[10] During World War II, ground-attack aircraft emerged as a significant threat to mechanized units on the move.

This experience made it clear that an anti-aircraft tracked vehicle, armed with small-bore autocannons or heavy machine guns, was needed.

Vehicles such as the German Wirbelwind and specialized variants of the US M3 Half-track had been used to good effect in the final battles of World War II, both by the US and nations which had received the M3 through Lend-Lease.

The vehicle, based on the T-60 light tank chassis, was armed with two 12.7 mm DShK heavy machine guns; but the prototype did not go into production because of flaws in the design.

[11][12] The SU-72 SPAAG and several other experimental vehicles based on the T-60 or T-70 light tank chassis and armed with 37 mm autocannon were also tested in 1942–1943.

The ZSU-37 was based on the chassis of the SU-76M self-propelled gun (SPG) and armed with one 37 mm 61K anti-aircraft autocannon in an open-top rotating armoured turret.

[13] After World War II it became clear that the firepower of a single 37 mm AA gun was insufficient to destroy the high-speed, low-altitude targets, which airplanes started to become at the time.

[14] Two of the USSR's potential enemies – the United States and Great Britain, had high-quality air forces with substantial ground-attack experience.

58 in Kaliningrad, Moscow Oblast submitted a joint project for a SPAAG based on the T-34 tank chassis, to be armed with four 37 mm AA guns, to the Technical Council of the Ministry of Transport.

The left and right loaders, located in the forward part of the turret on both sides of the main armament, load clips into the magazines of their respective weapons.

[15] The ZSU-57-2's armour is welded rolled steel[8] sufficient to protect the vehicle from 7.62mm armour-piercing bullets at 250 meters.

[3] The mechanical transmission in the rear part of the hull consists of a change gear quadrant, a primary multiplate clutch unit with metallic friction pads, a manual gearbox with five forward gears, two multiplate planetary steering clutches with band brakes and two in-line final drive groups.

[3][15] Small arms for the crew members include two AK-47 assault rifles and a 26 mm signalling pistol.

[3] The main weakness of the ZSU-57-2 was the lack of a search or fire-control radar; the vehicle was equipped with an optical mechanical computing (analog) reflex sight as the sole fire control system, so it could engage visible targets only.

Also, the manual gunlaying and manual clip loading was not good enough, the rate of fire is not high enough, particularly considering that air-cooled barrels require quite long pauses for cooling at high rates of fire and the turret traverse is not fast enough to effectively intercept high-speed attack jet aircraft at low altitudes.

The advantages of an open turret for SPAAGs, such as very high elevation angle for AA autocannons, excellent visibility of the combat situation by the gunners and no need for induced ventilation of the fighting compartment during intense fire were significantly over-shadowed by the disadvantages.

Nevertheless, its Western counterparts that were operationally available in the 1950s, such as the US M19 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage (based on the M24 Chaffee light tank) and the M42 Duster SPAAGs (both armed with the famous 40 mm Bofors M2A1 twin AA gun), had similar problems and were armed with less powerful weapons.

[3][4] 250 ZSU-57-2 SPAAGs based on the Chinese Type 59 (a copy of the Soviet T-54A) tank chassis were produced under license in North Korea.

[15] The vehicle was also used by some motor rifle regiments (which in the 1960s had one battery equipped with four SPAAGs or, more likely, with six 23 mm ZU-23 towed twin AA guns).

The anti-aircraft performance of the ZSU-57-2, however, was quickly found to be unsatisfactory and, because of rapid air force development, the vehicle was deemed obsolete by the early 1960s.

Five other Warsaw Pact members—Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania—used it, as well as Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

[citation needed] The air defence battery of the 44th "Wolves" armoured-mechanized battalion stationed in Pivka, belonging to the 4th Regional Command Postojna operated ZSU-57-2s.

[27] The People's Republic of China was approached by Iraq in the early 1980s to develop a copy of the ZSU-57-2 system and a few examples were delivered to the PRC for reverse-engineering.

[5][7] To meet Iraq's production order, NORINCO attempted to manufacture a copy with the improved amphibious chassis of the Type 69-II tank.

Several Type 80 SPAAGs were tested and accepted into service by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in small numbers.

Cuba received 25 ZSU-57-2s alongside other heavy equipment from Soviet forces stationed on the island in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

These were defeated by a company of Israeli M48 Patton MBTs belonging to the 7th Armored Brigade during an intense action on 6 June 1967.

Iraqi ZSU-57-2s, which could receive information from the radar on ZSU-23-4s or 9K31 Strela-1 (SA-9 Gaskin)/9K35 Strela-10 (SA-13 Gopher) surface-to-air missile systems were employed against Iranian AH-1J SeaCobra attack helicopters.

However, there is at least one piece of footage (which has since been removed by YouTube) showing that this vehicle was used by the Syrian Army in the Spring of 2014, in the fights at Harasta, Rif Dimashq Governorate.

[citation needed] ZSU-57-2s saw service during the Yugoslav Wars, usually in light batteries used by Serbs and Montenegrins of the JNA for attacking ground targets.