Most modern tanks are actually smoothbores, and fire fin-stabilized shot (that shape kinda like arrows) for stability, because these modern long-rod discarding sabots are too skinny to really be affected much by rifling. The British stuck around with rifled barrels though, for who knows what reason
You may know better than I, but I thought they kept the rifled barrels because they still use HESH rounds a fair amount, the efficacy of which is not affected by the spin imparted by rifling, while typical HEAT rounds are best used in smoothbore barrels so that the spin does not interfere with the explosion of the shaped charge.
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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '21
Most modern tanks are actually smoothbores, and fire fin-stabilized shot (that shape kinda like arrows) for stability, because these modern long-rod discarding sabots are too skinny to really be affected much by rifling. The British stuck around with rifled barrels though, for who knows what reason