Re: OT- Recoiless Rifle
The Swedish Carl Gustav is still in use in several 'major' armies like Sweden, Norway, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, USA (as said above, mainly in SOF and Ranger units), and dozens of other nations.
It has become somewhat of an archetype of the shoulder-fired RLR, and can be considered as a tactical equivalent of reloadable rocket launchers like the RPG-7 family, though considerably more versatile.
The latest versions pack all the power of more modern AT weapons, with rounds available including rocket-assisted tandem-HEAT antitank rounds, FAE canisters and APHE bunker busters.
On the other end of the scale you find things like the US M-40 or the late British Wombat, i.e. long-tube, heavy-caliber weapons meant to be mounted on a wheeled carriage, or generally a light vehicle.
These weapons are now mainly used by second- and third-rate armies (from Spain and China to Bolivia and Zimbabwe), as they were the very thing that was replaced by long-range antitank missiles (TOW and HOT) in the NATO armies' battalion support units in the 70s and 80s.
These were used mainly for long-range antitank support of infantry units, and shifting to missiles has traded versatility against anti-armour potency, which made more sense in the heigth of the cold war.
China is still using lots of recoilless rifles due to the large size and overall low proficiency of its army, which means that modern ATGMs are too expensive and reserved for elite units. They even developped a new company/battalion-level support weapon called PF-98 Queen Bee, which can be described as a crossover between a recoilless gun and a reloadable rocket launcher like a SMAW, LRAC-89 or RPG-29, though significantly heavier.
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