Thursday, February 19, 2015

Oshkosh & ATK demo a 30mm cannon in a .50 cal package.

EOS Remote Turret for 30-40 mm Cannon. (PRNewsFoto/Electro Optic Systems Holdings..)

R-400S with ATK M230LF 30mm cannon mounted on Oshkosh M-ATV. (PRNewsFoto/Electro Optic Systems Holdings..)

High speed photograph of M230LF firing bursts from M-ATV. (PRNewsFoto/Electro Optic Systems Holdings..)

R-400S with ATK M230LF 30mm cannon mounted on HMMWV. (PRNewsFoto/Electro Optic Systems Holdings..)

High speed photograph of M230LF firing from R-400S on HMMWV. (PRNewsFoto/Electro Optic Systems Holdings..)

via Press Release.
CANBERRA, AustraliaFeb. 18, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Electro Optic Systems Pty Ltd (ASX: EOS) has announced two developments that will open up opportunities for the supply of weapons and defence systems to meet a growing demand to increase the firepower of armoured infantry vehicles.
The company has completed significant testing milestones of two new weapon systems. The systems, first revealed at the Army USA Show in Washington DC (21-23 October 2013) are:
  1. Remotely Operated Turret for 30-40 mm cannon. This product is a new category of high performance turret, intended to deploy the Orbital ATK Mk44 30-40 mm cannon. The turret is lightweight at just 1300 kg and allows precision engagement from a moving vehicle to targets beyond 4 km.
  1. R-400S Remote Weapon System. This is an upgraded version of EOS's R-400 [CROWS] RWS. It enables deployment of the Orbital ATK M230LF 30mm cannon in a lightweight 400kg system, allowing precision engagement from a moving vehicle to targets beyond 2 km.
According to EOS CEO, Dr Ben Greene, the two new products meet a growing demand for increased firepower across the entire range of next-generation combat vehicles, both tracked and wheeled. The EOS products set new benchmarks for firepower while, importantly, offering significantly reduced weight.
Both products have now successfully completed major qualification processes, in each case spanning two years of testing.
This has really been a no brainer.  I've called for the possibility of doing a massive upgrade to the AAV using the ATK lightweight 30mm package on these very pages (along with the compact 1500 hp diesel engine from MTU), so this really isn't a surprise.

What is shocking is that its taken so long for someone to actually get them on a vehicle to see what it could do.

You can bet that others are watching and instead of 50 cal machine guns on light vehicles we're going to see larger caliber cannons instead.

2 comments :

  1. ATK has been pushing for 10+ years to put their 30mm gun from the Apache onto vehicles. They even have a ground-mounted tripod for it. The vehicle mount is called the M230LF.

    Here is a PDF from 2003 about it's development:

    http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2003gun/lam.pdf

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  2. Always wonder why they did not done that earlier. 30mm is 30mm... that is a serious punch, much bigger then classic 0.50cal.

    And I'm sure that US soldiers would like to have that punch... just look like cavalryman is happy when he sit in 35mm armed Rosomak :D

    http://www.defence24.pl/media/cache/slide/uploads/images/0aeebcff2e10d96963238cad98b93cd3.jpg

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