Non-Subscriber Extract
Pakistan joins DU producer nations
- Article Tools
| 9 May 2001 |
Among
the exhibits at IDEX 2001 was a model
of the new 125mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS)
projectile with a depleted uranium (DU) long-rod penetrator, which is
being developed by the Pakistani National Development Complex (NDC) for
use with T-80UD tanks. It follows the development of a DU round for the Pakistan Army's Chinese-designed T-59 tanks, which have been re-armed with 105mm guns and currently fire a license-built version of the British L64A4 tungsten APFSDS projectile. The latter is credited with a range of 4km against a NATO single heavy target. The 105mm DU APFSDS round has a muzzle velocity of 1,450m/s and can penetrate more than 450mm of rolled homogenous armor at an unspecified range.
The performance of the 125mm round is said to be 25% greater. A noticeable feature of the saddle-type sabots of the NDC 125mm projectile and of the Norinco 125mm tungsten APFSDS projectiles (now being license-produced by Pakistan Ordnance Factories) is the reconfiguration of their forward bore-riders so that the projectiles align accurately with the autoloading system of the T-80UD.
(It was reported in 1998 that unspecified 'loadability' problems had arisen between Chinese projectiles and Ukrainian autoloaders. The same problem is not thought to have been encountered with the loading systems of the 125mm smoothbore guns mounted in Chinese Type 85-IIAP tanks.)
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| Among the exhibits at IDEX 2001 was a model of the new 125mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectile with a depleted uranium (DU) long-rod penetrator, which is being developed by the Pakistani National Development Complex (NDC) for use with T-80UD tanks. |