The active use of front-line strike aviation, including the growing role of combat helicopters, led to the fact that already at the beginning of the sixties in the leading countries of the world projects of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns began to appear, capable of accompanying troops on the march and protecting them from existing threats. However, not all such projects have been completed successfully. So, the German army received a fairly large number of Gepard ZSU, and the United States armed forces did not wait for the M247 Sergeant York anti-aircraft self-propelled gun.
By the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, the situation on the fronts of a hypothetical war required equipping the troops with a sufficient number of self-propelled anti-aircraft installations as soon as possible. The new combat vehicles were supposed to deal with attack aircraft and attack helicopters of a potential enemy, which have become widespread in recent years. According to some estimates, at the beginning of the eighties, the troops of the NATO countries needed about a thousand SPAAGs. Approximately the same number of self-propelled guns could be sold to third countries, which were also in dire need of such equipment.
Seeing the insufficiently active development of self-propelled anti-aircraft systems, the British company Marconi Electronic Systems (now transformed into several divisions of BAE Systems) began its own project. Since one of the goals of the project was to maximize commercial prospects, several main ideas were laid down in it. This is the use of the best existing technologies and technical solutions, as well as versatility. The latter, first of all, meant the creation of a combat module suitable for installation on a large number of base vehicles. However, as it turned out later, all efforts to ensure the installation of the turret on different chassis turned out to be useless. As a result, serial turrets with anti-aircraft weapons were installed on a tank chassis of only one model.
The Marksman project was launched in 1983. When determining the technical appearance of a promising ZSU, the following application features were taken into account. The anti-aircraft system was supposed to destroy attack aircraft flying at altitudes of no more than 45-50 meters at a speed of up to 250 meters per second. Such targets at that time were of great difficulty for British anti-aircraft missile systems and therefore their defeat was assigned to the new ZSU. The required range of aircraft destruction was set at three kilometers. Attack helicopters armed with Soviet Shturm missiles made the second "typical target" of the Marksman ZSU. The attack range of the helicopters was determined at four kilometers. The specified parameters of the firing range determined the choice of weapons.
Of all the available weapon options, the 35-mm KDA automatic cannons manufactured by the Swiss company Oerlikon Contraves could show the greatest efficiency in anticipated combat situations. It is worth noting that the British company Marconi attracted not only Swiss gunsmiths to the Marksman project. Vickers (designed the turret), SAGEM (optical sights and part of the electronics), as well as several smaller enterprises, took an active part in the creation of the ZSU. In addition, one cannot fail to note the international cooperation associated with the testing of the first prototypes of the Marksman turret. Probably counting on future contracts, the Markconi company began to create a turret for a shoulder strap with a diameter of 1840 millimeters. To test the first instance of the combat module, a Chinese-made Type 59 tank chassis was used. According to the most common version, such a base for the prototype was chosen in order to optimize all systems to work on this chassis and then sell a certain number of ZSUs to China or other countries that operated Chinese tanks.
The first prototype based on the Type 59 tank looked like this. The vehicle with a combat weight of about 41 tons was equipped with a 620-horsepower diesel engine. Due to the increase in the weight of the vehicle compared to the base tank, the running characteristics have noticeably decreased.
A large welded tower was placed on the standard pursuit of the tank. Unlike the tank chassis, the turret had relatively weak protection: from 14.5 mm bullets in the frontal projection and from 7.62 mm bullets from other angles. The tower was equipped with a high-speed electric swing mechanism capable of rotating the combat module at a speed of up to 90 ° per second. When using automatic guidance systems, the maximum turret traverse speed dropped by a third.
On the sides of the front of the turret were two Oerlikon KDA guns of 35 mm caliber (barrel length 90 calibers), stabilized in two planes. Gas automatic cannons could fire at a rate of up to 550 rounds per minute each. The electric mechanism made it possible to direct the guns in a vertical plane at a speed of up to 60 ° per second. Vertical guidance angles - from -10 ° to + 85 °. The guns were equipped with a hydraulic recoil brake and a spring-loaded knurler. Of great interest was the cannon ammunition supply system developed by Oerlikon. KDA cannons could receive belts with shells from both sides, including during one turn. This feature of the guns made it possible to apply the original ammunition supply system. Outside the tower, on the side of the breech of each gun, there was a container for 20 rounds 35x228 mm. Two more containers were placed inside the tower, each for 230 rounds. It was assumed that the inner, more capacious containers will be equipped with high-explosive fragmentation shells of various types, and the outer ones - with armor-piercing. After using up the ammunition, the ZSU crew could, on their own, change the empty containers to the loaded ones. For this, the combat vehicle was equipped with a folding cargo crane.
The Marksman self-propelled anti-aircraft gun could use 35-mm projectiles of several types: fragmentation-incendiary (HEI), fragmentation-incendiary with a tracer (HEI-T), armor-piercing fragmentation-incendiary with a tracer (SAPHEI-T) and armor-piercing subcaliber with a tracer (APDS -T). Thanks to the two-way power supply of the cannons, the self-propelled gun could fire both incendiary fragmentation and armor-piercing shells in one turn. The muzzle velocity of fragmentation projectiles is about 1175 meters per second. For armor-piercing sub-caliber ammunition, this parameter was significantly higher and reached 1440 m / s. The effective slant target hitting range was 4-5 kilometers. The average probability of hitting a target specified by the original technical specifications did not exceed 52-55 percent.
At the rear of the roof of the tower of the ZSU Marksman was the antenna of the Marconi 400MX surveillance and tracking radar. In the survey mode of the surrounding space, the radar could find targets at ranges of up to 12 kilometers. When switching to escort, the maximum operating distance was reduced to 10 km. The use of a single radar for review and for tracking targets accordingly affected the capabilities of the entire complex. After acquiring a target for auto-tracking, the radar station could not continue to survey space. In the stowed position, the radar antenna column was folded back.
The fire control system was based on a digital computer designed to track targets and generate commands for guidance drives. In order to improve the firing accuracy, the OMS received data from several sensors. When calculating the guidance angles of the guns, the parameters of the movement of the vehicle itself (determined by the gyroscopic system of the weapon stabilizer), the speed and direction of the wind (information came from sensors on the turret roof), as well as the actual initial velocity of the projectiles (measured by a special system on the muzzles of the guns) were taken into account. When using the appropriate projectiles, the Marksman machine control system could program the fuses to detonate at a certain distance from the gun.
Inside the Marksman tower, there were only two crew jobs - the commander and the gunner operator. The third crew member, the driver, was housed in a tank chassis. The crew could turn on the automatic mode of operation of the MSA, associated systems and weapons. In this case, the electronic equipment of the anti-aircraft self-propelled gun independently found targets, determined the necessary guidance angles and parameters for the detonation of projectiles. The gunner or commander could only give the command to open fire. When the fire control system was turned off, the crew could independently direct the guns, using the appropriate controls. To ensure acceptable firing accuracy, the commander and gunner each had one SAGEM VS-580 VISAA periscope sight. With the system of stabilization of sights turned off, it was possible to observe the situation or targets with an increase in x1 and x8. The included stabilizer provided magnification up to x10. A PRF laser rangefinder with a maximum range of 8 kilometers was integrated into the gunner's sight. The fire control system and sights could be modified at the request of the customer.
Despite the fact that the Marksman ZSU was created taking into account the installation on a chassis similar to the T-55 or "Type 59" tanks, already in 1984, other variants of experimental vehicles began to appear. Employees of Marconi and related organizations installed a turret with anti-aircraft guns on the Centurion, Chieftain and Challenger 1 tanks. Since not all tanks had a ring diameter equal to this parameter of the Type 59 tank, several adapter adapters were created to equip them with the Marksman turret. They were ring-shaped parts of a complex profile that allowed the turret to be installed on any suitable chassis. Almost all variants of installing the Marksman turret on different tank chassis were supposed to use such adapters.
Thanks to the use of adapter adapters, it was possible to significantly expand the list of potential chassis for the Marksman SPAAG. In addition to self-propelled anti-aircraft guns based on British and Soviet / Chinese tanks, customers were offered similar combat vehicles based on the German Leopard 1 tank, the American M48 Patton, the British Vickers Mk3, and the South African G6 self-propelled gun. However, all these versions of the ZSU remained on paper. Only vehicles based on Type 59, Centurion, Chieftain and Challenger 1 tanks took part in the tests.
The large number of proposed options did not affect the real prospects of the new ZSU. As already mentioned, only one version was useful, based on the Type 59 / T-55 tank. The alleged main customer, the British Armed Forces, was not interested in the project. Already in the mid-eighties, a large number of aviation weapons appeared in the armament of the leading countries, capable of effectively destroying such anti-aircraft systems. The use of only artillery weapons did not suit the British. As for other potential customers, the severance of relations with China, financial problems of third countries, as well as the insufficient characteristics of anti-aircraft self-propelled guns almost left the consortium led by Marconi without orders.
Soon after the first displays of the ZSU Marksman at exhibitions of weapons and military equipment, in the second half of the eighties, the commanders of the Finnish army became interested in it. A relatively large number of Soviet T-55 tanks remained in service with this country, which would soon have to be written off and disposed of. Wanting to save money on disposal and preserve good, but already outdated equipment, the Finnish military in 1990 signed a contract with British industrialists. In accordance with this agreement, Marconi supplied the customer with seven Marksman turrets intended for installation on the T-55 / Type-59 tank chassis. In the Finnish army, the converted vehicles received a new name - Ilmatorjuntapanssarivaunu 90 Marksman ("Anti-aircraft tank-90" Marksman) or ItPsv 90. Finnish "Anti-aircraft tanks" were used by the troops for two decades. In 2010, all existing ItPsv 90 machines were transferred to storage, where they are still located. By the end of the decade, they are planned to be removed from service and disposed of.
In general, the English project Marksman can be assessed as unsuccessful. Moreover, the lack of noticeable results in the field of sales (only seven serial towers manufactured for Finland) was due to the very concept of the combat vehicle. Already in the early eighties, when the appearance of a promising ZSU was only being determined, in a number of countries there were not only projects, but also prototypes of aircraft weapons capable of destroying anti-aircraft artillery without entering its zone of action. Such aircraft missiles and bombs went into series at about the same time that Marconi built the first prototype of an anti-aircraft self-propelled gun based on a Chinese tank. It was the discrepancy between the Marksman ZSU and modern requirements that caused the failure of the entire project. As for the contract with Finland, the delivery of only seven towers brings to mind the adage about the sweetened pill. In addition, do not forget the military activity of the Finnish self-defense forces: Finland has not been involved in major conflicts for a long time, and therefore all seven "Anti-aircraft tanks" are likely to wait until the end of the decade and will be disposed of, having had time to participate in only a few exercises.
