Damian
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As Ace009 said it is not true. In fact if rifled guns are so superior how fans of rifled guns will explain the CAT competition effects when smoothbore gun armed MBT's defeated both Chieftain and Challenger 1 armed with rifled guns? Besides of course that both Chieftain and Challenger 1 had completely obsolete FCS... but hey in Greece Challenger 2 with modern highly accurate FCS was also defeated by MBT's armed with smoothbore guns... how this could happen! Rifled guns are sooo accurate! Well we know currently that this is not true and the future brightly smiles only to smoothbore guns only (if we talk about MBT armament).cos,a rifled gun will fire a projectile more accurately and with greater range, but at a somewhat lower velocity, because the rifling actually carves grooves into the projectile as it travels down the barrel. The spin imparted to the projectile gives it better aerodynamic properties, but the lower velocity means less energy is delivered to the target by momentum.
Oh BTW, the current APFSDS in Arjun gun also do not spin, because of complex design of sabot with ball bearings. Same ball bearings would be needed for HEAT, because HEAT do not like spin even more than APFSDS.
Actually smoothbore gun have only advantages over rifled gun. It is easier to manufacture, have longer service life, can fire all types of ammunition without any problems, APFSDS, HEAT, HE, Cannister, Beehive, HEOR, MPAT and other types would not be a problem, just add fins to the round and voila.
Oh, also Israelis are slowly starting to scrapp tanks with rifled guns, Sho't, Magach and Merkava Mk1, many of them are allready standing on old storage posts as scrapp metal, unoperational. There are also plans to scrapp Merkava Mk2 in future, so the tanks fleet will be completely made from Merkava Mk3 and Mk4 armed with smoothbore guns. Well at least these are rumors, how it will end in reality we will see.
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