About the TOS-1, I was just joking of course 🙂

BMP-T have Kornet,wich comes with alternative termobaric warhead with 5km range.

The Kornet is still a direct fire weapon incapable of quickly laying a barrage on suspected positions. Furthermore, instead of the expensive missiles, you might as well use the 125mm HE-shells from the tank platoon the BMPT is supporting.
Of course instead of bombarding positions yourself, you may call in artillery or air support, but that takes some valuable time, is not organic to the company / batallion and didn’t save the Israelis either.
The Swedish AMOS seems to be an interesting development; but I read the system is very expensive.

Though the best course of action is certainly to not just ride into unknown hilly terrain with limited possibilities to manoeuvre and without infantry screens.
Simple mortar carriers also still perform a role:

Dear Vaiar,

If that one RPG round below the “Made in Iran” sign is a HEAT warhead it has to have an awesome penetration. HEAT warheads penetration is a factor of its diameter. A rule of thumb is a factor or four to six. So if a HEAT warhead is 100mm that means it has a penetration of 400 to 600mm. That HEAT warhead looks to be about 130mm to 150mm. that means a penetratio of between 800 to a 1000mm! I can not see the projectile having much range. And with that size of a warhead the secondary rocket assist motor is probably not present because warheads like that from RPG type launcher have a tendency to weather-**** and the larger the diameter the worst the weather ****. I would say the effective range is no more than 150mm.

Jack E. Hammmond
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Dear Jack,

The entry in Jane’s Infantry Weapons 2001-2002 (some years old indeed, but I am a student) says that the RPG-round (with the text “Made in Iran” on its launcher) has a precursor warhead of 30mm to activate ERA and a main HEAT warhead of 80mm that can penetrate a (disappointing) 350mm of RHA set at an angle of 90 degrees and 250mm of RHA at an angle of 22 degrees.

The very large RPG-round you were referring to appears to me to be a PG-7VR (well, a demonstration example of this round in this case). According to Jane’s the main warhead has a diameter of 105mm and can penetrate more than 750mm of armoured steel after ERA, (1.5m of reinforced concrete, 2m of bricks and 3.7m of logs and earth). The effective range is claimed to be 200m and the projectile weighs 4.5 kg.

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Some interesting paragraphs of an article in the Telegraph of 15/08/06:

Outside one of the town’s two mosques a van was found filled with green casings about 6ft long. The serial numbers identified them as AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. The wire-guided weapon was developed in Russia but Iran began making a copy in 2000.

Beyond no-man’s land, in the east of the village, was evidence of Syrian-supplied hardware. In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets, described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as “some of the best in the world”.

Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: “Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”

Brig Edelstein said: “If they tell you that Syria knew nothing about this, just look. This is the evidence. Proof, not just talk.”

The discovery of the origin of the weapons proved to the Israelis that their enemy was not a ragged and lightly armed militia but a semi-professional army equipped by Syria and Iran to take on Israel. The weapons require serious training to operate and could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly regular armies in the Middle East. The Kornet was unveiled by Russia in 1994. It is laser-guided, has a range of three miles and carries a double warhead capable of penetrating the reactive armour on Israeli Merkava tanks. Russia started supplying them to Syria in 1998.

Those tandem RPG-7 are interesting, some are probably Bulgarian, at least one may be a PG-7VR or copy thereof.

I have to say these large ‘grenades’ make the whole system look quite unwieldy and front heavy compared to a smaller warhead of the size of the PG-7.

Rubbish. It is a rocket launcher, not a complex air defence network, or million part aircraft that still needs testing.

So what that it is an RPG? Does that mean that the whole service and all ‘allies’ immediately have access to it, that it is produced in huge numbers and that all in the same span of more or less a single year? Just like the Warchaw pact allies had access to the latest ‘mere’ tank APFSDS-rounds for their T-72s, right?

Finding one example in the Middle East does not immediately prove the Russians are supplying Hezbula.

Jane’s Infantry Weapons 2001-2002 lists as only producer a Russian company. Whatever the route these weapons took to arrive at Hizballah, their origin is Russian. Not that it matters in some sort of moral way though.

To have better protection western tanks “gained” much weight and are close to WW2 Mouse tank.

The Maus weighed 188 tons; so a difference of around 120 tons is your definition of “close”. :rolleyes:

In WW2 the Germans also used such stand-off steel plates and these were intended to defeat 14.5 AP and 75-76 mm HE rounds. The powerful penetrating jets from modern HEAT warheads (such as found on most ATGMs) are hardly disturbed by mere spacing of armour plates and may well exit the other side of an older tank or light armoured vehicle in case of penetration.

Neither is ERA a solely Russian affair; the Israeli MAGACH series already sported ERA modules in the 1970s. Furthermore, the concept of ERA was developed by a German working in Israel. He and his team were testing shells against tanks wrecked in the Six-Day War. Later Israeli tanks such as the Merkava 3 Dor Dalet and Merkava 4 also possess (N)ERA modular armour.

Finally, I am not impressed by your choice of tank. If the recent experience of the IDF has relearned one thing it is that hull storage (amid the crew) of ammunition is unwise and especially dangerous in the carroussel autoloader of Russian tanks.

This video of the captured weaponry displayed yesterday on photos also shows the RPG-29 launcher at 1.10 min:

Click on the picture to see or d/l the video.

Well it seems that Russia in their defense ministery was lying.

Of course they are; it would not be in their interest or that of their client to openly claim Hizballah is operating advanced Russian weaponry irrespective of the route the weaponry had to take to reach Hizballah hands.

As to the AT-4 defeating a Merkeva I can only go by public sources in Janes and others. They state it only has an armor penetration of 550mm. Every source states that is not enough against a modern MBT.

Indeed when one only considers the frontal arc of a modern MBT, but the rear and rear sides enjoy considerably less armour protection and this is also the spot where the ammunition is kept in the Merkava tanks.

Btw, I think the Israelis would have been a lot more happier if the Iranians had supplied Hezbollah with their copy of the Dragon missile. =GRIN=

😀 I wonder why the Iranians set out to copy that system at all.

HNN has pictures of a Hizballah observation post including TOWs:

More pics:

http://84.95.240.242/~hnn/index.php?module=albums;task=view;id=1056