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To: John Jorsett; SLB; archy; patton
Good read but.........

The RPG is literally "caught" by the airbag like a pillow and slowed enough so the nose-mounted fuse doesn't detonate the warhead.....is pure BS IMHO !

The RPG series has a small metal cup over the piezoelectric crush switch that send a signal to a "detonator" at the base of the shape charge via a flat wire. That cup is left on the PG if the user will fire it through heavy rain or tall grass........it is that sensitive in most cases. Based on my experience with the PG-2 and 7 series I'm skeptical as to the airbag thingie. As we see on the strykers currently the mesh grid that trashes the warhead before it can reach the armor works just like we used chainlink fence in static / fixed fighting positions to disrupt or break up so it wouldn't function as designed per se.....the stryker "fence" is a valid standoff form of protection from the side, front or rear shot.I'm gonna have to see this airbag work before I believe it. I'm thinking it will deonate the RPG at a greater standoff so the shape charge doesn't get optimum jet formation to punch the lighter armor of the "utility" vehicle forced fed into an APC wannabe.

Just my opinion ......

15 posted on 12/11/2004 10:39:23 AM PST by Squantos (Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet. ©)
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To: Squantos

It will not take the rag heads long to realize they need to use two RPG's on the same target.


16 posted on 12/11/2004 10:44:52 AM PST by SLB ("We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us." C. S. Lewis)
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To: Squantos

You are wrong about the wire - the nosecone is a three-layer sandwich, forming the circuit. That's why the chain-link works; it shorts the inner and outer layers, and grounds the charge.


17 posted on 12/11/2004 10:48:32 AM PST by patton (Changing culture is like moving a cemetary. You don't get much help from the residents.)
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To: Squantos
The RPG series has a small metal cup over the piezoelectric crush switch that send a signal to a "detonator" at the base of the shape charge via a flat wire. That cup is left on the PG if the user will fire it through heavy rain or tall grass........it is that sensitive in most cases. Based on my experience with the PG-2 and 7 series I'm skeptical as to the airbag thingie. As we see on the strykers currently the mesh grid that trashes the warhead before it can reach the armor works just like we used chainlink fence in static / fixed fighting positions to disrupt or break up so it wouldn't function as designed per se.....the stryker "fence" is a valid standoff form of protection from the side, front or rear shot.I'm gonna have to see this airbag work before I believe it. I'm thinking it will deonate the RPG at a greater standoff so the shape charge doesn't get optimum jet formation to punch the lighter armor of the "utility" vehicle forced fed into an APC wannabe.

Just my opinion ......

The PG-7 also uses the external body of the warhead as one side of the firing circuit, and the metal liner cone of the shaped charge as the other. Dent a PG-7 warhead enough that the outside body comes in contact with the liner, and the firing circuit will short-circuit, resulting in a dud round.

That was the rationale behond the chainlink RPG screens successfully used in Vietnam: when night defensive perimeters were set up the screens were unfolded and set up a couple of meters in front of the vehicle's position; come daybreak they'd be rolled up and carried on the sides or top of the vehicle, adding at least some RPK standoff or the chance of keeping an RPG fired from an angle from detonating.

But RPGs properly used are not fired singly, but by multiple gunners firing simultaneously, which is one reason the Russians in Chechnya have been moving away from external reactive armor [also hard on accompanying Infantry support when it performs its function] and instead using bundles of metal or plastic tubing slung alongside some of their vehicles. And handily in a desert enviornment, some of those metal tubes can be filled with water, both providing additional water on board and providing some fire suppression in the event a round does detonate/penetrate. And Ivan has a long history of having had his own [and Chinese] RPGs being fired at his tracked and wheeled light vehicles in Afghanistan.


31 posted on 12/11/2004 12:47:22 PM PST by archy (The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before.)
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