Vietnam Unveils PTH-85 Truck Mounted Howitzer

21 Juli 2020

New self propelled howitzer PTH85-VN18 (photo : QDND)

Recently, the People's Army newspaper published a report including the first public appearance of the wheeled self-propelled artillery complex called PTH85-VN18, integrated by the Z751 factory.

In a recent report of the People's Army Online, viewers discovered the unexpected appearance of a new self-propelled self-propelled artillery complex integrated by Vietnam. This is also the first time this artillery has been publicly introduced.

Self propelled howitzer mounted on truck PTH85-VN18 (photo : QDND)

Previously, in 2019, in a reporter of the QPVN television channel made at the Z751 factory accidentally came across the image of this unique artillery of Vietnam, which was the first time people knew about the its appearance. However, until now, we officially knew the name of this weapon.

The PTH85-VN18 self-propelled artillery complex (85mm self-propelled gun - Vietnam in 2018) is the official name of this new type of self-propelled self-propelled gun, the system uses Ural-43206 6x6 Vietnamese truck chassis with an 85mm caliber D-44 anti-tank gun.

First image of PTH85 in 2019 (photo : QPVN)

The combination weighs 14,150kg, can climb steep slopes 50 degrees, can wade 0.7m deep, the time to switch from march to battle is 5 minutes. At the same time using a hydraulic system with two feet to help the cannon very good stability when firing.

The main weapon of the complex is the 85mm D-44 cannon currently in service with our army artillery. This was a division-level artillery produced by the Soviet Union in the 40s of the last century and still has some troops still in use today. This is also a cannon that has made many glorious victories during the war against the US with the record of burning many enemy ships.

D-44 cannon 85mm (photo : QPVN)

D-44 cannon weighs 1.72 tons, crew of 6 to 8 people, extremely high rate of fire, can reach 20 shots / minute. Maximum range of the cannon is more than 15,000m and the lowest range is over 1,000m.

With the use of HEAT type BK-2M high explosive shells, within a range of 1,500 meters, the cannon could penetrate 300mm of steel. The muzzle velocity of the cannon reached 1030m/s.

D-44 mounted on M548 crawler armored vehicles (Photo : Baomoi)

Before that, Vietnam had also integrated 85mm D-44 cannon on American booty M548 crawler armored vehicles. Although D-44 artillery is difficult to destroy modern main tanks, but with its power can still fire infantry vehicles as well as light tanks. The integration of D-44 from caterpillar to treadmill further enhances mobility and cross-country capability, easy to deploy, easy to maintain and maintain.

It can be seen that, recently, Vietnam has been actively researching and integrating ground cannons on trucks to improve its maneuverability and effectiveness. significant national defense industry. However, we have not yet integrated the large caliber grenades, such as D-30 122mm, M-46 130mm, D-20 152mm, .. on the transport chassis. Hopefully in the near future, we can quickly implement this idea to further improve the artillery power.

M101 mounted on Ural truck (photo : QPVN)

The current main Vietnamese self-propelled guns, 2S1 and 2S3, have been in service for a long time, gradually failing to meet the needs of a modern war. With the steps of developing self-propelled guns like Vietnam today, it is expected that in the near future, we can produce high-power self-propelled guns, long range and high damage, worthy to replace the "old near" has used for more than 40 years.

(BaoMoi)