An autoloader or auto-loader is a mechanical aid or replacement for the personnel that load
ammunition
Ammunition, also known as ammo, is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. The term includes both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines), and the component parts of oth ...
into
crew-served weapon
A crew-served weapon is any weapon system that is issued to a crew of two or more individuals performing the same or separate tasks to run at maximum operational efficiency, as opposed to an individual-service weapon, which only requires one pe ...
s without being an integrated part of the gun itself. The term is generally only applied to larger weapons, such as
naval weapons,
tank
A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; ...
s, and
artillery
Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and l ...
; that would otherwise have a dedicated person or persons loading them.
An autoloader extracts a
shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
and
propellant charge from the ammunition storage rack/compartment and loads it into a magazine or belt, if the gun has one, or directly into the
chamber of the gun if it does not. It often replaces a human loader. Automation can streamline and speed the loading process, resulting in a more effective design.
The potential benefits of an autoloader in a vehicle is a higher
firerate and a smaller
turret
Turret may refer to:
* Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building
* Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon
* Optical microscope#Objective turret (revolver or revolving nose piece), Objective turre ...
and crew amount. The autoloader takes up internal space and could need room in the turret ring like the
Des Moines-class cruiser or require an extended turret bustle like the
Type 90 tank, and is also more mechanically complex than manual loading.
History
Autoloaders were developed at the beginning of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Their first combat use was in "tank-buster" aircraft such as the 75mm caliber ''Bordkanone''
BK 7.5 cannon-equipped
Henschel Hs 129 B-3. Every
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
and Russian-derived tank since the
T-64 main battle tank
A main battle tank (MBT), also known as a battle tank or universal tank or simply tank,Ogorkiewicz 2018 p222 is a tank that fills the role of armour-protected direct fire and maneuver in many modern armies. Cold War-era development of more po ...
has used an autoloader. Their use has been mostly shunned by
American and
British tanks, despite the American
T22E1 medium tank being one of the first tank designs to use an autoloader.
After the middle 20th century, autoloading became common on large caliber or greater naval guns. The size of the shells, when combined with the more elaborate autoloading facilities available in the wider spaces of a ship, makes an autoloader much faster than human loaders. For example, the
US 5"/38 Mark 12 can load about 20 rounds per minute.
The advent of jet aircraft, and the rate of fire required to engage them, hastened the adoption of automatic loaders on naval artillery. Development was often problematic, and reliability was seriously compromised in many cases. The US
5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun
The Mark 42 5"/54 caliber gun (127mm) is a naval gun (naval artillery) mount used by the United States Navy and other countries. It consists of the Mark 18 gun and Mark 42 gun mount. United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fires a pr ...
was derated from 40 rounds per minute to 34 to improve reliability.
The US 3"/70 Mark 37
actually spent more time in design (13 years) than in service (12 years) due to severe unreliability. These problems are largely of the past and the field has advanced a great deal.
Features
Rate of fire
The
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
/
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
n
AK-130 (twin barrel naval ), using autoloading, can achieve up to 40 rounds per barrel per minute.
The
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
127 mm/5" Compact has similar performance. The largest caliber auto-loading naval rifles were the US 8"/55 Mark 16, deployed on the three cruisers of the in the late 1940s, and the 8"/55 Mark 71 tested aboard the destroyer in the late 1970s. Both weapons achieved a rate of fire of 12 rounds per barrel per minute, compared to 3-4 rounds per minute for the preceding hand-loaded weapons.
A modern tank autoloader for a and caliber weapon in good condition can achieve about 10-12 rounds per minute. This rating may or may not include the time required to bring the gun to the appropriate loading angle (if required) and then bringing it back up to firing angle after loading. The autoloader on the cancelled
Object 640 "Black Eagle" tank was supposed to have up to 15 rounds per minute rate of fire.
For weapons above , the increased weight of the round pushes this issue decisively in favor of the autoloader. For self-propelled artillery with calibers of around and , for example, autoloaders can typically achieve 8–12 rounds per minute, while a human loader(s) can typically achieve 4 rounds per minute. For sustained bombardments, this may not be so important. Sustained firing rates for artillery are typically only 1–2 rounds per minute, but the rapid-fire capability is vital to
shoot-and-scoot tactics to deliver enough fire and then avoid the rapid
counterbattery response provided by modern counterbattery systems. On the other hand, even during sustained bombardment an autoloader could be useful, as the fatigue issues of loading an artillery piece for hours (i.e. projectile weighs ~) do not affect them.
In addition, an artillery piece with an autoloader and powerful
fire control system
A fire-control system (FCS) is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a Director (military), director and radar, which is designed to assist a ranged weapon system to target, track, and hit a target. It performs th ...
can use the
multiple rounds simultaneous impact technique, firing several shells with varying propellant charges so all of them land on their targets simultaneously.
Survivability
The most common tank autoloaders store their ammunition in the turret basket, increasing the possibility of a catastrophic explosion should the armor around the hull or turret be penetrated. More armor protection, and isolation/separation of the ammunition from the crew compartment has traditionally been available in tanks with a human loader, which can decrease the possibility of
cook-off, or protect the crew in case of an ammunition explosion. For example, the
M1 Abrams
The M1 Abrams () is a third-generation American main battle tank designed by Chrysler Defense (now General Dynamics Land Systems) and named for General Creighton Abrams. Conceived for modern armored ground warfare, it is one of the heavies ...
was designed to protect the crew from cooking off, which is accomplished by storing the main gun ammunition in a compartment at the rear of the turret. The compartment is separated from the crew by a power-operated armored door, which is only opened for a couple of seconds each time the loader needs to grab another round. The roof of the compartment has
blowout panels, are armored against outside attack but much less resistant to pressure from inside, so that if the compartment is penetrated by enemy fire the panels will open, venting the explosion generated by the ammunition and protect the crew while keeping the tank in one piece. Other western designs from the later Cold War era to the present with manual loading have similar protective features. In contrast, the Soviet tanks of the Cold War which employ autoloaders store the ammunition on a carousel in the middle of the crew compartment, where any penetration by enemy fire is likely to incinerate the crew and blow the turret right off the top of the tank (known as the
jack-in-the-box effect).
This is made worse by the fact that autoloader holds only a limited number of rounds, while the remaining ammunition is stored around the crew compartment. Result is that even if the carousel itself is not hit, ammunition stored around the tank may still ignite due to a penetrating hit, and thus set off the ammunition in the carousel.
Some Western designs, such as the
Leclerc tank, store the primary ammunition in an isolated compartment in the turret bustle, with blowout panels on top and the ramming mechanism underneath or in the middle. This allows for much better crew protection but the loading mechanism, taking up space in the ammunition compartment, reduces the available number of rounds that can be carried. Therefore, such a tank usually stores additional ammo in compartmentalized storage at the bottom of the fighting compartment, like older manual loading tank designs. This storage can be surrounded by water, but the reduced crew must still transfer this ammunition to the autoloader at some point. However, such a design can also allow for the rapid replacement of the autoloader and reloading of the ready ammunition by making the compartment at the rear of the turret a modular component that can be easily replaced with appropriate support equipment, similar to how the US
M270 MLRS system is reloaded. Another possible advantage is that the door that separates the turret can be only large enough for one round of ammunition to slide through, rather than extending across the entire rear of the turret as in the case of the M1 Abrams – this could save additional mass and reduce the power necessary to operate the door, by using less armor for the same level of protection, since it would be part of the turret instead of a sliding component in a heavy frame.
Size
Autoloaders are often implemented in an attempt to reduce tank size and profile. The
Stridsvagn 103
The Stridsvagn 103 (Strv 103), also known as the Alternative S and S-tank, is a Sweden, Swedish Cold War, Cold War-era main battle tank, designed and manufactured in Sweden. "Strv" is the Swedish military abbreviation of ''stridsvagn'', Swedish f ...
and
T-64 are examples of this, both being significantly lower in profile than contemporaries with manually loaded guns and a fourth loader crewmember.
Crew reduction
The replacement of the loader and gunner with a commander and driver could allow crewmembers to rotate shifts. This would enable continuous operations on the battlefield.
Though in some retrofit cases (Abrams tank for example) there is nothing in the fitting of an autoloader that requires the removal of the loader. In such situations the autoloader frees up the fourth crew-member to support the other three full-time, instead of just part-time when they are not doing their main job.
The disadvantage of the need to keep most of the ammunition close to the autoloader can be actually turned into an advantage by using an unmanned turret design with a crew capsule. In this case, all the necessary ammunition can be kept in direct access to the autoloader, without affecting the safety of the crew, because the crew compartment is completely separate from the autoloader and ammunition. Modern examples of this design are the Russian
T-14 "Armata" MBT and the Polish
PL-01 light tank.
Adoption
The current generation of tanks using autoloaders (Russian
T-72
The T-72 is a family of Soviet Union, Soviet main battle tanks that entered production in 1973. The T-72 was a development based on the T-64 using thought and design of the previous Object 167M. About 25,000 T-72 tanks have been built, and refu ...
,
T-80
The T-80 is a main battle tank (MBT) that was designed and manufactured in the former Soviet Union and manufactured in Russia. The T-80 is based on the T-64, while incorporating features from the later T-72 and changing the engine to a gas turbi ...
,
T-90
The T-90 is a third-generation Russian main battle tank developed from, and designed to replace the T-72. It uses a 125mm 2A46 smoothbore main gun, the 1A45T fire-control system, an upgraded engine, and gunner's thermal sight. Standard p ...
and
T-14, Japanese
Type 90 and
Type 10, Chinese
Type 96 and
Type 99, South Korean
K2 Black Panther
K2 Black Panther () is a South Korean List of main battle tanks by generation#Fourth Generation, fourth-generation main battle tank (MBT), designed by the Agency for Defense Development and manufactured by Hyundai Rotem. The tank's design bega ...
, French
Leclerc, Sino-Pakistani
Al-Khalid MBT, North Korean
M2020, Iranian
Zulfiqar
Zulfiqar or Zulfaqar (, ), also spelled ''Zu al-Faqar'', ''Zulfakar'', ''Dhu al-Faqar'', or ''Dhulfaqar)'', is the sword of Ali, Ali ibn Abi Talib that was distinguished by having a double blade.
Middle Eastern weapons are commonly inscribed wi ...
and
Karrar, Indonesian/Turkish
Kaplan MT / Harimau) all weigh between 45–55 tons. Tanks that do not use autoloaders tend to weigh in the 55–70 ton range (American
M1A2 Abrams, German
Leopard 2, Indian
Arjun, British
Challenger 2, Turkish
Altay, Israeli
Merkava
The Merkava (, , "chariot") is a series of main battle tanks used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) which are the backbone of the Armored Corps (Israel), IDF's Armored Corps. Current iterations of this tank are considered broadly equivalent t ...
, and Italian
C1 Ariete).
References
External links
"Whither the Autoloader?" YouTube presentation by
Nicholas Moran "The Chieftain" about autoloaders
"Tank Autoloader or Crewman Loader?" YouTube presentation by Matthew James/Matsimus about autoloaders
{{Use American English, date=September 2015
Firearm components
Autoloaders