KS-12 Russian 85mm Towed Anti-Aircraft Gun

Hezbollah Proliferation. The KS-12 85mm single shot AA gun is mounted on a 4 wheeled towed carriage. The Chinese variant is the Type-72. The 85-mm anti-aircraft gun of 1939 is also known as the KS-12. The new gun had good characteristics - 800 m / s initial projectile speed of 9.2 kg and a range of 10.5 km - allowed the new anti-aircraft gun to fight very effectively against armored and high-flying targets. The gun had inertial semi-automatic shutter. High results were supposed to show and shooting from an anti-aircraft gun at ground armored targets. Thus, even before the outbreak of hostilities, the KS-12 anti-aircraft gun went into mass production. Although long withdrawn from Russian service, it remains operational in several countries, including North Korea. The 85-mm anti-aircraft gun of 1939 appeared as a natural result of the development of Russian anti-aircraft artillery, which originated in 1914, when the designer of the Putilov factory F. Lander developed the first 76-mm anti-aerostatic gun of 1914. In 1915 and in 1928, this system was subjected to modernization, which increased the vertical firing range at a maximum elevation angle of up to 6,500 m; it was replaced by a 76-mm anti-aircraft gun of the 1931 model. In 1938, on the instructions of the GAU, several prototypes of the modernized 76-mm gun were manufactured. Installed on a four-wheeled carriage, it weighed 4200 kg - significantly less than the previous one. In this form, it is accepted into service as a 1938 anti-aircraft gun. However, the increase in speed and "ceiling" of the aircraft, increasing their survivability demanded an increase in the reach of anti-aircraft guns at height and an increase in the power of the projectile. At the end of the 1930s, it became obvious that the rapid development of aviation would lead to significant problems in the future in the event of opposition from aviation and air defense forces. Thus, the already available means of air defense could not adequately guarantee sufficient effectiveness. There was a need to give the army a long-range anti-aircraft gun, the weapon had to be powerful enough to hit high-flying armored targets. It was decided to base the 76.2-mm gun of the Rheinmetall company and to proceed from this when creating an anti-aircraft gun. The designers of the plant number 8 in 1937-1938 did this. The 76.2-mm gun had a large margin of safety embedded in the casing, breech and gun carriage. As a result, a new gun at that time was developed (not counting the single instances that appeared) of an 85-mm caliber.