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My Goddess its real the early M-120A1 (ZMC38III) 120mm machine gun.
Truth be told IRL Japan and many countries have called MGs cannons and Cannons Mgs.’ like 20mm machine guns. Though the rule of thumb is if your MG can fire explosive shells its a cannon and if it cant its a MG. 12.7 mm machine gun can for HE bullets but there not that good. Sabre fighter had an experimental belt with HE rounds but they did basically nothing therefor we got the 20mm Sabre.
There are explosive bullets for 12.7mm machine guns…
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Yes but does that make it a Cannon or MG?
Truth be told its a cannon with an auto loader so its an autocannon
then tell me why the gun of an ztz 99 is called only “cannon”
Well the image we have here is in what seems to be German maybe if you turn of the German language it may be maschinenkanone → Rapid fire cannon. otherwise it may not. Cannon designation vs MG designation if strange. Japan called many things Machine gun or just gun like the 62 Caliber Type 91 40 mm “BI” Gun
Otherwise it can be political like the Ho-103 machine gun which uses the cannon designation in order to prevent interservice fighting. Also it did have HE bullets improved over the Italian ones.
The thing is the both oplot cannons are called autocannon(Maschinenkanone) in German, but in English both are just called canon, but also the ZTZ 99 gun is called cannon and in German it’s “Geschütz” and not “Maschinenkanone”
The the autocannons of the light tanks are also called “Maschinenkanone” so it doesn’t really make sense why they call the cannon an autocannon
Ammunition does not change whether or not something is a cannon or machine gun, it’s simply caliber size.
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And also if you type up the name of the KBA-3 it’s clarified as an “Geschütz/Panzer Kanone” (Canon) and not as an “Maschinenkanone” (autocannon)
The rule of thumb HE rule comes from the the St. Petersburg Declaration (1868) which prohibited weight below 400 grammes, which is either explosive or charged with fulminating or inflammable substances" in warfare. Auto Cannons tended to be not be used “on purpose” on infantry but if your MG had HE rounds like the 12.7 MG then you might run fowl of the St. Petersburg Declaration. That is where the shell rule comes from.
But yes you are also correct