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HELMOED-RÖMER HEITMAN JDW Correspondent Cape Town  South Africa's
Denel will unveil its 105mm Light Experimental Ordnance (LEO) at Africa
Aerospace and Defence in September.
The 'concept demonstrator' has been under development with South African Army funding since 1995. The first demonstration shoot was carried out earlier this year. The aim of the programme was to develop a light gun with range and terminal effects similar to existing 155mm guns, but with a lesser logistic load. The concept is for a gun suited to the needs of early entry forces and for peace support operations where safety distances and collateral damage considerations are often paramount. The LEO is a 105mm/52-cal weapon (57-cal with the rifled muzzle brake) with a maximum range of 24,000m using boat-tail shells and 30,000m with base-bleed shells. It can also fire 105mm Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilised Discarding Sabot (APFSDS) rounds for self-defence against main battle tanks and other armoured vehicles. The LEO can fire six rounds per minute. The gun has a split-trail steel carriage and weighs 3,800kg in its present form. LEO, together with 100 shells and charges, weighs some 6,000kg compared with more than 10,000kg for a 155mm gun with 100 rounds. Production weapons are expected to weigh less.
The gun is fitted with Kentron's inertial laying and navigation system with a direct interface to a fire-control system. It also has a direct optical sight. Denel's Naschem division has developed a new pre-fragmented high explosive (HE) shell for the gun with a lethal area of more than 2,000m2 when fitted with a proximity fuze. That compares with the 1,900m2 lethal area of Denel's 155mm extended range full bore RDX/TNT filled shell and the 1,000m2 or less of a standard TNT-filled 155mm shell. Naschem has also developed a standard HE shell. The Somchem division has developed a five-zone unimodular charge system for the LEO that is essentially a scaled down version of the 155mm charge system selected by the British Army for its BAE Systems RO Defence AS90 155mm self-propelled howitzer. This gives the 105mm shell a muzzle velocity between 950 and 1,050m/sec and a range of 24,000m with the standard shell. It is expected that a range of 30,000m will be achieved with the base-bleed unit that is to be developed for this ammunition. The dispersion is 0.3% of range and 0.5 mil in deflection at 75% of maximum range. Further development
of the LEO will depend on continued army funding or foreign interest.
It will include reducing weight and improving deployability and mobility,
adding automatic laying and a laser inertial laying system, developing
an assisted loading system and adapting the gun to allow the use of older
105 mm ammunition for training purposes. It will also include the development
of the base-bleed unit.
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a n d F o r c e s
S p o n s o r :
Intelligence Review Fighting Ships All the World's Aircraft International Defense Review
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The
LEO has a towing hook and lifting hooks to allow it to be deployed by
helicopter. The breech is of the swing and slide type. The LEO has fixed-length
recoil with a gas counter-recoil system. The muzzle brake is a high-efficiency
pepperpot with special Laval-shaped nozzles and is rifled. Both traverse
and elevation are hydraulic with a manual back-up, and provision has been
made for automatic laying. The gun traverses 40º to either side,
and has an elevation range from -5º to +75º. 
