Rarden (cannon)

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Warrior tank with RARDEN automatic cannon as main armament

The L21A1 RARDEN is a British machine gun in 30 mm caliber , which is used in armored vehicles. The designation consists of R oyal A rmament, R esearch D epartment and En field together. The Royal Armament Research Department and the Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) were both under the Ministry of Defense at the time .

Manufacturing

RSAF produced the rarities from the early 1970s. From 1984, RSAF became part of the Royal Ordnance Factories , which in turn became Royal Ordnance during privatization . Royal Ordnance planned, among other things, to close Enfield after privatization. In 1987, however, British Aerospace (BAe) bought Royal Ordnance and reversed the closure of RSAF Enfield on August 12, 1987. Most of Royal Ordnance Enfield's work has been outsourced to RO Nottingham due to the closure of RSAF .

The production of the rarities was carried out from 1985 by the British Manufacture and Research Company BMARC , which was also bought by BAe from 1992 and became part of RO Defense , now renamed BAE Land Systems .

commitment

The Rarden was used in a variety of armored vehicles of the British Army.

The Rarden was to be retrofitted to the tracked vehicle FV 432 , but the battle tower inside took up too much space for the infantry mounted. As a second solution, a total of 13 units were converted into an experimental support vehicle using the Fox combat tower. For this purpose, the tower was moved upwards by 76.2 mm with a spacer, which caused problems with soiling.

The weapon was designed to be as compact as possible for installation in combat turrets. Furthermore, no powder gases enter the combat tower. The empty cartridge cases are ejected forwards. In contrast to most on-board cannons, the Rarden is not supplied with ammunition via an ammunition belt , but with manually reloadable 3-shot magazines. Because of this cumbersome reloading process, the rarity was criticized. The Rarden is a recoil gun with a movable barrel, the barrel and the breech moving together. This keeps the load for attaching the weapon low.

The British Army plans to replace the Rarden with various firearms in 40 mm caliber .

Technical specifications

  • Type: single barrel machine gun
  • Function: recoil loader
  • Caliber: 30 × 170 mm
  • Ammunition feed: 3-shot magazine
  • Cadence: depending on the manual reloading process
  • Total length: 3150 mm
  • Tube length: 2440 mm
  • Interior length: 430 mm
  • Total weight: 110 kg
  • Tube weight: 24.5 kg
  • Ammunition:
Armor Piercing Secondary Effect (APSE): Armor fragmentation projectile
High Explosive Incendiary (HEI): Armored incendiary projectile
Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot (APDS): Massive bullet with a throwable sabot
  • Muzzle velocity:
    • APSE, HEI: 1070 m / s
    • APDS: 1175 m / s
  • Maximum firing range: 4 km

credentials

  • David Pam: The Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield & its Workers. Enfield: privately published by the author, 1998, ISBN 0-9532271-0-3 .