Cannon > Related Articles
From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium
< Cannon
- See also pages that link to Cannon or to this page.
Parent topics
Subtopics
- Autocannon [r]: A magazine-fed cannon that will load and fire continuously until its magazine is empty. [e]
- M61 Vulcan (autocannon) [r]: The first widely deployed electrically-powered, 20mm, rotating-barrel autocannon, used on aircraft and some ground vehicles in the Vietnam War [e]
- M242 Bushmaster [r]: A 25mm autocannon used on a wide variety of land, sea, and air platforms [e]
- GAU-8 [r]: The largest full-automatic aircraft cannon in operational use, a 30mm gun on the A-10 Thunderbolt II, optimized to defeat armor [e]
- Phalanx close-in weapons system [r]: A 20mm autocannon system originally for shipboard final defense against subsonic anti-shipping missiles, obsolescent in that role but being deployed for land-based counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) defense against guerilla rockets [e]
- Anti-aircraft artillery [r]: A general term for guns that can elevate to high angles and shoot accurately at aircraft, using visual, electro-optical, or radar guidance. [e]
- 20mm antiaircraft gun [r]: A manually tracked piece of anti-aircraft artillery widely used on ships of the U.S. Navy and other navies during World War II. [e]
- 40mm-56 caliber gun [r]: An antiaircraft (AA) gun used on almost every major U.S. and U.K. warship of World War II. [e]
- Phalanx close-in weapons system [r]: A 20mm autocannon system originally for shipboard final defense against subsonic anti-shipping missiles, obsolescent in that role but being deployed for land-based counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) defense against guerilla rockets [e]
- S-60 [r]: A Soviet 57mm anti-aircraft artillery piece, introduced in the 1950s and replaced by missiles as the division-level air defense weapon. [e]
- ZSU-23 [r]: A Soviet-developed radar-directed 23mm self-propelled autocannon, primarily intended for low-altitude antiaircraft but capable of engaging ground targets; extremely widely deployed [e]
- Gun (artillery) [r]: An artillery piece with a relatively long barrel length with respect to caliber; characteristically has the flattest trajectory of types of cannon and usually the longest range for its caliber. Other than for specialized applications, it has largely been replaced by guided missiles [e]
- 130mm gun [r]: An older piece of Soviet-designed artillery, which outranged most light (105mm) and medium 155mm howitzers of its time [e]
- Anti-tank gun [r]: Narrowly, a gun (artillery) optimized to defeat tank armor; more generally, an obsolete approach of free-standing artillery pieces (i.e., not armored fighting vehicles) used against tanks [e]
- Naval gun [r]: An artillery piece optimized for use aboard ship, which has always meant being resistant to the effects of salt water, and in modern times having stabilization to compensate for ship motion [e]
- 5"-38 caliber gun [r]: A dual purpose (DP) gun, effective for both surface and antiaircraft use, mounted on very many U.S. Navy ships in the World War II era, but which has disappeared from service today. [e]
- 5"-54 caliber gun [r]: Until the introduction of the 5"-62 caliber gun, the primary medium naval gun of U.S. warships after the Second World War [e]
- 5"-62 caliber gun [r]: The main gun for shore bombardment and some anti-surface warfare on newer U.S. Navy warships; the successor to 5"-54 caliber guns. [e]
- Tank gun [r]: The main weapon of a tank (military) is, at present, a gun optimized for antitank use, often firing armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot ammunition, although different tanks have more or less capability against targets other than tank armor. Some tank guns also can fire missiles through the barrel. Railgun electromagnetic gun technology is actively being researched. [e]
- Howitzer [r]: An artillery piece with a medium ratio between barrel length and diameter; longer than a mortar and shorter than a gun; the most common form of modern cannon [e]
- 155mm howitzer [r]: Implemented in self-propelled or lightweight towed versions, this howitzer size, with slight variations in caliber, is the world's most common medium artillery type [e]
- Mortar [r]: A piece of artillery, sometimes light enough to be carried by infantry, which has a short barrel length relative to the shell caliber, and fires in a high indirect trajectory, often desirable to fire over obstacles. [e]
Other related topics
- Direct fire [r]: A military term for battlefield weapons fired with a direct line of sight on their target; projectile weapons actually fire in a parabolic trajectory that approximates a straight line for short distances [e]
- Indirect fire [r]: Weapons fire that is fired in an arc such that the projectile rises above the target elevation and descends to hit the target [e]
- Fuze [r]: A mechanical, pyrotechnic or electronic device that causes the initiation of a detonator after some sensed event or events [e]
- Proximity fuze [r]: Fuze designed to detonate an explosive device automatically when the distance to target becomes smaller than a predetermined value. [e]
- Guided missile [r]: A weapon that flies through air or space, under its own power, which adjusts its course to hit its target. [e]
- Rocket-assisted projectile [r]: A cannon-launched projectile that does not depend on the initial energy of the cannon propellant, but supplements it with a rocket motor attached to the warhead; usually trades payload for increased range [e]
- Machine gun [r]: A firearm capable not only of full-automatic fire, but with additional features, such as large ammunition supply mechanisms, barrel cooling or quick-change features, etc., that lets it fire for prolonged periods [e]
- Multiple rocket launcher [r]: In modern use, a family of mobile artillery systems, firing unguided rockets intended for area-effect coverage, complementing howitzers for point targets. These systems, however, increasingly use guided rounds. [e]
- Shell (artillery) [r]: A warhead for artillery, which contains a bursting or penetrating filler, and appropriate fuze, rather than solid metal [e]
- Shot [r]: Projectiles that are made of solid metal, without an explosive filling [e]
