Text-free instructions are actually a pretty solid idea for weapons. Never know if you’ll be arming the Ukrainians or the Taliban, eh?
Text-free instructions are actually a pretty solid idea for weapons. Never know if you’ll be arming the Ukrainians or the Taliban, eh?
That’s the best one in many days.
That’s the best one ever. It’s not funny though. It’s what’s called “Reality Reinforcement”. It is scary true and speaks to what’s really happening with our would be global corporate/fascist rulers.
Already bought one of those at IKEA. Had not thought it possible to make a shoulder-fired missile launcher out of pressed wood. Unfortunately, it did not hold up.
That is because you don’t want to get that pressed wood stuff wet…next upgrade is gonna be waterproof glue!
But it worked REALLY WELL once.
The thing with IKEA is there is always a tricky step that is poorly documented, or undocumented, and a special tool that is needed but not included.
I nominate dacian to cover that last part.
Our operators are standing by to help you!
Operators assisting operators, helping to keep things operational. 🤔
Do these operational operators have the requisite tats and beards?
Every idiot in Ukraine seems to have the mandatory beard.
I got a beard but no tats. I look more like Santa than Rambo.
Depends. Are we talking a “Gilette” beard, “Ragnar” beard, or neck beard types?
“I look more like Santa than Rambo”
(laugh) that’s awesome.
“Hello, Ikea support? I’ve put my missile into the launcher backward, and I can’t get it out.”
“Hello valued customer. The easiest way to extract a stuck missile is to approach the tank, use the launcher to hammer on the tank hatch, then drop missile, launcher, and all inside when the tank commander answers.”
I think I remember those. 88mm Gustav I think. Never got a chance to fire one, but got to see them fired. Flichettes were impressive.
Gadsden Flag,
Since you brought up the topic of the effectiveness/impressiveness of shoulder-fired ordnance, I have to share an idea that I cannot shake from my head.
While shoulder-fired javelin missile tank busters clearly render tanks inoperable, I see them as a fairly significant overall failure. Hear me out. The javelin targeting thingy plus the tube and one missile weigh a combined total of something like 55 pounds. Needless to say, it isn’t very practical trying to haul 55 pounds around a battlefield in addition to the rest of your combat gear. Then there is the fact that a system costs something like $150,000 which is incredibly expensive. Thus, if you wanted a squad of ten guys armed with javelins to attack a tank column, it would cost about $1.5 million just to outfit them. So: the javelins are too heavy and too expensive.
I think an overall superior solution is a slightly amped-up grenade launcher, maybe even going as far as something like an old-school World War II bazooka but with a projectile which actually penetrates the tank’s armor. Such a system would be incredibly light weight, maybe 15 pounds for the tube and 8 pounds for each projectile? And that system would be crazy inexpensive (the tube should cost less than $500 and each projectile should cost less than $1000). Thus a squad of ten men could be armed with 10 tube-launchers and have TWO projectiles each (total of 20 projectiles) for a total cost of $25,000–and the weight of that solution would be around 31 pounds for each squad member.
Now, the down side to that solution is you have to get up close–probably within 100 yards–to hit the tank. (Such an inexpensive system would have no active guidance system and would rely on old fashioned aiming with iron sights.) And yet, if it only costs $25,000 to arm every member of a 10-man squad with their own launching tube and TWO projectiles, they could get into position and lay waste to a tank column. Once the tanks are inoperable, the squad can then drop/abandon their $500 tubes and have maximum mobility to either engage the tank column’s infantry support (who no longer have armored vehicles) or evacuate.
Sure, that solution sucks in flat open terrain where there is no cover–and that solution is not intended for that environment. Rather, that solution is intended for forest, mountain, or urban environments where you can easily move to within 100 yards of a tank without notice.
Feedback?
The tubes for a bazooka were heavy as shit.
Between those, Thompsons and Garands our forefathers were cut from a different cloth.
Wiki says 13lbs. wow my bad.
Wonder if you could punch a tank with it still though tbh
Andrew Lias,
After posting my comment above, I started researching World War II bazookas. The first generation launching tubes were less than 15 pounds.
There is no reason that a simple bazooka’s launching tube would weigh more than 15 pounds, especially if we make the tube with a steel liner and carbon composite fiber overlay.
After my superficial research, I am even more convinced that the system which I described is very feasible, both in terms of size, weight, effectiveness, and very low cost. The fact that such a system is so inexpensive is probably why the U.S. military does not want to pursue it. (Charging astronomical prices for super tech-laden systems maximizes profits for military suppliers and is a primary consideration for adopting new systems.)
And yes, you can punch through tanks. A more recent version of bazooka indicates that they can punch through 400 mm (about 15 inches) of armor.
Andrew Lias,
With preliminary research suggesting that my super inexpensive and super light/mobile bazooka system is totally feasible, imagine the following, keeping in mind that it would cost about $2,500 (in quantity) to provide one launching tube and two projectiles to a soldier:
For the modest cost of $44 million (that’s one dollar for every man, woman, and child–Ukraine’s population before Russia attacked), Ukraine could have armed 17,600 soldiers with one launching tube and two projectiles thus going afield with a total of 35,200 projectiles. That is enough ordnance 10 times over to completely destroy all of Russia’s tanks.
Let that sink in. For the paltry investment of $44 million, Ukraine (and any other nation for that matter) would have a significant ability to render tanks useless in an attack on their nation.
Bonus: I imagined that my proposed system would only be usable at ranges of 100 yards or less. Apparently World War II era bazookas and newer versions were intended for use at ranges of up to 400 yards. When you factor in that longer possible range with the fact that even a modest nation could have something like 40,000 projectiles afield, it becomes apparent that no one can successfully invade on the ground.
Bonus #2: my proposed bazooka system may also enable Ukrainians to go on offense and start decimating vehicles and structures in Russia in retaliation.
You realize that the modern combat load is heavy than any war pior .
And who is going to do that? The ungenius defense planners in Ukraine are handing out ak-74s to teenage girls, for F’s-sake.
Does that sound like a nation that values their independence?
Who the F are these people? You couldn’t pay me anything to ‘defend’ these retards.
Tim,
While Ukraine is indeed handing out AK-47 and AK-74 rifles to young women, they are also handing out those same rifles to countless thousands of men. And even more countless thousands of men (mostly Ukrainian ex-patriots as well as foreign volunteers) are streaming into Ukraine to join the fight.
There are plenty of men who are fit enough to use a simple and light weight bazooka to decimate ALL of the Russian tanks invading Ukraine. The problem is a lack of bazookas, not a lack of capable soldiers.
“handing out ak-74s to teenage girls, for F’s-sake.
Does that sound like a nation that values their independence?“
Well yes, it does sound like a nation that values their independence, Russian troll.
And I bet the young lady that slapped the shit out of the coach who was attempting to deprive her of her Second Amendment rights, would have no difficulty hosing a few Russian conscripts when they attack her block.
In my experience, the troublemakers, properly disciplined, are motivated and effective troopers.
“Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul? ”
But it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes ” when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes, ” when the drums begin to roll“
So an RPG or Panzerfaust 3?
A 100m anti armor shot ALWAYS is going to suck big. Perhaps better than a satchel charge or the Japanese crowbar in the tracks technique.
neiowa,
Not sure if I understand your comment. Are you suggesting that the person shooting a bazooka at a tank which is 100 meters away has poor survival prospects? Assuming that is your meaning:
For starters, that tank isn’t going to return any fire since its operators are dead and the inside is damaged beyond immediate repair. More importantly, I was suggesting that several people–like 10 people minimum–all fire on several tanks at the same time. And after those 10 people all fired on and destroyed those 10 tanks simultaneously, those 10 people are able to engage any enemy response with their rifles and grenades that they were able to carry since their bazooka and projectiles are so light. Of course, if those 10 people with their bazookas have another 20 infantry soldiers with rifles, they now have a very high likelihood of surviving since they had the element of surprise, cover/concealment, and the enemy no longer has armor.
Uncommon. It is very rare for tanks to be on their own. Tankers hate that. You get within 100m of a tank and you’re well within the supporting infantry cover screen. It can happen in a one on one situation. ww2 is full of these examples. But a whole armored column? Kinda doubt it.
One big back blast and you are going to be the center of a lot of attention.
I think the cost of losing more men is more prohibitive than the $150k for the javelin (at least for the USA and other first world nations militaries).
For ragtag groups with more limited funds, your proposal makes sense.
“The fact that such a system is so inexpensive is probably why the U.S. military does not want to pursue it.”
Have you noticed, though, that it’s not just our wasteful military moving in a different direction?
On the surface, HEAT warheads offer incredible performance / cost. OTOH, all the armor developments of the last half-century (Chobham and other composite armors, spaced armor, reactive, etc.) were designed to defeat them. For quite a while, it seemed as if modern armors had rendered man-portable systems obsolete or pointless.
Tanks proved somewhat vulnerable in more recent conflicts, but it was because warheads had advanced (top attack, tandem charges, etc.) well beyond simple and inexpensive “bazooka” technology. Of course, IEDs have shown that lower tech approaches like EFP can still be effective against tracks, thinner areas of armor, etc., but they do so by replacing sophistication with [non-man-portable] mass.
A ‘dumb’ weapon like a bazooka means the one firing it remain exposed to enemy return fire until the warhead detonates.
Javelin, on the other hand, is a ‘Fire-and-forget’ tandem warhead missile so the crew can at the least duck out of the way…
I know which one I’d choose👍
Geoff. A ‘bazooka’ is not wire guided. You can unass the place as soon as you fire.
The back blast on bazookas and recoiless rifles is why they are not well liked. They mark your firing spot for the infantry screening the armor.
JWM,
Correct, but a TOW (our previous-generation ATGM) is.
A bazooka doesn’t require post-launch operator action per se, but is so short ranged that (in combination with the backblast you mentioned) Geoff’s statement is largely accurate.
I warhead of about 120mm is needed to be effective in top attack. Especially as the Russians are putting racks and cages on top of the turrets. Javelin class missiles, including NLAW, will defeat the extra top protection. AT4 won’t.
That’s already been done, decades ago. I was a US Army tanker, by the way, but was also trained on a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon. When I was in the US Army (way back in the 1980s), the shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon we used was the M72A2 LAW (light anti-tank weapon). Those were incredibly lightweight, very cheap, extremely easy to use, and disposable (fire them once, then throw them away). They were so lightweight that every soldier could carry one in ADDITION to his rifle and other combat gear (not that every soldier did, but they could). One of the Nordic nations (Norway, I think) just supplied Ukraine with about a thousand M72 LAWs (they didn’t say if it was the A2 variety), which means they’re still in use 40 years after I used them!
The main advantages of the M72A2 LAW is that it’s lightweight, easy to use, and cheap. Unfortunately, the M72A2 LAW has several big drawbacks, which is why nobody (except Norway) uses them anymore. They can’t penetrate the frontal armor of a modern tank, so you have to snipe at the tanks from the rear or sides. They have a short range (only a little farther than a WWII bazooka, but much shorter than modern anti-tank weapons). They have no guidance mechanism whatsoever, so you have to look through the very primitive sight, aim at the tank, and hope you hit — one of many reasons that US Army doctrine recommends firing several at once, in case one of them misses (another reason is in case they hit but don’t penetrate). They have a severe (fatal) backblast, so they can’t be fired from indoors, or from a bunker (or despite what one of the Rambo movies showed from a helicopter), so forget about using them to snipe at tanks from apartment buildings.
The AT-4 is an improved version of the M72A2 LAW, more powerful (bigger warhead), but had all the same limitations IIRC.
Next came the wire-guided anti-tank missiles such as the TOW missile and Dragon missile. Those are big, heavy, and have a severe limitation from the fact that they’re wire-guided means you have to continually keep them aimed at the tank the whole time the missile is in flight, even while the tank is shooting back at you, making it almost a suicide mission to fire one.
Next came the pinnacle of the man-carried anti-tank missiles, the Javelin. It solved all the drawbacks of the previous weapons. It is much lighter weight than the Dragon or TWO, and each iteration of the Javelin made it lighter and lighter. It doesn’t weigh “55 pounds” as you say, because it is split into two parts, each of which is lightweight and easy to carry. It is a fire-and-forget weapon, so you aim, pull the trigger, and dive for cover, and the missile will continue tracking the target. It has a thermal sight, so it can see in the dark and can’t be fooled by camouflage. It also has a thermal guidance system that locks on to the thermal signature of the exact vehicle you are attacking, which gives it fire-and-forget accuracy. It has a “soft-launch,” which means it doesn’t have a large fatal back-blast area, so it can be fired near friendly troops or even from cover in some cases. Best of all, it has a “top attack mode” in which it can attack a tank from the top, where the armor is weakest, and even if a tank ducks behind a hill, it can still destroy that tank using the top attack mode. It even has an anti-aircraft mode to attack helicopters!
The Javelin does have a couple drawbacks: it’s expensive, it’s fragile, and the batteries have to be replaced after about four hours of use (depending on which model Javelin you’re using). By “fragile,” I mean if you drop it, it could be damaged and become unusable, which isn’t good considering how expensive they are and the fact that soldiers are frequently, running, diving for cover, and jumping into ditches. But other than those couple drawbacks, it’s the best man-portable anti-tank weapon the world has ever seen. I’d hate to be a tanker today having to fight against enemies equipped with Javelin missiles. Back in my day, if someone fired an RPG, you could do a “Sagger dance” (take evasive action) to avoid it, but there’s no evasive action that can avoid a missile with thermal guidance that seeks out the exact heat signature of your tank even if you duck behind a hill!
Interesting post. Good read. Thank you.
Even better than an RPG.
Go Putin!
Not that I care one way or another, but if you deliver weapons to one side of the conflict, you’ve now “chosen sides”.
You’re no longer “neutral”. Good luck.
P.S. Who is Zalinsky? I have no F’n idea.
He’s a freaking comedian…who bribes Hunter n “the big guy”.
Ain’t my circus. Ain’t my monkey’s. But if you invade another country and kill their people, military and civilian for no legit reason expect some push back.
Putin is acting like an old school dictator and this will not end well for him or Russia. It just remains to be seen how bad the damage will be to others.
And when Mexico or Canukistan wants to join the CCP and park their weapons on our border you’ll feel the same? It’s easy to take the MSM line and say Putin is literally Hitler, but there are no angels in this one. Both countries are corrupt like us and have evil leaders grabbing with both hands and two toes. Not to mention the uke probably does have some nasty bio crap and maybe even dirty bomb stuff. I’d want to take control too if it were on my border.
NO the lefties are claiming the Ukrainians are hitler. Try to keep up numbnuts.
The same lefties that:
a) think Klaus Barbie was made up for the movie “Rat Race”.
b) couldn’t pick Karl Marx from Groucho.
“Push-back” is fine. I doubt that I would disagree with jwm about anything. Putin may be evil, but that doesn’t make Zalinsky an angel.
He could be a bigger crap-weasel than Jussie Smollett, for all I know.
This looks like a drug-addled ‘domestic situation’ to me. No one is going to “win”. It’s like a bum-fight. Everyone is drunk – no one will remember what-the-hell-happened in the morning.
Hope we stay the hell out of it.
Putin can add another title to his name:
“The Butcher of Ukraine”
Sure, Putin is a bad actor, but what about our leaders in the West?
Are Western leaders “New School”.Dictators?
Steal elections?
Spend money we don’t have?
Let pedophiles groom the children?
Stay home.
Close your business.
Spread medical disinformation.and blackball anyone who speaks the truth.
Wear a nonsense mask for the next couple years.
Take an unsafe experimental medication for a disease you have already had (and it wasn’t bad), or lose your job and get locked out of the economy
Start and eventually lose nearly endless nonsense wars around the world (Iraq and Afghanistan)?
“Start and eventually lose nearly endless nonsense wars around the world (Iraq and Afghanistan)?“
Yep, the conservative Republicans were banging the drum pretty hard in 2001, and accusing anyone who oppose the Iraqi invasion as a ‘traitor’.
And that includes you.
Remember President Cheney and Vice President Bush telling us all about the weapons of mass destruction and Saddam‘s ‘rape rooms’?
Tim,
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Ukraine’s president.
“Text-free instructions are actually a pretty solid idea for weapons.”
The Vietnam war era had the US DoD produce a comic book describing in cartoon form how to use and maintain the M-16 :
http://www.astrotx.com/M-16A1%20Rifle.pdf
It was called PM magazine – for (Preventative Maintenance) Still have some choice issues. Each month featured a different piece of equipment, but several articles on maintaining your gear. From commo, weapons, & movers (trucks & jeeps). Even big engineer equipment. Wife made me ditch my collection years ago to Mil vehicle collector. I still have a few -prize ones – 1st 1/2 in english , 2nd 1/2 in Vietnamese. Oh and every mechanics cartoon dream girl – Connie Rod !
If it’s a US weapon it should have stick figures at most because the people we arm in buttfarkistan probably won’t even be able to read their language let alone any other. We are the evil empire.
That tube reminded me of a woman who shot her husband with a potato cannon and got charged with attempted murder.
Donated weapons sometimes come back to bite you. Europe will be mostly Islamic Sharia States within 15 or 20 years if their present demographic trends continue. The newcomers have also learned about democrat Ballot Harvesting and effectively used it in Manchester UK elections.
Europe is going to have to take a hard right turn if they are to have any future. Again. Not my monkey’s, not my circus.
I’m doubly glad now that I did not buy that cottage in France.
And lil’d has found out that “socialist agitator” is not an occupation that’s in demand. If anything they have too many as it is.
“Europe is going to have to take a hard right turn“
It’s happened before, but it didn’t turn out so well for Adolph and Benito.
“Not my monkey’s, not my circus“
Chamberlain announces, “We have achieved peace in our time”.
And now we have a dementia riddled chamberlain in the oval office.
Seriously, miner, you want to bang the war drums for the US with biden as CinC?
Not our circus and not our monkeys but definitely coming to a tree near you/us soon.
I don’t care if the political leadership of Ukraine is as bad as Idi Amin or Pol Pot. Or as corrupt as The Chicago mob run mayor’s office when Capone was in control. Ukraine was no threat to Russia. Putin had no valid reason to invade. Hell, if Ukraine is as corrupt as some say, he could have bought them off easily.
Now, I do not want to see any American soldiers in country. But, I have no problem giving, or preferably selling them any and every piece of ordinance they want.
As far as the Javelin missile system, it’s a great system if you have a truck or APC to haul it into the field. An updated version of the old laws system would be much more cost effective.
Total weight under 20 lbs. Shoot and toss the tube. Range of under 200 meters, but in cover or in an urban area, you likely aren’t going to be very far out anyway.
@oldmaninAL
LAWS won’t even give the guys in modern armor a headache when it detonates.
A LAWS or Bazooka will just set off a side-mounted reactive pack and get their attention as to your (near-by) presence…you are toast.
The only reason the Javelin works as well as it does is because it attacks the top (hatch area) of the vehicle where armor thickness is at it’s minimum (the Russians are placing armored canopies with a layer of sand bags over the top of the turret to increase the stand-off distance and to prematurely detonate dual-charge HEAT warheads as an effective deterrent).
And their top protection is still not working against NLAW and Javelin.
I hope they go together better than the last piece of Danish RTA furniture I bought. Never again.
Canada has sent the M72B rocket launcher.
Massive signature at launch. Slow rocket. A modern tank will detect and kill the soldier who fired it before the rocket arrives. But it will kill troop carriers. It’s not good in urban settings as the arming distance is too long. Urban settings RPG-7 duplex head is low cost good tank killer. But any user has a high probability of being killed due the big signature.
I thought we (Canada) still just used the sticky sock method of tank defestation? Good to hear the idiot manchild is doing his part to help protect the political money laundering capitol of the world. Daddy’s (pick one of two) trust fund doesn’t just multiply all on it’s own, ya know.
Was that “stinky” or “sticky” sock?
I was told Canada is a major money laundering country using real estate. I don’t understand this stuff but somehow it has resulted in a large number of empty houses and condos and crazy high prices.
Honestly I’ve given up trying to keep track of who is worse than the other guy. They all suck equally, criminal grifters every last one of them at this point, the New Mafia. And it’s “sticky”; a sock covered in tar, filled with HE and slapped onto a tank by hand. Although if I could jam one of my empty used socks down the turret hatch that might easily render it ‘combat ineffective’ as well.
ikea furniture and television sets. decide on their proper location and do not disturb; they will last indefinitely.
move them once and they are shot.
PUTINISM BLEW UP WATER SUPPLY CAN’T BATH NOR SHAVE .
IKEA INFOR THANKS ALWAYS
I just recalled a second hand conversation (coworker’s son was in Afghanistan).
He was attached with a unit that drove around with a sci-fi IED killer. German made thing that sent out electromagnetic pulses strong enough to burn or trip remote control devices. It was effective, blew up everything ahead. It got so the locals first tried just using two wires and hiding near with magneto. Finally they were reduced to using mechanical detonation with a string. One day they look up at this guy 80 yards off wildly screaming and yanking on a string – he forgot that strings stretch. So they shot him, then pulled the string and blew up the road.
I’d fire a rocket remotely (the tanks can canister shot the firing position with nobody there) then when infantry dismount set off IED and those shoulder launched thermobaric.
Now the column has a bunch less infantry support. No broken armor but a super bad day for the column. Or in a perfect setup have artillery already zeroed for when they stop. Strip off all the antennas and scrap the optics. Sorry I went off on comic book hero path.
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