Popular Mechanics: Weapons Of The Insurgents: March 2004

Original Post Date: 2008-01-09 Time: 00:00:00  Posted By: Jan

In the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, a rare public fight developed between the Army’s top general and his civilian boss. At issue was the number of troops the United States would need to oust Saddam Hussein. Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee the job would take “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believed it could be done with about half that number. Missing from the sound bites that framed the debate was the reason behind the discrepancy.

Acting upon what it believed to be sound intelligence, the Department of Defense (DOD) expected entire Iraqi divisions to lay down their arms. Shinseki looked beyond that surrender and worried that without a sufficient force to stand guard, the Iraqi arsenal would be plundered. Both men proved correct. The U.S. took military control of Iraq with about 130,000, mostly American, troops. But by the time the first statue of Hussein was pulled off its pedestal, a massive stockpile of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles had fallen into the hands of Islamic insurgents. In the months that followed, half the Americans who died in Iraq were killed by one type of these weapons, the RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade.

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RPG-7
“The RPG-7 is everywhere,” George J. Mordica II, a senior analyst for the Center for Army Lessons Learned, tells POPULAR MECHANICS. “We have people embedded in Iraq. In every patrol in which they recover weapons, they find RPG-7s.” Cheap to buy, easy to use and nearly as rugged as a club, the RPG-7 is an old weapon that has been reborn in the hands of militants. Originally developed by the Bazalt State Research and Production Enterprise in Russia in the 1960s, its simplicity made it an immediate favorite among armies in Soviet bloc countries, China and North Korea. By the end of the Cold War, RPG-7s had found their way into the inventories of 40 armies, many in countries unfriendly to the United States.

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How many RPG-7s are loose in trouble spots around the world is unknown. Even the number in legitimate hands is uncertain. Mordica and other weapons analysts tell PM that at least 1 million RPG-7s have been manufactured by Bazalt or are under license. What is known is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the flow of RPG-7s from military warehouses to the black market has grown from a trickle to a flood. RPG-7s are now so plentiful, they can be bought for less than the price of a decent laptop computer.

In the age of night vision goggles and satellite-guided smart bombs, the wooden stock and rough handgrip of the RPG-7 make it seem only a slight technological advance over the bow and arrow. Mordica says the weapon traces its origin to the Panzerfaust tank buster that Germany developed for territorial defense toward the end of World War II. And that weapon, say military historians, was itself based on confiscated bazookas that had been used by the Allies.

The single-round RPG-7 that has proved so deadly to American forces weighs about 15 pounds. To fire on a target, the shooter holds the tube with two handgrips, takes aim through the simple optical sight and pulls the trigger. Depending upon the type of ammunition fired, a single RPG-7 round can shred a squad in a clearing, stop a tank from three football fields away or bring down a helicopter.

“Close combat is a direct-fire brawl in which the RPG-7 excels,” Lester W. Grau, an analyst who studies tactics for the Department of Defense Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., tells PM. This was a lesson that both the local mujahedeen and Soviet army quickly learned during their 1979 to 1989 war in Afghanistan.

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At the beginning of that conflict, the Soviet army typically assigned one RPG-7 to a motorized rifle squad. As soldiers gained experience in fighting in the mountainous terrain, they saw the advantage of adding more RPG-7s. The mujahedeen found the weapon even more valuable, adopting tactics that included forming armor-vehicle hunter-killer teams. “Fifty to 80 percent of the personnel were armed with RPG-7s. This could be up to 15 RPGs,” says Grau. “When there weren’t mortars available, these groups used their RPG-7s as a form of pseudo artillery.”

Although it was never intended for use against aircraft, the RPG-7 became an effective helicopter killer. In October 1994, two U.S. Army Black Hawks fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia, were shot down by RPG-7 fire. In Afghanistan, the mujahedeen used the weapons for helicopter ambushes. It has been used in a similar fashion by insurgents in Iraq (see “Insurgent RPG-7 Tactics” below).

New Warheads
Part of the reason for the continuing success of the RPG-7 is Bazalt’s eagerness to introduce new types of ammunition for its venerable weapon. “The new TBG-7V, PG-7VR and OG-7V rounds allow a soldier to accomplish an unprecedented range of missions on the battlefield,” Anatoly Obukhov, Director General of the Bazalt State Research and Production Enterprise, told the Russian military journal Military Parade.

The thermobaric TBG-7V round has a lethality comparable to a 120mm artillery projectile or mortar shell. “The TBG-7V round operates on the enhanced blast principle. The warhead explosion creates a high-temperature field and simultaneously generates a powerful blast wave,” Obukhov explained. When fired against unprotected troops, it shreds and incinerates everyone within a 30-ft. radius of where it detonates. If it strikes armor, it produces a 6- to 18-in. opening. The heat and shock wave from the explosion then enters the vehicle, killing the crew.

One way to defend against this type of round is to apron a tank with reactive armor, which is essentially a coating of explosive. When the round strikes the tank, the reactive armor explodes–in effect, it pushes back against the incoming round. This prevents the focused jet of molten metal created by the impact of the shaped charge from squirting through the crew compartment. The PG-7VR overcomes reactive armor by using a 2-part, or tandem, warhead. It hits the tank with two closely timed blasts. The first punches a hole in the reactive armor. The second attacks the armor.

The OG-7V fragmentation round is designed specifically for urban warfare. “As a rule, these targets are made in brick and reinforced concrete,” says Obukhov. This necessitates dropping the RPG-7 round through a relatively small opening through which the entrenched defender is firing. “The OG-7V accuracy is very close to that of small arms.” The Iraqi army is generally believed to have all three of these advanced RPG-7 rounds, along with older varieties of antipersonnel and anti-armor munitions.

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“The RPG-7 will be around for a good while yet,” predicts the DOD’s Grau. “It is a proven, cheap killer of [tanks and helicopters], which will continue to play a significant role, particularly when conventional forces are pitted against irregular forces.”

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Missile Attacks
With an estimated 1 million rocket-propelled grenade launchers in use in 40 countries, the RPG-7 is the most common threat facing American troops. It is not, however, the sole threat. Hussein’s looted arsenal was also brimming with SA-7 Grail anti-aircraft missiles. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), over the past 25 years the Grail and later models including the SA-14 shown on the opening page have been responsible for attacks on 35 airliners–mostly commercial flights. Twenty-four of these attacks led to crashes, killing more than 500.

In Iraq, as many as 5000 Grails are believed to have fallen into the hands of insurgents. CRS reports that between May and November 2003, 19 attacks on aircraft took place in the vicinity of Baghdad International Airport.

The chief limitation of the RPG-7 is that it relies upon the aim of the shooter. In contrast, the SA-7 can find its own targets. Each missile is equipped with an infrared sensor that “sees” the invisible heat trail behind a jet engine as though it were a beacon atop a lighthouse. Guidance-system circuitry reacts to changing input from the sensor by adjusting the fins of the missile. This keeps the Grail pointed toward its target as it streaks through the sky at supersonic speeds. When the missile reaches the engine, its warhead detonates 2.5 pounds of high explosives.

Despite the heavy toll Grails have taken on aircraft and the lives that have been lost, there are two technical reasons to believe these missiles will pose a lesser threat in the future. The first has to do with the age of the weapons. The Grail tracks its quarry with an infrared sensor and heat-activated batteries to power its circuitry. All have a limited shelf life. Although estimates vary, many of the Grails in illegitimate hands are believed to be too old to reliably fire.

The second shortcoming has to do with the way the Grail finds its targets. The Grail is a tail-chaser, which means that it must be fired from behind an aircraft in order to gain sight of the heat from the plane’s engines. The distance between shooter and target–as far as 6 miles–gives the aircraft crew time to defend itself. One technique is to release flares, creating a target that’s “brighter” than the heat from the jet engine. Air Force One, commercial airliners operated by Israel’s El Al and military aircraft have installed various types of these systems. Efforts are under way to install similar defensive systems on American airliners.

Best Defense
At present, the most promising plan for defending troops against insurgents’ rocket and missile attacks is called FCLAS. The abbreviated acronym stands for “full spectrum active protection close-in layered shield,” which in itself is an explanation of how it works. FCLAS is an antimissile missile in a tube. Strategically placed around a vehicle, boat, building or helicopter, these missiles create a sort of invisible shield that detects and then demolishes incoming threats.

The idea behind FCLAS is simple in concept but difficult in execution. The forward section of the FCLAS projectile houses two radar systems. The radar at the front looks forward for objects whose speed is consistent with an RPG-7 round or missile. When this threat is detected, a black powder charge, like that used to launch smoke grenades, ignites, propelling the FCLAS out of its storage tube. The second radar system looks up, down and to both sides.

The launch of the FCLAS projectile is timed so that it and the incoming target will pass each other when they are about 15 ft. from the vehicle being protected. At this precise moment, the side-looking radar senses the passing threat and ignites the explosive material that fills the middle of the projectile. The force fractures the explosive’s metal sheath.

Scored lines in the sheathing cause it to shatter into tiny square-shaped shards that radiate outward. Anything in the path of this doughnut-shaped wall of fast-moving metal is shredded into confetti.

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Collateral Damage
A chilly wind heavy with the scent of snow is blowing across the test range at Camp W.G. Williams near Salt Lake City, Utah. PM has been invited to observe the first in a series of live-fire fragmentation tests. Because FCLAS is used close to the vehicles and people it is intended to protect, it is critical to know just how far the destructive “doughnut” created when an FCLAS explodes will extend. The Army has already seen a convincing demonstration of the projectile’s ability to detect and knock down incoming threats. That test was conducted in June 2002 at the New Mexico Institute of Technology.

Killing an RPG-7 round requires considerable energy. “That’s nasty stuff. You can’t throw a pillow at it,” says Don Walton of California-based Chang Industries, which developed the FCLAS radar systems. The open question is how much collateral damage is caused in the immediate vicinity of the detonation.

A junked car, battered SUV, and dummies in flak jackets to simulate drivers and bystanders are set up around the test site, shown in the high-speed photo above. Inside a trailer protected from the explosion by a natural ridge, there is a brief countdown before detonation. The air cracks and the floor jumps as if a lightning bolt has struck nearby. Through the window, we watch a plume of gray and black smoke form over the ridge and drift from the blast. After the blast, the dummies are still standing. Both vehicles have had their windows blown out. Several tires have been punctured. It is a far cry from the damage inflicted by an RPG-7 round or SA-7 warhead that hits home.

Maury Mayfield, President of Virginia-based Archangel Defense Systems, which is working on FCLAS with Chang and U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) in Warren, Mich., is standing at the detonation point. Almost everything looks as it did before the blast. The sole difference is a series of depressions in the sandy ground, as if someone used their heel to scrape a line of evenly spaced furrows. Mayfield makes a circling motion with his hand. He traces the doughnut-shaped region that, for less than a hundredth of a second, was filled with metal fragments moving at supersonic speed. “Nothing would leak through that,” he says. Had an actual missile been fired toward the FCLAS projectile, it would have dissolved into a tongue of flame as the explosives in its warhead were pulverized and burned away.

In Michigan, news of the test has been received enthusiastically by TARDEC Research Director Grace M. Bochenek. “We are in the process of working with program managers for the Bradley, Stryker, Humvee, and future tactical truck programs,” she says, naming the vehicles for which FCLAS protective modules are being considered. “We hope to have a prototype system in theater within a year, and a standard system ready in two years.”

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Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1281566.html?page=1

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