness, and their combat performance was greatly improved. During this period, there were several outstanding changes in the structure and performance of anti-aircraft guns: first, anti-aircraft guns adopted long barrels to increase muzzle velocity and firing height. Some small-caliber anti-aircraft guns have a barrel length of 70 times the caliber and a muzzle velocity of up to 20 times per second

About 1000 meters, nearly 50% higher than the original. The firing height of medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns reached more than 10 kilometers, which was 3 ~ 4 times that of the original. Secondly, the anti-aircraft gun was equipped with advanced firing sighting devices, which increased the hit rate of the anti-aircraft gun. Thirdly, small-caliber anti-aircraft guns were equipped with reloading and re-entry devices, while large- and medium-caliber antiaircraft guns were equipped with mechanical ammunition delivery equipment, which increased the rate of fire of anti-aircraft guns. In addition, most of the anti-aircraft guns have adopted a fire control system with a very high degree of automation, which has comprehensively improved the combat capability of the anti-aircraft guns.

By the early 50s, anti-aircraft guns were once left out in the cold due to the entry into the battlefield of anti-aircraft missiles. However, actual combat has shown that anti-aircraft missiles are not omnipotent, and they cannot completely replace anti-aircraft guns. From the mid-60s, small-caliber anti-aircraft guns were again "favored". It has a fast response, a high hit rate, and a multi-tube concentrated launch, which can hit quickly

Destroy enemy aircraft attacking at low altitudes. At present, various countries are studying various new methods to improve the effectiveness of antiaircraft artillery in antiaircraft combat, and antiaircraft artillery is developing in the direction of small-caliber artillery, self-propelization, and artillery shell guidance. The integrated anti-aircraft weapon system of missiles and anti-aircraft guns will exert tremendous power in future wars.

New anti-aircraft guns

Anti-aircraft guns have unique anti-low-altitude, anti-saturation, anti-jamming and anti-missile combat capabilities, so there is still great potential for their development. With the rapid development of modern air attack weapons and the characteristics of recent local wars in the world, in recent years, some military powers have stepped up the research and development of new-concept antiaircraft guns, and new technologies, new achievements, and new products have been constantly introduced, and a new development trend has emerged.

Electromagnetic anti-aircraft guns

Electromagnetic anti-aircraft guns are ultra-high-velocity catapult weapons and are the nemesis of supersonic air attack weapons in the future. It replaces the firing device of the traditional antiaircraft artillery with an electromagnetic device, and uses the principle of ultra-high-power electromagnetic induction to produce more than 3 megajoules of firing kinetic energy in the gun chamber, and is an interception weapon that destroys the target with the impact force of a projectile, and has a strong air defense capability, and the ability to hit the target can be increased by more than five times.

Foreign newspapers reported that in the 1995 test of the electromagnetic antiaircraft gun, the United States fired a projectile weighing 8.5 grams in succession, and the speed reached 5.6 kilometers per second; in 1999, Russia used the sample gun to carry out a target test, penetrating two "Scud" target missiles at an altitude of 4,000 meters; Britain is also stepping up the experiment, and claims that according to its plan, the electromagnetic antiaircraft gun will be equipped with troops in 2005. At present, the developed countries are making the transition from the stage of experimental development to the stage of practical development, and by improving the launch structure, reducing its weight and bringing it to the level of practical use in field operations.

Laser anti-aircraft guns

Laser anti-aircraft guns have unique performance and great prospects. It uses a laser transmitter as the barrel to directly project beam energy onto the target at close to the speed of light, so that the laser is instantly destroyed by high heat energy. Laser anti-aircraft guns have the characteristics of firing without ammunition, silent, no recoil, etc., as long as the light energy is sufficient, it can be flexible, fast and efficient to hit saturation attacks in different directions, so the development of laser anti-aircraft guns is favored by countries all over the world.

In the development of laser antiaircraft guns, the United States has shot down target planes and shells on many occasions, and the US Army has used the "Nautilus" laser antiaircraft gun in exercises to shoot down three unmanned target planes in only five seconds. The laser air defense system newly equipped by the Russian army consists of two vehicles, one carrying a power supply and the other carrying a transmitter, which captures the target with radar and fires high-energy lasers to destroy or ignite the instruments in the target. France and Germany are also implementing plans to develop iodine oxide chemically energy-assisted laser anti-aircraft guns to make the laser beam stronger and farther. It is expected that after 2010, 20 countries in the world will be armed with laser anti-aircraft guns.

Stealth anti-aircraft guns

Stealth anti-aircraft guns have strong survivability and are most suitable for all-weather and full-spectrum combat. Currently, there are three types of development of stealth anti-aircraft guns:

Paint invisible. In 1993, the British and French armies took the lead in developing stealth antiaircraft guns with absorbing paints, and the Russian army is now developing new video stealth technologies such as color-changing absorbing films with electrical fluids, which not only allow them to have the ability to absorb waves, but also can match the color of the gun body with the ground background, so as to "integrate" the hidden and the scene.

Anti-infrared invisibility. When the electrical part of the anti-aircraft gun is working, it will constantly radiate infrared rays outward, and it is vulnerable to infrared reconnaissance and infrared missile strikes. In order to improve its anti-infrared detection capability, the United States has installed "highly sensitive" oil-cooled equipment on the electrical appliances of the "Retaliator" self-propelled antiaircraft artillery, thus eliminating the outward radiation of heat energy.

Integrated technology invisibility. Sweden adopts "comprehensive stealth technology", the MK2 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun turret and deck are made of composite plastic, the gun barrel is protected with a fiberglass cylinder jacket, the electrical part is equipped with a quick-cooling air conditioner, and camouflage the car body with camouflage and stealth materials, so that infrared and electromagnetic waves radiate almost zero.

Rocket-resistant guns

Rocket-resistant artillery is best adapted to anti-missile operations. Compared with the traditional antiaircraft gun, it has no recoil force and can fire multiple tubes at the same time; the number of tubes is large, the projectile dispersion range is large, the killing probability is high, the firing sound is extremely small, and the rate of fire is fast.

The 30-mm 64-tube rocket anti-aircraft gun, first developed by France in 1992, can fire 64 shells in 3 seconds, and the firing speed is five times that of anti-aircraft guns of the same caliber. In 2000, Italy was equipped with 20-mm 36-barrel rocket anti-aircraft guns, and during the operation, 36 rockets were fired at the target at the same time in the form of "array firing", and the probability of destroying cruise missiles in a salvo was 99%. The rocket antiaircraft artillery under development in Russia has transformed the "Hail" 40-barrel ground-to-ground rocket launcher, adopted new technologies and materials, increased its firing range by 20 percent compared with the original, and increased the accuracy of destroying targets by more than 20 times that of ordinary antiaircraft guns.

Smart anti-aircraft guns

Fire control intelligence. The automatic control by the computer has enabled the artillery and missiles to achieve a "soft integration" of sharing a common control system; the fire control system can control and determine the order of artillery and missile strikes; the artillery has achieved self-loading and firing; and after the missile is launched, it will "automatically homing" the target and leave it alone.

Optoelectronic intelligence. The Russian "Tunguska" self-propelled anti-aircraft gun has the characteristics of "three-in-one" (periscope, television camera, laser) sight, low-light camera, computer, etc., which enables the capture and tracking of targets and the calculation of shooting elements to achieve automation and precision.

Ammunition intelligence. The Swiss double 35 anti-aircraft gun uses the "Ahed" sub-mother grenade, which is loaded with 152 bullets, and the mother bomb is automatically loaded with a detonation time when it is launched, and it explodes at a distance of 8~10 meters from the target. After exploding, the submunitions can form a barrage group with a radius of 8 meters on the target, leaving the target with nowhere to escape.