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The RPG-7 (Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomet-7) is a man-portable, shoulder-launched rocket propelled grenade weapon. Its robustness, simplicity, low cost and 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, including terrorist organizations. Numerous recent conflicts with such forces have seen extensive use of the RPG-7, including Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The RPG-7 was first delivered to the Soviet Army in 1961 and deployed at a squad level. It replaced the RPG-3, having clearly out-performed the intermediate RPG-4 design during testing. Its original design concept originated with the German Panzerfaust developed near the end of World War II. The current model produced by Russia is the RPG-7V1, capable of firing standard, dual, and thermobaric warheads.
The launcher is based around a simple milled 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-sight s 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 Mujahideen 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 steelRHA stands for Rolled Homogeneous Armour . Through the end of World War 2, the armour for almost all tanks and other armoured vehicles was sheets of steel. Increasing the protection on a vehicle meant adding thicker sheets of steel, increasing the vehicle; two warhead types (PG-7BR and VR) are 'tandem' devices, used to defeat reactive armourReactive armor or explosive reactive armour (ERA is a type of armour used primarily on tanks to lessen the damage from explosions caused from missile warheads, exploding shells, grenades, or dropped bombs. Essentially all anti-tank munitions work by pierc with a single shot.
Current production ammunition for the RPG-7V1 consists of three types:
Manufacturer specifications for the RPG-7V1 provided by Rosoboronexport.
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