Brandt 60 mm LR Gun-mortar

Brandt Long-Range Gun-Mortar
Type Mortar
Place of origin  France
Production history
Designer Edgar Brandt
Specifications
Weight 75 kilograms (165 lb)
Length 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in)
Barrel length 1.80m (70in)
Shell weight 2.2 kilograms (4.9 lb)
Caliber 60 millimetres (2.4 in)
Elevation -11° to +75°
Traverse Depends on mounting; up to 360°
Rate of fire 10 rpm
Muzzle velocity 250 metres per second (820 ft/s)
Effective firing range 4,000 metres (4,400 yd)

The Brandt 60 mm Long Range gun-mortar is a breech loading mortar capable of flat-trajectory firing like a gun. It is solely used as the armament of light armoured vehicles, such as armoured personnel carriers (APCs) or IFVs, to give them a useful anti-armour capability.

Description

The French-made Brandt 60 mm LR Gun-mortar is a very unusual mortar, which is capable of firing like a gun. It is a smoothbore weapon that uses the same fin-stabilized bombs as normal 60 mm infantry mortars. These bombs can be breech-loaded within the vehicle on which the mortar is mounted, or drop-loaded in the usual mortar fashion.

Ammunition

The Gun-mortar can fire the standard infantry 60 mm bomb; but, to give the weapon increased anti-armour capability, it is also provided with a high-velocity fin-stabilized armour-piercing shot and a fin-stabilized shaped-charge bomb.

Operators

Brandt's 60mm gun-mortar has been exported widely with the AML-60 series of Panhard armoured cars. Besides France, it has traditionally been in use with South Africa, Portugal, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, Iraq, Ireland, Cambodia, and Ethiopia. Several nations, such as Pakistan, may have acquired them from second-hand sources.

In South African service, the mortar is scheduled to be replaced by the DLS M10 BLLR, a conceptually similar—if somewhat longer ranged—armament produced by Denel Land Systems.

Map with Brandt 60mm operators in blue with former operators in red

Current operators

Former operators

Use of Brandt's LR Gun-Mortar
Vehicle Designer Country Gun Users
Panhard AML-60 Panhard  France Brandt 60 mm LR Algeria, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Iraq, Ireland, Kenya, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Spain, Zaire, others
Eland-60 Sandock-Austral  South Africa Denel Model K1 South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe
Ratel-60 Land Systems OMC  South Africa Denel Model K1 South Africa, Rwanda

See also

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, August 12, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.