page_title: Tank gun
section_title: After World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Tank gun / History / After World War II
caption_attribution_description: Description: Denel GT-2 90mm smoothbore cannon at 1 Tank Regiment, Tempe Base, Bloemfontein. 2014.
context_page_description: A tank gun is the main armament of a tank. Modern tank guns are large-caliber high-velocity guns, capable of firing kinetic energy penetrators, high explosive anti-tank rounds, and in some cases guided missiles. Anti-aircraft guns can also be mounted to tanks.
  As the tank's primary armament, they are almost always employed in a direct fire mode to defeat a variety of ground targets at all ranges, including dug-in infantry, lightly armored vehicles, and especially other heavily armored tanks. They must provide accuracy, range, penetration, and rapid fire in a package that is as compact and lightweight as possible, to allow mounting in the cramped confines of an armored gun turret. Tank guns generally use self-contained ammunition, allowing rapid loading. They often display a bulge in the barrel, which is a bore evacuator, or a device on the muzzle, which is a muzzle brake.
context_section_description: By the end of the war the variety in tank designs was narrowed and the concept of the main battle tank emerged. After World War II, the race to increase caliber slowed.  Slight increases were made between tank generations. In the West, guns of around 90 mm gave way to the ubiquitous 105 mm L7. This lasted a long while with a shift to 120 mm in the late 1970s and early 80s (the UK changed in the late 60s with their Chieftain tank).  In the East, the 85 mm quickly yielded to the 100 mm and 115 mm U-5TS gun, with the 125 mm caliber now standard.  Most of the improvements were instead made in ammunition and fire control systems.
  With kinetic energy penetrator rounds, solid shot and armour-piercing shell gave way to armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) (a product of 1944), and fin-stabilized (APFSDS) rounds with tungsten or depleted uranium penetrators. Parallel developments brought rounds based on chemical energy; High explosive squash head (HESH), and shaped-charge High explosive anti-tank (HEAT), with penetrating power independent of muzzle velocity or range.
  Stadiametric range-finders were successively replaced by coincidence and laser rangefinders. Accuracy of modern tank guns is improved over earlier weapons by computerized fire control systems, wind sensors, and muzzle referencing systems which compensate for barrel warping, wear and temperature. Fighting capability at night, in poor weather, and smoke was improved by infrared, light-intensification, and thermal imaging equipment.
  Technology of the guns themselves has had only a few innovations. Throughout the history of tank guns, they have almost exclusively been rifled weapons, however most modern tanks now use smoothbore guns. Rifling of the barrel imparts spin on the projectile, improving ballistic accuracy. The best traditional antitank weapons have been kinetic energy rounds, whose penetrating power and accuracy decrease with range. For longer ranges high explosive anti-tank rounds are more effective, but accuracy is limited; for extremely long ranges cannon-launched guided projectiles (CLGPs) are considered more accurate.
  The use of the autoloader has been a development favoured by some nations and not others. Some countries adopted it as a means to keep the overall size of the tank down. Interest has also been shown as a means to protect the crew by separating them further from the gun and ammunition. For example, an autoloader allows the use of an unmanned turret in the T-14 Armata.
caption: Denel GT-2, a South African copy of the 90mm French DEFA D921 low-pressure rifled[1] tank gun. This was the product of recoil control experiments aimed at allowing light tanks to carry larger cannon.
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