MODERNIZATION OF ZU-23: FIRE WILL BE ACCURATE

Vyacheslav Kokurin
Deputy Chief Designer of the Nudelman Precision Engineering Design Bureau

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t present, the Russian army and armies of a number of foreign countries have in their inventories the ZU-23 towed light AD gun mount. It consists of two 23mm automatic guns, mechanical hand-operated elevating and traversing drives, and ZAP-23 optical iron sight. The mount is also fitted with an optical sight to fight ground targets. However, it has no electronic ballistic computer, electric signal meter for generation of lead and elevation angles (range finder, tachometer, angle sensors) or actuating mechanisms (electrical or hydraulic) for laying the weapon to a predicted point.

Modernizied ZU-23M AD mount

The ZU-23 is fired by two crew members operating at workstations on the rotating part of the mount. One member handles the ZAP-23 sight by manipulating the knobs to enter approximate target data into the sight, to turn the collimator sight relative to the weapon, and to lay the latter in elevation and lead. The other crew member, the gun layer, rotates the elevating and traversing handwheels to keep the crosshairs of the collimator sight on the target and, hence, the automatic gun barrel axes in the direction of a predicted point with an accuracy depending on the accuracy of the target data entered.

The AD mount is simple in design and handling, reliable in operation and service, and is popular among the troops. However, having been created in the 1960s, the ZU-23 has a low efficiency against modern aircraft and can practically deliver the barrage fire rather than the aimed fire. Thus, the probability of hitting aircraft flying at a speed of 200 m/s during the coverage zone flyover is approximately 0.023.

A great number of ZU-23 gun mounts operational in Russia and abroad, as well as their high performance, make modernizing the ZU-23 a practical task. It is evident one must improve, first of all, the laying system on the basis of state-of-the-art technologies, the control systems of a ZU-23 battery and of single mounts, and give the mount the equipment that will allow it to operate at night.

The experience of the Nudelman Precision Engineering Design Bureau in creation of simple but efficient AD close-combat systems with optronic control systems accumulated in recent years, allowed the Bureau to modernize the ZU-23 on the basis of the modular construction of renewed systems, to increase the combat capabilities with insurance of aimed fire against low-flying air targets, including pinpoint targets, with an efficiency elevated up to 0.3 - 0.4. At that, the modernization is mainly done by employing series and experimental models of instruments and systems with minor adjustment of the standard AD mount to meet the appropriate requirements...