Chapter 1167: Cold field

"Look at you and you will know the gap." Fang Weixian flipped through the data pile in front of him, picked up two photos and placed them in front of Tan Zhenhua: "Comrade Xiao Tan, take a closer look and see the two guns. Has the difference come?"
This is a photo of two tanks. One of them has the obvious angular wedge-shaped structure of a welded turret, which is obviously a Chinese "Storm 2" prototype, while the other is a traditional half-oval. Casting the turret is just a lot of blocks hanging on the outer edge of the turret. This should be the state of "M60A3" with composite armor.
Tan Zhenhua looked at it carefully for a long time before hesitatingly said: "It looks like our gun is a bit longer than the gun on the "M60A3". Could it be that I read it wrong?"
Fang Weixian praised: "Comrade Xiao Tan is still very careful, you are not mistaken, our gun is indeed longer than others."
"Uh, Fang Gong, I don't understand this a bit. Didn't it mean that our guns were also L7 imported from Britain? The American guns are also from the same source. Why do we want to make it longer?"
"Oh, this is one of the root causes of the disease." Fang Weixian sighed: "Everyone has the same source of artillery technology, but our material level in China is far behind that of western developed countries. This material level is not only The material of the gun itself, the composition of the propellant and other factors, in order to achieve the same shooting ability, it had to be made like this..."
"Let me explain this question." It was Zhu Yusen, the "Cannon King" who has the most say in this regard: "There are many factors that affect the power of artillery, but the most important one is the initial velocity of the shell, which must be achieved. For better initial speed, the method that can be adopted is nothing more than increasing the barrel pressure or increasing the work stroke of the gunpowder. To increase the barrel pressure, the available measures are generally to increase the effectiveness of the gunpowder, which requires the barrel. Can withstand this higher chamber pressure, but this puts higher requirements on the material and processing technology of the manufacturing barrel. Based on the reality that our current industrial level is relatively backward, we can only do work by increasing gunpowder. The stroke method is to increase the initial velocity of the shell, that is, to increase the length of the barrel. The final result is what you see now. Normally, in order to ensure the service life of the barrel, the barrel diameter of modern tank guns is doubled. It will not exceed 55 times, but our gun has to be increased to 58 times the diameter, and the entire barrel length exceeds 6 meters, but even with these compromise measures, the performance of the entire gun is still different from that of the M68 gun. The small gap, especially the barrel life is less than half of that, and the full life is only 400 rounds."
"Moreover, because the new gun is too long, the center of gravity of the vehicle has shifted. In layman's terms, it is a bit "top-heavy", which will inevitably cause a "punch" phenomenon when the car is driving." Fang Weixian Then he said, with a rather helpless expression: "This is one of the very unsatisfactory aspects of the Pakistan Railway, because in addition to the limited life of the gun barrel, it will also bring a very bad driving experience and have a great impact on the maneuverability of the tank. In addition, the excessively long barrel also brings more and more complicated work to the replacement of the barrel in an emergency. The replacement of the barrel is an important part of tank maintenance or battlefield repairs."
Tan Zhenhua noticed the word "among" very sensitively, and couldn't help but frown and asked: "Fanggong, in this case, Pakistan Railways is not satisfied with this point? Can you elaborate on what else?"
"To be honest, the Pakistan Railway has put forward a lot of opinions after testing the "Storm 2"," Fang Weixian reluctantly curled his lips again: "Let’s talk about a few main things, such as the power system. Our car uses The largest power engine available in the country. This power pack consisting of an engine with a power of 588 kilowatts (800 horsepower) and a brand-new "electronic-hydraulic-mechanical" semi-automatic gearbox sounds really good, and it also makes us " "Storm 2" has a power-to-weight ratio that exceeds that of the competition by a large margin. However, this power pack is too immature. During the prototype test of the Pakistan Railway, there were multiple failures, cracking of the cylinder head and oil leakage of the transmission. There have been several accidents such as the ablation of the main bearing bush, which led to the complaints of the personnel involved in the test on the Pakistan Railways. On the other hand, the US tank that participated in the test at the same time, the proper rate of the power system far exceeded ours..."
"Let me explain this question." Before Fang Weixian's words fell, a person had already stood up in the conference room. Tan Zhenhua looked at this person's age as Fang Weixian, thin, with creamy sideburns, and wearing deep myopia glasses. He seemed to be an academic character, but his face was flushed at the moment, obviously the topic just now made him a little excited.
"Hello Comrade Xiao Tan, my name is Zhang Baozhong, and I am the chief designer of this engine." This one bluntly declared himself, and then said: "The engine installed on the "Storm 2" is not so much A product is more suitable than a verification machine, so in my opinion, it is normal to have a problem, and it is strange that there is no problem."
Is this a bit aggressive?
Li Liqing obviously also heard the smell of gunpowder in Zhang Baozhong's words, and quickly stood up and said in a roundabout way: "Lao Zhang, come, don't get excited, say slowly, it's your own person, just open up and explain clearly if you have any questions. "
His words calmed Zhang Baozhong a little bit. The latter pushed the eyes that had fallen to the bridge of his nose to stabilize his emotions before continuing: "I admit that this 8V165 engine failed to achieve the expected results, but, Before installing this engine on the "Storm 2", I made it clear that it is not recommended to use this engine to participate in the test bidding of the Pakistan Railway project. Although from the paper parameters, this 8V165 engine looks better, but at that time As I said, we can’t give up reliability indicators in pursuit of good-looking parameters. Customers will scold the streets! This 8V165 engine is the result of the West Hans MTU’s 8V331TC41 diesel engine that we surveyed and copied. The reason is that MTU refuses to provide us with any cooperation in product design. Therefore, we have not obtained any valuable technical information from MTU. All designs come from the reverse engineering of this engine. Everyone knows how to do so. Reason: This engine is technically the same as the MB873Ka-501 installed on the "Leopard II" tank, except that the number of cylinders is less than 4, only 8 cylinders, so the power is only 706 kilowatts (960 horsepower).
The original 8V331TC41 engine was installed on the No. 1224 test vehicle for testing. The results are well known and very good, but our imitation results are not satisfactory. The maximum power of the 8V165 engine bench test is only It reached 667 kilowatts (906 horsepower), but various failures occurred many times during the test. In the end, it could only be downgraded to 588 kilowatts (800 horsepower). However, even so, its proper rate is still not guaranteed, and the exposure In my opinion, the problem cannot be fundamentally solved in the short term. So my point of view is that although the MTU engine is good, its goodness is based on the powerful materials and processing technology of West Hans. This is what our country currently lacks, and it cannot be remedied in the short term. To this day, I still insist on my point of view. Tanks are weapons. On the battlefield, weapons with advanced performance are not necessarily useful. Only weapons that can be used are The best weapon, so I insist on replacing the engine plan. The mature 537 kW (730 horsepower) 12150ZL is the right choice. My opinion is over. "
After Zhang Baozhong had finished talking about this, regardless of other people's reactions, he immediately sat down, and with his shelling, there was a brief cold spot in the conference room, and the atmosphere was a little subtle for a while.