Soviet/Russian Projectile ID

[Eggburt1969]

Little weekend quiz for a munition ID-minded person. Let's see who can ID this projectile.

I've got an idea what it is, but lets see if someone else can ID it.

Only clue I'll give, which may be wrong, is that it's possibly not being used in its original intended environment.

Original image is from the X (Twitter) post linked below.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1774715220084015227

 

[MINENAZ16]

100mm HE OF70 ?
Could it be this one (shell without boat tail in the middle) for the cartridge 3UOF19 ?

 

[Eggburt1969]

100mm HE OF70 ?
Could it be this one (shell without boat tail in the middle) for the cartridge 3UOF19 ?

View attachment 195271

Right calibre I think, but I don't think it's one of those 100 mm HE-frag projectiles though.

The projectiles of the 3UOF17 and 3UOF26 IFV rounds are a no-no as they have the wrong base (tail) types. The 3UOF19's projectile is close, but it should have a slightly domed based and what's seen looks pretty flat.

The marking after the front bourrelet and the shape of the projectile's rear would suggest what its type/class/nature is.

 

[sgdbdr]

Could it be a BE illuminating projectile like the 100mm SB1-56 ?

 

[Eggburt1969]

Could it be a BE illuminating projectile like the 100mm SB1-56 ?

Yes, this is my guess.

Going by diagrams I have and the spacing between the rear driving band and projectile's base, it's probably not the Soviet/Russian A3-SB1-56 (А3-СБ1-56) base-ejection 100 mm naval illuminating projectile.

It may however be an A3-SB-56 (А3-СБ-56) 100 mm naval illuminating projectile. This is a forward-ejection, like a shrapnel shell, 100 mm naval illuminating projectile, of which there were two designs.

As such it's a Naval projectile/round being used on land, which may not be as surprising as it seems. As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be any land system-based 100 mm illuminating projectiles/rounds and 100 mm guns are being used quite a lot during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine war.

The A3-SB-56, as part of what is presumed to have be the A3-USB-56 (А3-УСБ-56) round, was originally developed for the B-34 (Б-34) series of 56-calibre 100 mm naval guns. It can also be used with the KSM-65 (КСМ-65) towed coastal gun.

I presume the round is compatible with the BS-3 (БС-3) field gun, KS-19 (КС-19) series of anti-aircraft guns, and the D-10 (Д-10) series of tank guns.

 

[HAZORD]

The Antitank minefield show seems pretty dense. Is that typical?

 

[Eggburt1969]

The Antitank minefield show seems pretty dense. Is that typical?

I've seen this sort of laying density before, but reference material I have suggests the mines aren't laid to Soviet/Russian standard doctrine though. This may reflect a general level of ignorance of those laying the mines, which should be approximately 4-6 m apart. The mines themselves would seem to be plastic-cased TM-62P3, which are fitted with minimum-metal MVP-62M fuzes.

 

[wingsofwrath]

I've seen this sort of laying density before, but reference material I have suggests the mines aren't laid to Soviet/Russian standard doctrine though. This may reflect a general level of ignorance of those laying the mines, which should be approximately 4-6 m apart. The mines themselves would seem to be plastic-cased TM-62P3, which are fitted with minimum-metal MVP-62M fuzes.

It's not ignorance, it's deliberate. The Russians decided to wilfully make their minefields from two to ten times as dense as the regs suggest because last summer they were running very low on manpower. And it worked, having to navigate and clear such dense minefields absolutely blunted the Ukrainian offensive because it became almost impossible to get any kind of mechanized force through, so, in turn, the Ukrainian Army is now laying their own just as dense minefields because they're currently on the defensive. At this point I expect Ukraine is already the most heavily mined country in history, having overtaken countries like Egypt, Angola, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, etc.

 

[Eggburt1969]

It's not ignorance, it's deliberate. The Russians decided to wilfully make their minefields from two to ten times as dense as the regs suggest because last summer they were running very low on manpower. And it worked, having to navigate and clear such dense minefields absolutely blunted the Ukrainian offensive because it became almost impossible to get any kind of mechanized force through, so, in turn, the Ukrainian Army is now laying their own just as dense minefields because they're currently on the defensive. At this point I expect Ukraine is already the most heavily mined country in history, having overtaken countries like Egypt, Angola, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, etc.

Well, that may or may not be so, but the mines are too close together. As such this may either result in sympathetic mine detonation, or possible functioning of the fuze fitted to the mine that is too close, which causes those mines to go off. That or the mines around the one that detonates are unearthed and pushed to the side.

This is not really much use as one mine potentially sets off loads of other ones, or pushes those to close to the sides. Though the former truly messes up the armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) unlucky to to set the first one off, it ends up with a large gap in the minefield. If the mines are simply unearthed and pushed to the side, this also results in the larger gap in the minefield.

In both cases this sort of defeats the object of sowing more mines in the minefield, i.e. to create a denser minefield to increases the likelihood of defeating AFVs. There's a reason for the the 4-6 m separation.

 

[wingsofwrath]

The larger explosions due to sympathetic detonation are exactly the effect they're looking for, because the whole point is to defeat attempts at mechanical demining using mine plows/flails by making the resulting explosion bigger than the vehicle is designed to whistand - I've also seen examples of mines clustered in groups of three for exactly this effect. And the fact you now have a sizeable gap in the minefield is easily rectified by simply making the whole minefield much, much deeper.

In fact, in some places it can be kilometres deep and having the mines in a single line close together, but the lines themselves at proper separation (or even worse, at irregular intervals, with several bands of mines separated by a few hundreds of meters) means you can't use mechanical means and a mine-clearing line charge will be to short so you need multiple ones or you try and demine by hand at night and pray the enemy doesn't have thermal camera equipped drones.

And of course, all of that takes extra time, during which the enemy is free to call in artillery on your position or bring in loitering munitions and fpv drones, etc.

We're again at a point in time where the actual experience of war has overtaken any peacetime doctrine and manuals, because it turns out you can do things that the people who wrote the manual never thought about.
EDIT: And also, they wrote the manual for the wrong thing - they were thinking of highly mobile, mechanized warfare, whereas what they got was WW1 including trenches, mud and artillery duels.