Talk:Type 85 anti-aircraft artillery

ROF

"With water-cooled barrels, the actual rate of fire exceeds 800 rounds per minute per barrel, but the standard system is usually consisted of air-cooled barrels for weight reduction, resulting in a decreased rate of fire"

That's true as far as sustained fire goes, a water cooled gun can actually fire 800 rounds in a minute and not have any issues, as long as the ammunition supply system accommodates this and you don't need to stop to reload. But there are very few situations where an anti-aircraft gun is going to be firing for a minute at full rate, most targets for a point defense AAA system are going to have very brief windows of engagement, so sustained rate is not very important. Having an air cooled version shouldn't effect the mechanical rate of fire. It will effect the sustained rate of fire, just that's limited by the gunners only being able to fire in relatively short bursts with pauses to cool the barrels. There are two types of rating, the cyclical and sustained rate. Cyclical is how fast the gun can function ignoring ammunition supply and cooling. Sustained is how many rounds the gun is actually able to send downrange in the same period following proper procedures for cooling and reloading. It's not clear which of the two is being discussed here. A water cooled gun can usually fire at full cyclic rate more or less indefinitely, other than stopping to reload. An air cooled gun fires at the same cyclical rate but a much lower sustained rate because it is crucial to fire in short bursts with pauses to cool down (although that depends on the situation, most allow for longer bursts in emergencies, only then you must stop firing for longer while the accumulated heat dissipates). So yes, the air cooled one will have a lower overall rate of fire, but it would only make any difference in situations where sustained fire is required, which should be relatively rare for a short range AAA system.

It's possible to mechanically limit rate of fire for an air cooled gun to allow longer bursts to be fired before it overheats, but that seems unlikely with an AAA gun, where the main goal is usually to get as many rounds into the target in the shortest time possible. Being able to fire for ten seconds instead of five isn't helpful if the target is only in range for a few seconds anyway and you are now much less likely to actually hit him because there are fewer shells going towards him. Idumea47b (talk) 11:11, 18 November 2024 (UTC)