More Agitprop
CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports on Iraq’s New Danger: Armor-Piercing Grenades
(CBS) An al Qaeda propaganda video dated Aug. 15, 2006, shows a brazen attack on U.S. soldiers with a hand grenade that’s more deadly than any other. The explosion is huge, as three armor-piercing bombs find their target.
It’s not a new weapon on the Iraqi battlefield, but CBS News has learned it’s being used more now than ever. And for the first time, the Army has admitted this weapon is killing its soldiers.
The Russian RKG-3 anti-tank grenade was widely used in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and is a staple infantry weapon of all of the armies in the Middle East. It is essentially a small EFP [explosively formed penetrator] that uses a built in drogue chute to help it come down on the top of armored vehicles. If we had secured all of Saddam’s ammo dumps there would be fewer to deal with today.
They are being used more often because the Humvees have been hardened and they can’t be taken out with the old weapons. They are especially effective in urban settings where they can be dropped on the top of vehicles. The thing about insurgents is that they adapt their tactics to conditions. The RKG-3 is pretty worthless in open terrain, as the individual using it will probably be shot and the range isn’t that great.
5 comments
it’s just really annoying how these brown people won’t follow the rules of war.
The thing is hipparchia…they are following the rules of war. George Bush and company have obiously never read SunTzu because if they had we would have never engaged Iraq and we surely would not still be there.
It’s Rumsfeld’s plan they are not interested in following. As Suvorov as fond of pointing out, the problem with plans is that the enemy has to agree to follow your plan.
Complaining about Soviet era infantry weapons doesn’t speak well for military PR people.
the plan of my enemy is the enemy of my plan. or something. i’m always amazed that people complain when their adversaries turn out to be adversarial.
complaining about soviet era weaponry may not speak well of them [it doesn’t], but it’s a step up from their earlier complaining about homemade bombs.
i’d never read sun tzu either, but i looked it up just now and skimmed parts of it. i think it’s entierely possible they did read it [possibly in as great detail as i just did] and then they only picked out the parts they liked the sound of.
They like using force as a concept but have no understanding of how or why you use it, and more importantly when you don’t use it.
They are saying we cannot defend our shipping from World War I mines, or our vehicles from Vietnam era grenades, but we have nifty over-priced model airplanes flying about.
This is just stupid, and it is getting thousands of people on both sides killed.