Optical means for monitoring the boreline direction of a gun.

摘要

A gun (4) is provided with an arrangement for determining the boreline direction of its muzzle during firing. The arrangement is particularly applicable to battle tanks having relatively long and massive barrels across which temperature gradients giving rise to thermal stresses can be developed. A reflector (5) is mounted on the muzzle (6) so as to reflect a beam of light from an optical source (8) mounted on the mantlet (10) to an optical detector (9) mounted along side the source. By this means the pointing direction of the muzzle relative to the cradle (11) within which the barrel is mounted can be accurately monitored.