The project of a new wheeled self-propelled gun from Hanwha involves installing barrel with a length of 58 calibers to achieve a firing range of 70 km
The Korean defense giant Hanwha swung at a rather ambitious target – to create a wheeled self-propelled gun that will be able to win the competition in the RCH 155. The Koreans were motivated to do this by losing their bestseller K9 to this German newest self-propelled gun in a tender from Great Britain. The model of this ACS was demonstrated in Korea during a defense conference held in the city of Changwon.
Although, of course, it will be implemented gradually. According to the Korean publication Bizhankook, the Doosan DST K239L 8×8 wheeled chassis used in the K239 Chunmoo jet system will initially be equipped with an artillery piece from the K9A2.
On the part of Defense Express, we remind you that this is a new version of the self-propelled gun with an automatic loader. It has a rate of fire of up to 9-10 per minute, instead of the standard conventional up to 6 shots, which greatly depends on the skill of calculation and the level of fatigue of the chargers. B also allows the crew to be reduced from five to three people.
The K9A2 prototype has been around for quite some time and is being successfully tested, but the work, estimated at $1.81 billion by the Korean Ministry of Defense, must be completed by 2027 . And only later, as part of the work on the 58-caliber gun, install it, both on the tracked and on the wheeled version.
But Hanwha wants not just to create a wheeled self-propelled gun, but to give it the ultimate advantage – install a 58-gauge barrel on it instead of the standard 52-gauge barrel. And this should allow firing at a range of 70 km. This is the distance with the Excalibur projectile taken by the American experimental Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA).
However, the USA could not go beyond the prototype and canceled the program as early as 2022, because the ERCA turned out to have a very small resource barrel That is why the Hanwha project, in which they know exactly about the fate and reasons for the failure of the American experiment, is more than ambitious.