PTH152 152mm D-20
Vietnam has evaluated mounting the 152mm D-20 cannon on trucks since the late 1990s. D-20 howitzers used to be an extremely dangerous weapon of the Vietnamese artillery force. Vietnam even tried to mount this extremely dangerous D-20 on the truck frame to turn it into a self-propelled gun. Based on the uniforms in the picture, it can be predicted that the time this program was carried out was in the early 1980s to the early 1990s. Increasing autonomy for the D-20 is very important because the gun itself, despite its strong firepower, has the disadvantage of not high maneuverability.
From the D-20 the Soviet Army continued to develop another model, the 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled gun with the same caliber and mounted on the GM-123 crawler chassis. This design greatly increased the mobility of the D-20 and reduced the crew of the gunner from 8 to 4 soldiers. Of course the 2S3 is also in the equipment of the Vietnam Army and is one of the most modern self-propelled artillery models of the artillery armies, it has a range similar to the D-20.
The most famous variant of the D-20 is the Type 66 gun, which China arbitrarily copied without permission. From the Type 66, China even developed a self-propelled version called the Type 83 - similar to the Soviet 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled gun. The D-20 cannon weighs up to 5.7 tons, when moving requires a trailer and on the battlefield, this cannon also proves to be quite heavy if operated only by manpower. The biggest downside to the D-20 is that it has a maximum gun rotation angle of only 58 degrees. If the target is out of this rotation, the crew will have to rotate the whole cannon in the direction of the target and fix it again - very time consuming.
Putting the 152 mm D-20 tractor grenade on a wheeled truck chassis will provide outstanding maneuverability for this weapon. Vietnamese military engineers are carrying out self-propelled howitzer 105 mm M101 loot obtained after 1975 by mounting them to the Ural 375D and Ural 4320.07 wheeled truck chassis or truck. Crawler M548. The above work has brought remarkable maneuverability for an old weapon that seemed to be out of date and no longer fully met the requirements of modern warfare, opening up the prospect of self-propulsion of higher caliber ground artillery. The next object for the above program is expected to be the 122 mm D-30 and then it will reach the 152 mm D-20, the proposed plan may be based on the Jupiter III, Jupiter IV or Jupiter V of Cuba tht proceeds by mounting trucks KrAZ 6x6. It was surprising, however, to learn that before the 105 mm M101 self-propelled artillery program began, Vietnam piloted the manufacture of a 152 mm self-propelled gun by placing the D-20 on a wheeled truck frame GAZ-63.
Compared with the Cuban configuration, the prototype of self-propelled artillery in Vietnam was more simple, requiring the removal of the car cabin to get space for the barrel to be turned forward, and its shield had also advanced close to the driver's position. This is just a semi-autonomous plan to reduce the time to drag artillery to the battlefield.
Because of the shortcomings as mentioned above, the pilot program of self-propelled howitzer D-20 152mm had not been deployed on a large scale and fell into oblivion. However, with the development of science and technology of the country, it is hoped that by now, Vietnam's defense industry has enough potentials, experience and learned knowledge to restart the program. If successful, the Vietnam Artillery will have in hand a powerful weapon with strong power and high flexibility, capable of taking on new tasks in a fierce modern combat environment.
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