The Russian designed RPG-7 (Raketniy Protivotankoviy Granatomet-7) is a man-portable, shoulder-launched rocket propelled grenade weapon. Its robustness, simplicity, low cost and - relative - effectiveness have made it the most widely used RPG in the world. Currently around forty countries use the weapon and it is manufacturered in a number of variants by nine countries. It is also popular with irregular and guerilla forces, perhaps ironically the Soviet armed forces suffered most from the weapon.
The RPG-7 was first delivered to the Soviet Army in 1961 and deployed at a squad level. It actually replaced the RPG-3, having clearly out-performed the RPG-4 during testing. Its design can be traced right back to the German Panzerfaust.
The launcher is based around a simple mild steel tube, 40 mm in diameter, 953 mm long, and weighing just 7 kg. The middle is wood wrapped to protect the user from heat and the end is flared to assist in blast shielding and recoil reduction. Sighting is usually optical, but both passive infra-red and night-sights are available and an iron sight is always fitted.
As with similar weapons the grenade is over-sized (70 - 85 mm), protruding ahead of the launch tube, and weighing between 2.5 and 4.5 kg. Launch is by a gunpowder booster charge at 115 m/s, which creates a typical tell-tale cloud of light grey/blue smoke. The rocket motor ignites after 10 metres and sustains flight out to 500 metres at a maximum velocity of 295 m/s. The grenade is stablized by two sets of fins that deploy in-flight - one large set on the stablizer pipe to maintain direction and a smaller front set to induce rotation. Maximum range is between 900 and 1100 metres, the fuze sets the maximum range, usually 920 m. The timed detonation has been used to create rough proximity airbursts against helicopters once they have passed the preferred 100m head-on attack zone.
Accurate firing is difficult over 300 m and with the RPG-7 the phrase "the closer the better" is always true. During the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan the Mujihadeen tended to use the weapon at ranges of less than 80 m.
The RPG-7 can fire a variety of warheads for anti-armour (HEAT, PG-) or anti-personnel (HE, OG-) purposes, usually fitting with an impact (PIBD) and a 4.5 second fuze. Armour penetration is warhead dependent and ranges from 300 to 600 mm of homogenous steel; two warhead types (PG-7BR and VR) are used in tandem to defeat reactive armour with a single shot.
