ZSU 23-4 Shilka

DAKADAKADAKADAKA

The ZSU 23-4 is a SPAAG made by the Soviet Union. Its basically a light tank with 4 autocannons to shoot down aircraft and any infantry unlucky enough to be in it's sights.

It's NATO designation is: "Shilka", although the west has occasionally called it "Zeus", inspired from it's Soviet designation.

In Team Yankee

The Stat Card

Its an AA gun. Here's the stat card.

IRL

DAKADAKADAKADAKA (note that this image is actually from a Shilka taken by the US, those are marines on the top of it)

The ZSU is one of the more popular tanks made by the Soviet Union, traditionally armed with a quad-linked 4x23mm autocannons, a search light, and radar equipment. Its primarily designed to shoot down low-flying aircraft, but its guns were also powerful enough to tear through lightly-armored vehicles and infantry aswell. Infact it was a common practice for Soviet soldiers to bring ZSUs whenever possible in anti-infantry operations due to their sheer lethality. That said, the ZSU was never meant to be a front-line vehicle, so it's armor is woefully light, even concentrated heavy machine gun fire to it's flimsier side and rear armor could potentially wreck it's day.

That said: the reason for the high rate of fire is that by the 1980's aircraft move ridiculously fast, going from world war 2's "ludicrously fast" to "there is a mosquito-shaped hole in my teeth". You have seconds to shoot at a target, so you need as high a rate as fire as possible to try and ensure you get at least one hit, and at those speeds one hole in the air frame will do the trick down a target by it self. That means that the whole concept of cannons or machine guns against aircraft from thee ground is a bit of a flawed concept. Missiles do better due to there ability to track a target. As such although the ZSU has served with all Soviet states and their allies as the go-to SPAAG from its inception until today, it is used mainly today by armies unable to field better equipment, though it can definitively ruin the day of any helicopter, which by definition are far lower and slower then planes, even to this day.