Author Andrei
12/08/2019
It’s time once again for another installment in “Milspec Teardown”, where we get to see what Uncle Sam spends all those defense dollars on. Battle hardened pieces of kit are always a fascinating look at what can be accomplished if money is truly no object. When engineers are given a list of requirements and effectively a blank check, you know the results are going to be worth taking a closer look. Today, we have quite a treat indeed. Not only is this ID-2124 Howitzer Deflection-Elevation Data Display unit relatively modern (this particular specimen appears to have been pulled from service in June of 1989), but unlike other military devices we’ve looked at in the past, there’s actually a fair bit of information about it available to us lowly civilians.

From this description we can surmise that the ID-2124 is used to display critical data to be used during the aiming and firing of the weapon. Further, the small size of the device and the use of binding posts seem to indicate that it would be used remotely or temporarily. Perhaps so the crew can put some distance between themselves and the artillery piece they’re controlling.

Now that we have an idea of what the ID-2124 is and how it would be used, let’s take a closer look at what’s going on inside that olive drab aluminum enclosure. Designed for external use in what’s likely to be an inhospitable environment, the enclosure is easily the most robust of any piece of equipment that I’ve ever disassembled.

In the end, I tapped the holes in the front panel so that it would grip on screws that are slightly larger than the original ones. Threaded into the 8 mm thick panel, these screws gave me something to put some leverage on. With considerable force, I eventually broke the seal that was holding the two pieces together. While I don’t like to make any permanent alterations to the military hardware out of respect for the history involved, once the original screws are back in place you can’t tell the holes have been enlarged. See full post here.

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