Vietnam modernizes Soviet-era anti-aircraft artillery

By successfully producing the control block that determines the target and automatically fires the ZU-23-2 cannon, Vietnam has smartened Soviet-era weapons.

According to public information, the Institute of Military Technical Automation, under the Institute of Military Science and Technology, Ministry of National Defense, has carried out a project to improve the ZSU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun.

Accordingly, the gun is mounted on a truck chassis to increase mobility. The most important improvement is that engineers have equipped the gun with an automatic targeting system and firing element calculation.

The system includes a laser rangefinder, an electro-optical sight capable of day/night operation. An autoloader is installed to increase the rate of fire.

ZSU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun after upgrade.

The fire control unit automatically adjusts the elevation angle of the gun according to the target parameters from the sensor system. The control unit is electrically operated with 360-degree rotation capability for better observation. The sensor system, fire control and gun are connected together to form a unified block to improve combat performance.

Target information is displayed on the screen for the gunner to observe and control the gun so that the line of sight is at the center of the target in tracking mode as well as shooting practice. Controlling the gun and sensor system is quite easy with a handheld joystick.

Before being improved, the ZU-23-2 gun was operated entirely by hand, requiring a lot of people, making it very unsuitable for deployment in island areas.

The automation of the entire process of target identification, firing element calculation and fire control of the ZU-23-2 gun has streamlined the organization while improving combat performance. The improved firing range remains the same as before.

The ZU-23-2 gun replaced the previous manual target range adjustment mechanism with a laser rangefinder and infrared imaging system. With the old mechanism, the gunner took a lot of time to determine the range, but the target coordinates were only at a relative level, not as accurate as the new system.

The successful improvement of the ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun has contributed to enhancing the combat strength of air defense troops, thereby demonstrating the capacity of the domestic defense industry in gradually mastering technologies to modernize and produce weapons for the army.

According to Datviet