Re: Old RPG problem
Most armies in bush wars type situations where they would be firing mainly at infantry type targets do need a couple or more HE rounds
-HEAT ammo wont be fired at non-AFV beyond the 4 rounds withheld for dealing with tanks
-HEAT is not fired as an opfire round, often enough.
-HEAT does not have a blast effect in neighbouring hexes.
The Chechens probably have the HE ammo since its mainly city fighting that that OOB was set up for.
The Rhodesians were not much into anti-tank work in their guerilla war. But 12 HE energas is ridiculous (I have handled a drill one, and it is not a tiddly little thing, more like an 81mm mortar bomb!). Luckily we had the 66 by then, the thing was a swine that reduced the SLR to individual parts when you fired the grenade often enough while beating the firing Jock black&blue in the process - according to the old sweats.
But mainly it's in Africa and the sandy places that the "rebels" and so on will need a spattering of HE rounds (and the RPG-7 does have the OPG-7(?) frag-HE ammunition). The main targets there are other grunts.
Now, Turkey unit 271 is an obvious change of the weapon from the rifle-grenade, but the designer then probably forgot about the ammo!.
We will have a look out for oddities like that - but expect rebels/Mujaideen/African/VC etc types to likely have at least a couple of HE rounds for anti-infantry use.
Andy
|