Seems like a trade-off they are willing to take in exchange of providing the 115mm gun with almost as much power as a 120mm/125mm gun.
North Korea Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
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Seems like a trade-off they are willing to take in exchange of providing the 115mm gun with almost as much power as a 120mm/125mm gun.
Looks more like a SPAG than a tank.
here in another one taken from another photo posted above
SPAG, with such a low tower ?
this instead is the tower of a SPAG, much higher
This is 2S25 Sprut-SD with 125mm gun, it is considered a tank destroyer , light with amphibious capabilities
Caveat. It's often taken at a face value that 115mm gun is weaker than 120/125mm guns.
It's true, but also it is not.
What matters for APFSDS pen the most is ultimately rod length. And 115mm single piece round, for all it's weaker muzzle energy, can host a round as long as M829 series, i.e. close to a meter.
I.e. if Korean engineers managed to get their production technology right (problem with rods is making them good at volume), DPRK tanks can easily have way more los pen than their Russian and Chinese counterparts...and a straightforward way to get even more, by fixing energy deficiency of 115 mm gun.
What 2A20 always struggled with, however, was the long range accuracy: after 2km mark it just deteriorates rapidly, and neither Soviet Union nor Russia ever bothered to fix it. For everyone other than North Korea that made sense, this was just an intermediate gun(115mm is literally a 100mm gun without riffling), born because properly designed Soviet 100mm smoothbore ammo was too large for man-handling in a tank.
2km isn't exactly long even, as for modern standards, and while normal engagement ranges on peninsula aren't long, often hills and mountains allow extreme range shots.
And...we see heavy ATGMs on DPRK tanks, which just happen to be the most straightforward way to solve this exact problem.
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Wouldn't a longer barrell compensate for the gun's original lack of accuracy at longer ranges?
Not really.
It is matter of material used to build the cannon, same for APFSDS along design of it, finally fire control system.
Muzzle reference device is ideal.
