#Anti-tank

Photo Of The Day: Above a member of the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment fires an NLAW anti-tank missile. The NLAW is a joint British and Swedish venture, providing a fire-and-forget anti-tank mis s ile system. It’s designed to be used by infantry soldiers and fires from the shoulder, after which it’s disposable. Apart from the United Kingdom, the NLAW is also used in Finland, Luxembourg and Sweden.

At the end of the past year, we reported about the merger of James D. Julia auction house with Morphy Auctions. The former became the division of the latter. That’s why the online catalogs of their firearm auctions are now hosted on Morphy Auctions website.

Belarusian YouTube channel called “ ВоенТВ Беларуси” has recently published a video telling about the Belarusian military news. In that video, they showed an unmanned aerial vehicle carrying an anti-tank grenade launcher. The demonstration of this rather unusual UAV was conducted in Losvida proving ground located in Vitebsk Region, Belarus. The mentioned video is embedded below and it starts from the point where it shows the UAV.

In the late ’30s, Soviet Union started to experiment with anti-tank rifle designs. One of the design approaches was to make a normal caliber (7.62mm) cartridge with an enlarged case capable of holding enough powder to accelerate the 185-230 grain projectiles to high muzzle velocities of over 1,000 M/s (about 3,300 fps).

According to Levan Izoria, the Minister of Defense of Georgia, United States have approved the deal of selling FGM-148 “Javelin” anti-tank missiles to Georgian Armed Forces. The total sum of the contract will be $75 Million. The subject of the contract is 72 launchers (Command Launch Units) and 410 Javelin missiles. In his speech, Levan Isoria added that Georgia needs these systems solely for defensive purposes.

Kalashnikov Media has released another short video of their video series called “Kalashnikov: Around the World”. This time they are showcasing a really interesting version of the Kalashnikov rifle – the Hungarian AMP-69. What sets this rifle apart from others is that it was redesigned to better suit the rifle grenade launching role.

Creating improvised firearms is one thing, but a recent propaganda video released by the Yemeni rebel and terrorist group Ansar Allah (better known as the Houthis) threw the spotlight on some weapons that take this to the next level. 20mm, 23mm, and even 30mm caliber improvised cannons are being produced by the Houthis in makeshift workshops, representing some of the largest and most powerful improvised small arms ever produced. Footage of the cannons firing, as well as their manufacture was included in the video. Despite their large caliber, the cannons appear to be quite crude indeed, with many parts shown being ground with dremel tools, and with scope bases and muzzle brakes simply being welded together. The barrels for the cannons appear to come from military autocannons. The barrels of 20mm Hasem cannon bear the distinctive “hump” towards the muzzle of M61 Vulcan cannon barrels, for instance – which may be an indication that the barrels are being supplied to the Houthis by the Iranians, who have stockpiles of Vulcan barrels for their F-4 and F-14 fighter aircraft.

The war in Syria and Iraq has seen the development of a whole range of scratchbuilt and improvised weapons that are as ingenious as they are destructive. Recently, a kind of serially-produced rocket launcher has come to light as part of Da’ish (ISIS) propaganda, which appears to demonstrate a capability to serially produce clandestine weapons of a fairly high degree of sophistication. The weapon, a multipurpose missile launcher with a high explosive warhead, is unassuming and appears roughly equivalent to the US AT4, though cruder. It is a simple tube with almost no fittings or sights, a carrying/support handle, and a safety pin securing a fold-out firing grip.

The editor says: This article was contributed by our friend Vitaly who runs Rem870.com, a blog and forum dedicated to the Remington 870. 

Previously, we discussed the benefits of and challenges facing saboted projectile ammunition, including the advantages of decoupling the diameters of the bore and the projectile, and the problems of accuracy during sabot discarding. One concept that could possibly provide many of the benefits of saboted projectile ammunition without the drawbacks is the idea of having a malleable projectile that is forced through a conical section of bore, squeezing it down to a smaller shape. This increases, to a degree, the swept volume of the barrel, while not requiring any discarding sabot and not producing “wasted” energy that goes into propelling the mass of the sabot out of the barrel.

US Army infantry platoons will be getting a little more “boom” very soon. Jane’s, among other news outlets, report that the US Army has finally approved the M3 Carl Gustav 84mm recoilless rifle for general issue to the infantry platoon. From IHS Jane’s:

The most recent episode of C&Rsenal is one you will not want to miss. In it, Othais and Mae take a look at the gargantuan Mauser Tankgewehr 1918, also known as the T-Gewehr:

The Simonov PTRS 14.5mm anti-tank rifle was a very innovative rifle, that seemingly offered the Soviet AT gunner of the early part of World War II a frightening amount of firepower. Its semiautomatic action, and en-bloc clip loading gave the infantry five rounds of high velocity heavy AT rifle ammunition on tap, that could be fired as fast as the trigger could be pulled and the target reacquired. By comparison, the contemporary single-shot Degtyarev PTRD seems downright crude. However, as this evaluation translated by EnsignExpendable of the Soviet Gun Archives blog shows, things are not always how they seem:

The second Forgotten Weapons video to feature really big guns, the embedded flick below shows a T124E2 AT (anti-tank) gun firing. These weapons were the last of the towed American AT guns, with less than a hundred made, although the Soviet Union – and its successor the Russian Federation – continues to use towed AT guns to the present day.

Gratuitous use of a Lahti 20mm anti-material weapon. Why? Because big boom. If I got a chance to shoot a Lahti I would but anything in its path just for the huge smile I would have from getting to shoot it.