The British AS90 Self Propelled Gun - Artillery Review

[Music] welcome guys it's maximus thank you so much for joining me on today's video I really do appreciate so today we are talking about something a little different than what we usually use to talking about on my channel with main battle tanks we are talking about the impressive the gigantic and the beastly as-90 Braveheart self-propelled howitzer now this thing is unreal when I was in the British Army it literally was one of those vehicles that when you see coming you kind of wanna crawl into a hole and die it is just huge I'm 6 foot 3 guys and when I used to get into the back of these things to do repairs or look around I literally could stand inside of it and my head wouldn't even be close with my helmet to the top of the ceiling of this damn thing it is huge and it needs to be to encompass that massive gun sitting inside of it now this vehicle is obviously running along the shoot and scoot maneuver tactic which basically means the artilleryman are able to place rounds onto targets and then be able to get out of the area as quickly as possible to react to potential counterbattery fire which in today's modern conflicts is very very important and something that's very prominent on the battlefield we want to be able to put rounds downrange and bug out as quickly as possible now this vehicle was designed very very well it was to replace an older vehicle and what we're going to do first of all before we go into the technicalities of how I feel about this vehicle we're going to go over a really quick overview of what this thing's about and kind of features and specifications it has just to give you a bit of idea of how this thing works how it came to be and why it is in service within the British Army and other countries worldwide so the as-90 otherwise known as the British as-90 self elde 155 millimeter gun was a replacement for the British Army's ageing American designed M 109 and FV 433 abot 105 millimeter artillery systems Vickers shipbuilding engineering which was brought out by BAE Systems Land Systems in 1999 originally developed it in 1981 the 1981 project build a prototype 155 millimeter turret designated the g bt 155 a new 155 millimeter self-propelled artillery system project was started and designated the as-90 which stands for artillery system for surprisingly enough the 1990s two prototypes were built in 1986 and entered the British Army service in the Abbott replacement competition in 1989 the as-90 was chosen at the British Army's new artillery system and an order was made to Vickers for 179 s 90s guys at a cost of an astonishing 300 million pounds that's a lot of money for the roshani first deliveries were made in 1993 and were completed in roughly 1995 the as-90 s engine is a 660 horsepower v8 diesel engine from the Cummings with a ZF Gears limited automatic transmission with four forward and two reverse gears giving a top road speed of 55 kilometres an hour and an operational range of 370 kilometers the as-90 is lightly armoured and is welded with a 17 millimeter thick steel armor construction it is then pretty much capable to defend itself from its own indirect fire front counts of battery effects but only within reason and only within certain distances however there is in current development new Armour to allow the as-90 to withstand anti-tank missiles and heavier rounds than its current protection against 7.62 millimeter and fourteen point five millimeter armor-piercing shells as well as 152 millimeter shell fragments it also has its own smoke discharges and obviously an NBC system in case of nuclear biological and chemical attack the s 90 s are fitted with a 155 millimeter gun 39 caliber length main gun which fires NATO L 15 155 millimeter projectiles with a range of 24.7 kilometers in conventional notes I say conventional ammunition the s 9 see also fires extended range ammunition rounds to around 30 kilometers it is a fire rate of three rounds in 10 seconds in burst fire mode and six rounds per minute for three minutes in intense firing and two rounds per minute for 60 minutes at sustained fire it carries 48 rounds 31 of these are stored in the turret bottle magazine the gun lair station is equipped with a direct fire site from a V mo now part of fails Optronics and we already know who Thales is guys they pretty much at most optronics for any kind of vehicles out there today for direct Knight firing for indirect firing an automatic gun laying system or a GLS with an electronic elevation and Traverse Drive provide laying accuracy of 1 mile and rapid target engagement the layers display unit or ldu was designed by the SEL the commander station is equipped with a separate site basically guys this particular system allows the crew to punch in coordinates as they're moving okay so has its own specified systems in place gyroscopes GPS systems and such that it can actually allow the commander and the gunner to put in coordinates punch them in as the drivers punch in as fast he can across the battlefield to get to his next firing location and as soon as they pull up on site enter into the ballistics computer gun can't reverse 360 degrees wherever it needs to go elevate fire many rounds they need to do closed barrel off they go and then jobs are good it's fantastic technology and something that is obviously apparent nearly all mobile field artillery systems nowadays there's also a barrel cooling system provide higher maximum fire rates in development it also has a 7.62 millimeter l7 GPMG mounted on the commander's turret for close protection so reloading of this thing guys is pretty self-explanatory quite simple it does have a very large bulk head at the back bulkhead door that is able to allow gun crews to replenish ammunition quite easily from the rear and there was a system in place that we're trying to try out to be able to do a automatic loading system into this vehicle but what it was declined for reasons unknown it was basically I would go along the thinking of they probably wanted to side towards human control over Auto loading system that could potentially fail and honestly I kind of agree with that I prefer to stick with troops getting shells in the back then a system that fails and then they have to get mechanics to come out to fix that a system when you're talking about ammunition as well I mean once you're trying to push bag charges and shelves of that caliber and that size through little ports in the back of the vehicle to try and get it you know loaded and much rather troops just hand loading carefully cautiously put them into the breeches and into the pod not the breeches into the magazine safely which is nice to see you know it's nice to have sort of Gunners doing the job instead of machines all the time so it's pretty neat to have that kind of reloading structure in place I used to remember the rola gistic school and they pulled up behind these things and just unloading racks and racks of these Brown gun tube ammunition racks and by the end of the day normally when they finish their gun days I mean they were just completely dry there was nothing left they'd just punch through every single ground they could get because training days of these things are disliked I mean it's like a kid in a candy store the gun is like to get their hands on the kit and get the rounds downrange and as you can see here the boys is tearing through them ammunition as quickly as they can now it really doesn't seem like a very difficult task trying to get Sheldon as I said before that rear bulkhead door is nice and big nice big opening to get those rounds in and obviously it's going to take time like any kind of reloading wood but they've also mentioned in the past that this vehicle was actually quite easily to maintain I would strongly disagree with that I've maintained these vehicles up and down and they are not fun to change however normally a power-packed change it's going to happen in about an hour's time if everything works out nicely which is pretty good considering I mean it's a little less time than the Challenger - and but this vehicle is designed a little differently to jump to this uses a caliper system to brake instead of the braking system that's using the challenge' - which uses oil and brake bands very different system so yeah so there were a few different variations of this gun and system that were placed the British s 90 D self-propelled gun is the desert version basically it gives it some extra thermal protection for the five-man crew some extra cooling for the engine into the machinery and such and the tracks were also given specific modifications for the desert environment the British s 90 Braveheart was created by BA systems and was awarded the contract upgrade 96th of the S 90s to a 52 caliber length gun to increase his unassisted range to 30 kilometers with a long range er a ammunition to 40 kilometers they've just bumped up the range even further and 40 kilometers for a hundred 55 millimeters of hot metal is pretty darn impressive the project was cancelled by the British Army due to technical problems with the ammunition it is assumed that the turret was modified to take the extra weight from the increased length of the main gun and changes to the breech and ammunition stowage hence the name Braveheart turret now this system is still being worked on concurrently guys I actually have a couple of friends in the Royal Artillery who work on this particular weapon system they are still working on different upgrades for the barrel and the achi there's different systems than putting in place of the GPS to to try and lay on more accurate fire but this gun can be upgraded to make it big and be able to punch rounds further so it's a nice feature to have if they require it for the most part they stick to the standard gun Britain is the main operate the s 90 M it operates six field regiments three of these regiments are under the command of the 1st armoured division in Germany however that's changing as of right now back into the UK three are under the command of the 3rd Armored Division in the UK now the structure in the UK has changed very very quickly and all over the place and not something I really want to talk about because make me very very sad but the Braveheart was also trialed in sweden and the turret fitted to a t-72 hull for trials in India which is very interesting the as-90 has not been exported as a whole vehicle to any country however the Braveheart turret is scheduled to be under licence in Poland as part of the new crab SPG using a German 155 millimeter caliber length with a 52 Cal length main gun so what's my opinion on this vehicle then well overall I honestly have a lot of respect for the s90 it's one of those vehicles that I always like to have on my side we all know that modern technology and modern battlefield techniques are changing in regards to artillery we know there's the counterbattery radar count battery systems that are able to engage artillery pretty much straight away when that round gets fired out barrel and we're able to locate artillery positions of fire back at them quite the shoot and scoot maneuver is slowly starting to become something of the past with air superiority being able to find these assets very very quickly counts battery radar being able to locate rounds coming in very quick however I think the edge 90 still has a long way to go it has a lot of features they're able to keep it on the battlefield without 30 to 40 kilometer range I mean that is a fantastic fire base that is able to produce the British Army clearly wants to keep it in service it's still running today the mo d is still pumping money into it which is really really nice to see 155 millimeter cannon is going to be a fantastic assets have on your side whether it's mobile or stationary with the s 19 being able to do the shoot and scoop maneuver I really do think in potential modern-day conflicts it still has a lot of potential and a you know the ability to provide good artillery support I do remember in my day looking after these vehicles in terms of maintenance they did pretty good for themselves I'm not gonna lie they did pretty good they weren't as bad as you know challenge' twos powerpack Valley rate was a lot more than BS 90s but this had a very different system in place the Gunners I spoke to my army career absolutely loved this vehicle and honestly guys hands down I love it too I love the fact that is part of my patriotic country's military force and I'm proud to say that I've served alongside in my army anyway guys I really hope you enjoyed today's video please leave a like and if you enjoyed the video some sort of comment to let me know and if you're new to my channel please subscribe I hope you enjoyed please please please have a great day all the best and bye bye [Music]

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 116,570

Rating: 4.9216967 out of 5

Keywords: AS90, AS 90, British AS90, AS-90, Royal Artillery AS90, as90 self propelled gun, AS-90 Self propelled gun, British AS90 Artillery, Mobile Artillery System, 155 mm/L39 howitzer, AS90D, AS90 Braveheart, BAE Systems, Royal Ordnance, AS90 howitzer, AS90 BAE Systems, AS90 Artillery, Artillery shoot and scoot, mobile artillery, M109 Artillery, AS90 155mm gun, matsimus gaming, British army artillery, british armed forces, British AS90 Self Propelled Gun

Id: xIASwxeb3uA

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2016