The defense industry is always so: someone creates a plane, and in return receives the anti-aircraft gun.Then there is attack and destroy ground weapon, clearing the way bombers.This continues indefinitely.Well armored tank - nothing will be armor-piercing shell.On the armor hung more active defense, fend means of destruction, but it is not the end.Be sure to come up with something that it did pierce.Modern Russian grenade just might serve as an example of such a response on the answer.RPG-29, a photo flashed on the screens which often images of pop stars and famous movie stars, famous after several cases of successful use against American and Israeli tanks, famous for its resistance to armor-piercing tools.
cumulative projectiles and active armor
Cumulative ammunition surely burn even very thick armor.In the last two decades of design thought the creators of armor found the way to protect the tanks from this terrible weapon.It was developed so-called active armor protection, acting on a paradoxical principle.If you get it in the cumulative projectile it creates a small explosion, scattering highly directional jet of hot gas, which substantially reduces the effectiveness of destruction.By all the laws of the arms race, each protection requires means to overcome it.Since standing armed with anti-tank grenade launchers RPG-7 and RPG-16 could not break through the defense of modern tanks - the likely opponents, it needed something new.VS Tokarev led design team whose task was given particular: to make a compact system that can burn through active armor.The task of our engineers to bleed, they created an RPG-29, "Vampire."Title to Count Dracula has nothing to do, rather, it corresponds to the biological species of bats in the dark acting ruthlessly and quickly.
Operating principle
Grenade - he is a rocket launcher, something new in principle, the device is difficult to come up with a launch tube.It's all in the projectile, which flies out of the RPG-29.It has a tandem scheme, that is, its warhead is, in turn, into two parts.First, the leading activates Anticumulative protection charge, the purpose of which is to destroy the targeted plasma jet.After that, the metal armor is exposed, and the action takes the bulk of the charge, cumulative.Due to this principle of "two in one" RPG-29 can pierce the armor of a homogeneous layer of high thickness of 60 cm. This is a wonderful garnet called PG-29B, its size is 105 mm.
Of course, this in words so simple and the practical realization of this, at first glance, a simple principle, there were many technical problems that had to be solved as they come.Double charge could explode at the same time, and the delay was needed, and do tests surprises and not always pleasant.Despite many difficulties, the RPG-29 by 1989 was prepared and adopted by the Soviet Army.
Engine grenades
addition to the main and leading the charge, garnet solid engine equipped with the jet, which is activated by an electric igniter through the contact ring on the tail of the projectile.Its body is made of fiberglass (steel and has an option, but the polymer is easier).Flight stabilization provides eight blades, pull-down after the grenade out of the barrel.The active part of the flight is not that much more difficult to detect the start point.
TTD
RPG-29 - a compact weapon, transport cover takes up very little space, only a meter of length.It weighs too little, a little more than five kilograms yes, plus pomegranate - another seven kilograms.You can shoot at night and during the day, and in addition to the destruction of armored vehicles, it is possible to solve the problem of resistance infantry fortifications, destroy bunkers, pillboxes and bunkers, for that, and thermobaric munitions TBG-29V.The effective range aimed fire at a stationary target is half a kilometer, a moving - 300 meters.Length grenade assembled - 1 meter 85 cm.
calculation consists of two fighters, but the experience of Syria (against government troops) and Iraq (against the US Army) proves that, if necessary, manage, and one man, if he cancarrying two bags: one with PU, the other - with three grenades.
Fate grenade
Paradoxically, for all its virtues in Russia is a powerful weapon used in almost not found.The fact that the need to destroy enemy tanks on our territory, thank God, no, but if it arose, that to solve this problem could be a number of ways.The Russian Army there ATGM and specialized artillery and helicopter gunships, and mines, and a lot more then.
RPG-29 is more suitable for conducting guerrilla and sabotage the war, when the enemy tanks appeared on the streets of the cities captured and must be ruthlessly burned.This weapon comes in two countries - Syria and Mexico, but in some mysterious way suddenly began to appear in completely different places.
Iraqi insurgents, which except the terrorists do not call the Western media, have successfully used the RPG-29 "Vampire" against "Abrams" American tank, which was considered almost invincible.Personnel chronicles on which an armored giant broke into pieces after detonation of ammunition, went around the world with comments about the unexpected use of Russian launchers.Well, the war should be ready for anything.In Afghanistan, a "Stinger", for example.And in Iraq a "vampire".
