Us suffer heavy losses in afganistan?

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KingBeast @ April 10 2002,18:09)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">the LAW is one shot disposable. The Russian RPG in operation flashpoint is also of the one shot disposable variety.

I THINK the other 2 can be re-loaded in the field<span id='postcolor'>

AT4 and GRG (Carl Gustav) are reloadable IRL - you usually have a shooter and a loader operating them.

LAWs are one shot weapons.

[Sadico 1]

RPG's can shoot a lot of diferent warheads, from HEAT to napalm or even thermobaric ones; but the most common is the HEAT. And of course a HEAT RPG can shoot down a chopper. Even a single bullet can if you hit in the right place. The problem is actually hitting a chopper flying at top speed with an unguided weapon! The apache is said to be able to take 23mm hits, but a 23mm shell is a piece of shit compared with a RPG. Even though the apache is heavily armored (to be a helicopter) you can't put on a chopper enough armor to resist an antitank weapon.

[scout 0]

again:

the RPG is not effective against choppers, why is then all AA missiles arent HEAT? why isnt there an effective AA/AT missile?

the answer is that an RPG is a piece of shit against choppers, it TOO good against soft skined vehicles.

the fragments from heat are actually from the armour of the vehicle. no armour no frags.

the only way that RPG's downed choppers is by hitting the rear rotor. this is easily blown up no matter with what and it'll down a chopper quickly.

edit: thermobaric warhead is a modified HEATthats all.

   hell im starting to sound like a tape repeating itself

[KingBeast 0]

RPGs may not necessarily be effective against helos, but they have no problem taking them down from time to time.

If a Heat round hits the cockpit of a helo, you can say buhbye. If it hits the rotor assembly you can say buhbye. If it hits an engine intake, you can say buhbye. If you hit the tail rotor you can say buhbye. etc etc etc

[pathfinder 0]

About the original post , the russian media is still run like the old propaganda machine of the cold war. Did anyone listen to soviet news during the U.S. / Serb conflict??? They said our jets were shot down by the 100's ,and other losses were astronomical by their accounts. But they also said we were nuking the serbs!!

Face it ,for them fiction makes better news than facts.

[Tovarish 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (RalphWiggum @ April 10 2002,05:54)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">.

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speaking of Russian media, I guess they are sour after seeing US topple whatever gov't that was in Afghanistan, when they spent nearly 10 yrs and sustained heavy casualty.

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AFAIK, reason why Russia couldn't win was because every Afghansitan ppl were enemy. For US, a lot less.<span id='postcolor'>

About the first comment, as Denoir already pointed out, the USSR took Afghanistan in a week. The problem isn't taking it, it's holding it. Like I've said before, it is much easier to harass and demoralize an occupying force than it is to defend against an invading army. It is the essence of guerilla warfare. Mao Tse-tung said it best: "They attack, we fall back. They hesitate, we harass. They stop, we attack".

Russia took massive casualties over a period of 10 years, the US has not been there long enough to be able to compare performances.

As for the second comment, not true. there were Afghans who were allied with the Soviets, remember, Afghanistan was a communist country, and the Soviets invaded when muslim fundamentalists overthrew that regime. Why do you think the Northern Alliance is so friendly with the Russians? Because these are mostly the same people who fought against what would become the Taliban.

[Guest]

Very simple (as scout has already pointed out):

AA: The warhead detonates  *before* impact showering the target with shrapnel, perforating vital parts of the aircraft.

HEAT: Explosive charge that is shaped in such way that it produces a narrow jet of hot gas that burns its way through the armour. The damage inside is done by the melted armour.

Shooting with a helicopter with a HEAT can of course work, but is actually a waste of the rocket. Being able to inflict heavy damage is not so importrant with airborne targets. To have a seeking mechanism is much more important.

Planes, helicopters and similar creatures are easy to kill, if you manage to hit them, that is.

[Sadico 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Planes, helicopters and similar creatures are easy to kill, if you manage to hit them, that is. <span id='postcolor'>

That's what i said!!! A rpg has a good probability of wasting the chopper IF it hits. Hell, even if it only produces a narrow jet of hot gas, a narrow jet of hot gas passing through the chopper will fry anything in it's path (fuel tanks, circuitry, the pilot, engines...). You can't aim at for example the tail rotor of a moving chopper, just hitting the chopper anywere is hard enough. The chopper could go down or could sustain almost no damage, just depends on how lucky you are. and scout: i mentioned the thermobaric not because i think it's effective against choppers, but because someone asked before if rpg's can carry other types of warheads!

[Satchel 0]

A "Rocket Propelled Grenade", Panzerfaust or any other shaped charge warhead projectile has explosive mass formed around a metallic cone inlay.

On detonation the metallic cone of a shaped charge warhead is deformed and upended by the immense pressure of the exploding mass, forming a thin, almost like a fluid behaving metal stream (called jet), that penetrates armor by kinetic energy, not by burning itself through it.

The penetration power depends on the width, length and density of the metal stream, therefore on the diameter of the metal cone inlay and the material it´s made of.

The speed of the metal jet is extremely high (more than 10000 m/s), and concentrated on a very small area when hitting the target, so that the armor too behaves like a fluid. It´s easiest to understand if you imagine 2 "fluids" coming  together and reacting accordingly, the armor is shifted away perpendicular from the impact point.

During this process there is no shrapnel/fragment development by the hit armor.

Inside the target (Tank for example), material of the metal stream "sprays" into the crew/fighting compartment together  with intense heat and pressure caused by the warhead detonation, wandering from the outside of the tank through the hole created by jet into the interior of the vehicle.

Needless to say that these forces act very negative on the crew and equipment inside the vehicle.

Because the body of a shaped charge rocket/missile  burst into many little fragments upon impact, it can also be used against soft targets with good effect.

Regarding shaped charge vs. Chopper; the most damage probably will be done done by the explosion and according blast/pressure of composite mass, followed by shrapnel effect and eventually jet stream if a armored/reinforced area of the chopper had been hit.

I wouldn´t want to be in any chopper if some AT soldiers decide to do some AA gunnery with their weapons.

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Satchel @ April 10 2002,21:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Needless to say that these forces act very negative on the crew and equipment inside the vehicle.<span id='postcolor'>

Quite an understatement. I talked to some guys in Kosovo who had inspected an APC that was hit by some form of LAW. They said that there was nothing left of the crew. The interior of the APC was covered in a mess of blood and crushed organs. Not a pretty sight, I guess.

As for an example of how not to use a HEAT weapon was demonstrated by the illustrious members of the Swedish Hell's Angels. They had stolen a Pansarskott m86 LAW from some military warehouse and decided to use it against a competing club. They fired one shot into their headquarters. The result was a less then impressive hole in the wall, and nobody god hurt. There was virtually no damage inside.

[Satchel 0]

It depends alot on the size of the room behind that wall.

If for example there would have been only sealed 4qmË› area behind it to absorb the entering pressure and heat, the damage/killing potential would be uneven higher to anything within that room.

A great deal of pressure/explosion blast/heat doesn´t enter the hit object, and what does enter is not sufficent if a large (open) area is located behind the penetrated material.

Also the shrapnel is inefficent if fired this way, as it goes off in front of the wall, spreading horizontally as vertically.

Sounds a bit harsh, but for optimum effect the Hell´s Angels would have needed to fire the rocket through a door or window, so that shrapnel and blast pressure can develop to the fullest inside the building not in front of it, especially if its a larger area.

[sn1per 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ April 11 2002,01:55)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Satchel @ April 10 2002,21:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Needless to say that these forces act very negative on the crew and equipment inside the vehicle.<span id='postcolor'>

Quite an understatement. I talked to some guys in Kosovo who had inspected an APC that was hit by some form of LAW. They said that there was nothing left of the crew. The interior of the APC was covered in a mess of blood and crushed organs. Not a pretty sight, I guess.<span id='postcolor'>

And reading one russian book from a veteran in the chechen war said troops would rather stay on top of vehicles and drivers used to keep their hatches open. I case the (bmp) APC was hit by a RPG the men on top would have some chances of survival and in many cases the drives was thrown out of the vehicle by the pressure of the blast and would survive quite well. Amazing, somehow...

edit: And I hate BMP's, in the army we used to have BMP's in some exercises and they somehow have the feeling of a death trap in combat with the fuel tanks in the back doors and everything. But it was sure fun to sit on the deck cruisin' 50km/h in the farm lands with all the kids looking at us with this sort of a respect

[Guest]

Actually, as I understand it, a HEAT warhead does not create much of a pressure wave by it self. The preassure wave comes from the energy released by the transition from solid to liquid and gas. This is not from the charge itself, but from the interaction of the charge and and the armour.

Actually it's quite useless (except for making holes) to use it on anything but a metal surface. Without the melted metal the HEAT is reduced into a standard shaped explosive. Big local damage, little global.

I am no expert at this, but I think that it works that way, if I remember correctly.

The Russians have, if I am not misstaken, some thermobaric variants that inject fuel-gas after the hole has been made and ignite it. That leads to a high preassure wave within the target (APC dimensions probably).