GIAT M781 (30 mm)

Description

The Model 781 (also known as the Nexter 30) is a 30 mm revolver cannon with electrical ignition and automatic reckocking, which was introduced in the late 1980s. Unlike the DEFA cannon, the M781 is electrically operated rather than gas operated. This increases both reliability and lifetime of the cannon, but also fire rate.

There were 2 variants of the GIAT 30 cannon, the M781 and the M791. The Model 781 was primarily meant to be mounted on helicopters, such as the EC-665 Tiger HAD, while the latter one being intended for fighters such as the Dassault Rafale.

The M781 is offered in multiple installations, such as being mounted as a turret or as a pod, or just fixed to the vehicle. It is 1,87 m long and it weighs roughly 65 kg, and its fire rate is roughly 750 rounds a minute with the muzzle velocity of around 810 m/s. Due to the somewhat heavy recoil of the cannon, single shots or bursts are preferred over fully automatic fire.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• EC-665 Tiger HAD
• EC-665 Tiger HAP

General info

Due to the M781 being limited to only HE rounds that have laughable penetration of just 4 mm, it will prove to be inadequate at dispatching hostile tanks. However, soft targets such as open top vehicles or light vehicles (or even aircraft in some cases), will get shredded in mere seconds by the M781 thanks to its high fire rate and high velocity.

Comparison with analogues

Give a comparative description of cannons/machine guns that have firepower equal to this weapon.

Usage in battles

As mentioned above, the M781 severely lacks in the penetration power. This makes it very difficult to engage hostile tanks, so the user should be careful about picking out targets.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• High fire rate; being 750 RPM
• High velocity of rounds
• HE rounds shred soft targets and aircraft alike

Cons:

• Restricted to only HE rounds; engaging armor will be difficult
• Thanks to its fire rate, it isn't uncommon to run out of rounds quickly

History

Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of the weapon in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the weapon and adding a block "/History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref></ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article with <references />.

Media

An excellent addition to the article would be a video guide, as well as screenshots from the game and photos.

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:

• reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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• topic on the official game forum;
• encyclopedia page on the weapon;
• other literature.