A gun stabilizer is a device that facilitates aiming an artillery piece by compensating for the motion of the platform on which it is mounted.
In 1960, West Germany prototyped a unique proof-of-concept three-axis stabilized turret on a widened Leopard 1 chassis.
The primary cannon remained stationary, while the turret rotated conventionally for horizontal aiming and employed oscillation for vertical alignment.
Additionally, the turret could tilt left or right along a third axis to accommodate aiming corrections on uneven terrain.
Design was cost ineffective and was ultimately not adopted, but lessons learned were carried over to other FCS research.
The control mechanism usually has other functions, such as applying super-elevation and leading the target according to its velocity, making it a fire-control system, and some guns are entirely automatic.
This type of system with an ability to almost equal the accuracy of firing the gun from a full halt was introduced into the U.S. M60A1 tank in the early 1970s.
The computer took the range input to use the rate of the turret rotation to determine the lead needed to hit a moving target by calculating its speed.
Added to this was the barrel wear determined by the number of and types of ammunition fired, the temperature of the ammunition propellant measured by thermometers in the ammunition compartment, the wind direction and speed where the firing tank was located measured by sensors on the turret roof, and barrel droop by measuring the location of a barrel mounted reference system near the muzzle.