As a tank crewman, I got to be a *target tank* for M20A1 3.5-inch bazooka crews firing practice rounds, as late as 1970- the Kansas National Guard still had 'em [just as the Ohio National Guard still had M1 Garands, as they showed at Kent State] We pulled off the driving lights and antennas, withdrew the vision blocks, periscopes and main gun sights, and dreove back and forth across the range at various distances [and speeds] letting them have at us. Mostly, they missed, one day we had some 200 rounds fired at us and only four smears of sky-blue paint from the practice rockets. The M20A1 was okay, though not on a windy day, and not with a well-trained crew that'd have let a 60-round burst of co-ax machinegun fire or a canister buckshot load from the main gun go ANYWHERE the gawdawful backblast from one of those things lit up, day, or night.
Other nice details about the RPG: it had both optical and backup iron sights, and the RPG-7D model [and most versions since] took apart in the middle into two short sections so that paratroops could jump with the thing like a rifle.
Like Squantos said: they figured out ways to use it against troops on the ground out beyond usual rifle range [600-900 meters] like a mortar. And now they've got all sorts of additional projectile types: antipersonnel, thermobaric, double-acting antiarmour, white phosphorous, you name it. The RPG is simple and cheap to produce [the Palestine Liberation Organization had their own factory; ISIS or HAMAs probably runs it now] You have to know what you're doing with it to know how to use it in the wind, so practice sometime on a windy day. Give me an RPG and 5 rounds and I'll use up three training a gunner and let him have at a million-dollar main battle tank, with a launcher that costs less than a good auto bumper jack. Give him a rookie rifleman with an AK to carry a few more rounds and watch his back, and they're in business. And if the gunner gets hit, the loader picks it up and stays in business; maybe two million dollar tanks and eight crewmen gone. Cheap.
The Israelis thought enough of them that they issued the ones they captured from the Egyptians and Syrians in '67 and '73 to their own troops, one gunner [known in Israeli gruntspeak as the RPGist] per squad. And manufactured their own ammo. And came up with a coule of next-generation designs; my last trip to Israel I heard rumbles anout a guided RPG round that follows an [invisible] Infra-red laser beam, accurate out to 1000-1500 meters; don't know if it's a bad guy or Israeli development and it doesn't matter: if it works, it'll get copied. If not it'll get improved.
It's a good deal better than the RPG-2/ B40 that it replaced. It's at least the equal of a bazooka, throwaway LAW or one-time-use German Armbrust, and did I mention it's cheap. And simple.
I don't have one. I guess maybe I oughta rethink that.
