The super tank can ‘swing’ when fired, making the Soviet Union nervous

Stridsvagn 103 is one of the unique tanks in the world, its turretless design makes it extremely low. This makes it more difficult to destroy tanks. On the other hand, the design of attaching the cannon straight to the body of the tank increases shooting accuracy.
The Stridsvagn 103, also known as the “S-tank”, was the main tank of the Swedish army during the cold war. It has a non-traditional design: The vehicle has no turret, the main gun of the tank is navigated by rotating the vehicle or adjusting the turret suspension so that the tank can fire accurately.

This strange tank history was born in the 1960s, when the Swedish army planned to develop a new line of main battle tanks to deal with the Soviet Union. Swedish engineers propose a unique idea when not to use turrets like conventional tanks. The main gun was fixed to the body of the vehicle, but did not have a rotating turret like normal tanks. The engineers argued that the cannon fixed to the hull made it more accurate to fire than the rotating turret. In addition, the use of a turret makes the overall height of the tank significantly reduced, harder to detect on the battlefield, and the low height also makes it harder for the tank to hit the enemy’s fire. Eventually a design was born, called Stridsvagn 103. Sweden wants to develop the Stridsvagn 103 into a high-speed assault and ambush armor vehicle, taking advantage of the superiority of precision firing to destroy, disrupting the enemy tanker formation. The Stridsvagn 103 is fitted with a 105 mm main gun, with an automatic reload system. Because there is no turret, the angle of lift and lowering of the gun is adjusted through a special suspension that can be lifted and lowered when necessary. However, the angle of elevation and lowering of the cannon is quite limited, Stridsvagn 103 cannot shoot from above. The crew must rotate the entire body to adjust the line of sight. Stridsvagn 103 tanks were produced to full scale from 1967 and lasted until 1971. In total, about 290 vehicles were produced and handed over to the Swedish army. In the 60s and 70s, Stridsvagn 103 was the core of the armored Swedish force. The car chain has small hooks to increase the grip of the road. The chassis has a blade that can be used to dig a camouflage tunnel for the vehicle. The Stridsvagn 103 tank can wade in about 20 minutes after the preparation time, the wading speed is about 6 km / h. In 1967, Norway compared this tank with the Leopard-1. When the lid is closed, the Stridsvagn 103 detects the target faster than the Leopard-1, the opposite result when opening the door. In 1975, two Stridsvagn 103 were shipped to the US for performance testing with the M60A1E3 version. The results showed that Stridsvagn 103 fired more accurately, but the average time per shot was 0.5 seconds slower. Stridsvagn 103’s superiority in accuracy was not enough to compensate for design flaws. This bizarre tank was quickly replaced by the Stridsvagn 122 (version of the Leopard-2) German made in Sweden in 1997.