Soviet 2S7 Pion Self-Propelled Gun: Bringing the Power of the Peony Flower

So today we have what's commonly referred to as the 2S7, also known as the M1975, because this vehicle was built from the Soviet era right through to the Russian Federation, so the names also changed along the way. It's also commonly referred to as the Pion, or the Peony. Out of the decree from 1967, they wanted a new series of self-propelled guns to come through, so they initially come up with four platforms, and then they come out with a second batch of vehicles, and the Pion was in that second batch as well. Three of them didn't make the cut. So this vehicle started out in that development series in the late 60s, it wasn't until about 1970 where they gave it its approval to be built, and this one was under Object 216, and then we first saw this vehicle in 1975, so hence M1975. So they built just over 400, I think, of these vehicles along the way, and as we can see when we look up, this is a very large gun. So this is the largest conventional artillery piece that we'll probably see around today. So this is a 203-millimeter gun, so eight inches in the old scale. It's about 56 calibers long. So this vehicle essentially started off with carrying four rounds, but when we updated this vehicle in 1983 to the Melker, we can now carry eight rounds. This has a planning range of about 37,500 meters. We can go out to about 47,500 meters as well with rocket assist, and we can fire our HE, HE frag. Can also fire some special munitions, chemical and tactical nuclear warheads. We have essentially a crew of seven, and then there's another crew of seven that follows on in a support vehicle. We have three sitting in the front cabin here, so the driver and the commander and another operator, and in the back, we have another cabin of four people. Most of the running gear that we see here is T-80, but we're also using some components out of T-72 as well. The engine's in the back here, so this is the V-46 V-12 turbocharged engine. So this vehicle comes in around 46 ton, but I could propel it at about 50 kilometers on road. The gun can go up to 60 degrees in elevation, and we've also got a field of view of about 30 degrees. Whose seat's this, James? So this is the gunner. He generally had his PG-1M day panoramic telescope that he can look through, so this gave him both horizontal and vertical positions to lay the gun accurately. He also had a K-1 culminator, which was also used in low-light situations, so if we're looking at dusk and fog and all that sort of stuff, but that was only in the horizontal plane, but it still allowed him to accurately lay this gun. So he has his manual controls, so we can lower the gun, takes quite a while, and then we can also traverse the gun, as I said, 30 degrees left and right. So generally, at the back of the gun, we have the stabilization blade that will go down, so this will allow the vehicle to put the blade down, reverse back, lock the vehicle in position. It does have a hydropneumatic suspension where it can actually lower itself down as well, and from there, we've got a stable gun platform where we can fire this gun quite accurately. And we've got essentially two-piece ammunition, so the projectile and the charge bag. They get loaded separately using the hydraulic rammer. Now, when this gun is about to fire, there's an audible alarm that goes off about five seconds before because you can imagine just the immense blast that comes out the front, and incidentally, that was one of the unofficial things about this gun where they named it after flowers because of the blast that comes out. It's just like a bouquet of flowers opening up. At the front, as I mentioned earlier, we have three crewmen that sit in the front cabin here. So in this position just here, we have the driver. Now, he has controls that look very similar to T-72 inside, so he's got an eight-speed sequential gearbox. So like T-72, you can push your clutch in, do the first gear, but after that, you can just essentially go through all the gears without actually touching the clutch. So we generally have the commander and one of the other operators. Being a self-propelled gun, you're sitting way back from the forward edge of the battle area, the fever. So these are only lightly armoured. These are essentially about 10 mil protection all the way around, so that'll give you protection against your small arms and other artillery fragments if they happen to zone in on your firing as well. It takes about five, six minutes to bring the gun into action, and it only takes about three or four minutes to take it back out of action. So it could be done with a well-trained crew very quickly, and the whole point of self-propelled artillery is you can pack up and move quite easily without having to attach a truck to tow your guns back out. Being a Soviet and Russian Federation-used vehicle, it's also been used by the Ukraine as well. So we have these self-propelled guns being used by both sides in the conflict as we see it at the moment. The Russians Mossballed this a while ago, but then brought them out and obviously upgraded them. So they went through their last big upgrade in 1983, where they had a better radio or communication suite. They also increased the allocation of rounds from four to eight, and it also increased their rate of fire as well to about two and a half rounds per minute. Well, this one essentially needs a new set of batteries. Obviously, we'll get Ryan to come over and give it a quick once-over for the engine, which I'm standing on top of here. And like most Russian vehicles, even if you've left them for quite a few years, you put a new set of batteries in them and you kick them in the guts and off they go. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll see this one at OzArmorFest either this year or the next.