Recoilless Cannons Return to Battlefields
Until recently, recoilless cannons were also used in the Turkish army, with models that could be used both from the ground on a tripod and mounted on a vehicle.
The German successes in the Second World War by using armoured troops with new doctrines and concepts led to the need to develop weapons that could be used against armoured troops.
As a result, many weapons emerged, such as rocket launchers that could be fired from the shoulder by a single person, cannons mounted on armoured vehicles and defined as tank destroyers that could fire visually, and recoilless cannons.
Until recently, recoilless cannons were also used in the Turkish army, with models that could be used both from the ground on a tripod and mounted on a vehicle. However, recoilless guns, which were technologically inferior to shoulder-fired guided anti-tank guns and guided anti-tank guns fired from helicopters or vehicles, were removed from the inventory.
This situation seems to have started to change again with the developments in the Ukrainian war. The United States has produced new long-range recoilless cannons mounted on some wheeled vehicles and has tested them in training areas.
Now Ukraine is testing the US-made 105 mm self-propelled gun 2-CT Hawkeye in combat conditions. The self-propelled guns were received in April this year and began to be used on the battlefield from May.
The "2-CT Hawkeye Mobile Howitzer System", which started to be produced in 2019, is produced in partnership with AM General and Mandus Group. The US Army signed a contract for the production of this cannon in 2021. These cannons are mounted on Humvee vehicles. The cannon is equipped with soft recoil technology to withstand the firing conditions of the vehicle and not fragment.
The cannon is also equipped with a modern digital fire control system, so it needs very little time to deploy and fire on the move, and can fire very accurately thanks to this system. The cannon can fire only 90 seconds after the moving vehicle stops. Moreover, the cannon's rate of fire is very high. It can fire eight rounds in three minutes.
Its maximum range with conventional shells is 11.6 km, and its maximum speed for active-reactive shells is around 19.5 km. This is a very long range that no tank gun can reach. Therefore, it is possible for the gun to hit the tank before the tank can see it, or even if it can see it, before it can fire.
The basic principle of using these self-propelled guns can be summarised as firing shells as far away from the enemy as possible and as quickly as possible, and then quickly changing positions. No matter how fast the tanks advance, the recoilless gun can be quickly withdrawn without entering the range of the tank gun. This makes the self-propelled recoilless gun very safe and useful.
It is a well-known fact that the weapons used in recent wars have changed rapidly. As a result of this change, new high-tech weapons create game-changing effects in war.
This situation leads not only to the emergence of new weapons, but also to the re-production of weapons that were previously used and discontinued a while ago with advanced technologies according to the need. Self-propelled recoilless guns are one of the best examples of this.
