Ukraine: RPG Warheads with Fragmentation Sleeves 

Never see any 16, 17 or 18 year olds on the front lines .All the guys are in their 30's, 40's and 50's or older. Both Russia and Ukraine are dying races and the war is just killing them off at a faster rate.

It looks like sections on pipe that have been scored with an angle grinder. Especially if the pipe was cast iron which is fairly brittle it ought to make a good fragmentation sleeve and would be a low tech way of achieving that.

PIATs/Mortars need a heavy barrel and ground plate, so RPG/recoilles riffles are way lighter. The indirect airburst option was always the high art of RPG shooting, but there were never really warheads designed for it. There are some dual purpose or anti bunker warheads for many RPGs etc. but a variable timed fused warhead wouldnt be so expensive to develope, especially with laser range finders this stuff is a low cost solutions for many situations.

​@@westphalianstallion4293It would be very expensive to develop.

@@zoiders Why? Timed fuses are pretty easy, they are low velocity so components dont have to be ultra robust. And if you know the relativ distance you time your rpg and its not rocket science.

The OG-7 grenade is the anti-personnel fragmentation grenade that is smaller/cheaper/more accurate than the RPG-7P/V It's not well known by the general public because it doesn't protrude from the end of the launcher so it looks like an empty launcher rather than the mandatory cone shaped accessory for every middle eastern guy with a pair of sandals and a towel on his head. Improvised weapons like this lend weight to the claim that Ukraine is running out of weapons.

Using the RPG-7 in this manner is very wasteful. It was never intended to serve as some sort of indirect fire weapon. Relying on the self-destruct feature for an airburst effect from desperation doesn't mean it is effective. The SD fuze isn't something like the ones found in purpose built modern airburst/programable munitions, it is just a simple pyrothecnic delay. Each round literally will have its own burst distance from all sorts of variables, from manufacturing quality, age, moisture within the warhead, or just wind strenght and direction... Mostly good for morale and in lucky instances for area suppression. Most trenches and fortified positions are in windbreakers, in those cases they might as well try to hit whatever foliage remains, the piezo fuze is sensitive enought to trigger on thin twigs and branches, giving you the same airburst effect, with added fragmentation from the trees. Allied supporters should send more Carl Gustav launcher with D441 HE-FRAG round, as those can be set to airburst while still having the impact fuze active. 600 steel bearing plus shell fragments every burst, a good 20 meter kill zone.

Thank you, that's exactly my aim with this series of videos. Appreciate the comment.

True ha ha 😅 the history repeats

I'm pretty sure UA is well versed with German WW2 equipment, must have been a source of inspiration

@@hamilcar358 this

@@hamilcar358 True

the fire extinguishers thing is a panic solution, you eff up range and likelihood of a hit

Ive even seen 3d printed IED's with magnets, thread taps and ball bearings glued to the outside attached to drones. Lots of innovations being made.

the RPG-7 already has a frag ammunition named OG-7 (and its variants) the problem is probably its low number, as the RPG is probably mostly intended for anti-tank fire so most ammo made for the rocket launcher has been the anti-tank PG-7 family

@@quoccuongtran724 Maybe it did not come through, but it was a shortage of the HE variant of rockets my initial comment was about.

​@@Br1cht- Once the fire extinguishers run out, they'll be using bows and arrows, then sticks and stones. lol

Have you seen how they been doing things? Cprobably a lathe and an angle grinder

Well thanks for sharing. I never heard of that before. I looked it up & am now better for it. Thanks.

What CNC?! 😁No need for precision here! Radial grooves, cut on a lathe, in the manufacture of a fragmentation jacket. Longitudinal grooves using a conventional angle grinder. It's cheap and doesn't require complicated equipment

Looks like a piece of 4 inch steel pipe scored with an angle grinder. With the exception of the base ring, it's probably easily made in the field by any of their soldiers.

In Afghan Thalibans did same against helicopter

​@@mickeygmx3114And convoys. Cheap way to have an airburst munition.

Exactly. If you add weight with the sleeve and aim upwards you can reduce the velocity and use it at a shorter range. 900 is an awfully long way for a company sized attack.

​@@mickeygmx3114Not really no. They swarmed them with multiple RPGs. Here they are adding weight to reduce velocity, firing at an angle to increase the time spent in the air and bring the round down over the enemy position in an air burst.

@@zoiders I guess they did it without extra weight and then rocket could reach approximately 1700m before self-destruction activated

Thank you! Thanks for watching

it's becouse it would turn an offensive grenade into a defensive one. meaning you wouldn't be able to throw it far enough not to get peppered by its shrapnel's.

The infamous pineapple, mills bombs and Russian grenades with exterior grooves may have been made to try to I fluency fragmentation, but also nonslip surface for throwing

To add to this, this is the reason why the F1 has such random lethality in combat footage. Some people get hit with 5 grain dust particles and survive, while other people catch a finger lenght strip of cast metal.

Mills bombs were crenelated for grip. Not for fragmentation.

I have read that as well. It's interesting what they learned after World War 2.

The grooves on the outside weren't for fragmentation to start with it was for better grip in wet and muddy conditions

True. Luckily our way of life turned out to be too efficient and economically successful, compared to the Soviet way. We just out earned them, and if the time had come the fight started . . . Well, it is worth noting that in 1940, in the entire world, there were 14 ACTUAL Aircraft carriers that carried more than a dozen front line capable fighters. In 1946, there were 114. All with far more capability, armament, all had been fueled and armed and crewed, and not one of them was built by russians or chinese. Made in America, I believe?. If the russians HAD relied on their "You tanks are too expensive" mode, America would have laughed, made more and more and more and said "We can keep this up forever, and guess what, Ivan. We are MAKING MONEY doing it, and when we have won . . . and we WILL win . . . we will MAKE MONEY selling you the stuff you need to repair your shattered lives".

@@uncletiggermclaren7592 isn't your last line what we're doing with Ukraine? I believe we should support them to some degree, but there seems to be no future for them where we don't own them instead of Russia.

Yes, but they didn't have much choice, once they decided not to be sacrificed to putin's ego and lies. And I don't know about YOUR country, but the 280 million dollars in humanitarian aid that New Zealand sent in the last two years, isn't a loan, it has been a gift. The money that we sent in 2015 was a gift, the money we sent in 2016 was a gift . . . etc etc. Did you mean "own" like MORALLY own them or something, some sort of power of condescension?. If that is the slant of your remark, it is a debt soon and "cheaply" paid in full. The future is going to contain other conflicts of the Civilised World against the scum that wants to be allowed to rape and steal. THEN, when Ukraine steps up and says "We are still poor, but THIS we can give, and these Officers we can send and they have very valuable advice. And As We had Men from our Neighbours (and even far New Zealand) come and die in our defense, Ukraine will put no restriction on those of our people who want to go and lend their strength" and at one stroke they will have paid every OUNCE of any "Debt", will have Strengthened Civilisation, and THAT they have already done by their determination to join it. Regardless of russian claims ( and their slaves like India ) Ukraine has not been committing murder, but Warfare by the rules. @@danielescobar7618

Only it doesn't explode like the HE variation, it still only fires out a jet forwards when it self detonate so the sleeve is utterly useless.

Hahahahaha. No. The JET is the _result_ of a shaped explosion of Brobdingnagian pressure. Why shaped explosions work, is for a tiny fraction of a second, the combined vectors of the pressure waves are SHAPED to increase the blast in one direction. But that is all over in a fraction of an instant, just longer than a normal explosion. To DO that, there has to BE explosive force in all of the normal directions too. Google "Fireant EFP weapon" and watch what happens to a bathtub sized robot when the shaped charge it holds a foot above its body goes off.@@SilvaDreams

Glad you enjoyed it!

The OG 7 is an HE/Frag munition designed for the RPG7 launcher. However unlike the PG 7 it doesn’t have a sustain motor so has a shorter range. There never seems to be many OG 7 around.

I think the WW II Panzerfaust had them to.

​@@comentedonakeyboardNo.

@@bob_the_bomb4508 Thank you. My work requires I know of other-than-US munitions. Also, a detail. Think of this, in the video, a 'mosaic' fragmentation sleeve appears. Would not steel sleeve often burst in large fragments, whereas a plastic matrix would shatter like tempered glass? What a nightmare for survivors and surgeons. Perhaps my compassion for Russian wounded errs.

@@ghfrostwriter frag sleeves often split into large, inefficient pieces, so many modern weapons (think M18 Claymore here) instead have a matrix of small pellets embedded in a sleeve or slab of plastic or similar material. The issue with non metallic fragments is that it contravenes the limitations of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons which forbids fragments that can’t be picked up by x-ray. They would probably also be held to contravene the Geneva Conventions as they would be probably considered as ‘excessively injurious’.

I'm no expert, nor do I have access to acutal RPGs. However, I have noticed that fragmentation is much more consistant the faster the explosion is. Stuff like black powder causes pretty much the frag to break into two, but higher explosives like ETN cause much mre consistant frag, where a standard pipe would easily break into 10-20 pieces. I have not experiemented with scoring though If I remember correctly, OG-7v rounds use either A-IX-1 or A-IX-2, which is like 90+% RDX mixed with Wax as a stabilizer (and Aluminum powder for A-IX-2). I have no clue what the exact detonation velocity of either is, but RDX detonates at like 9k m/s, and iirc ETN is like 8k m/s, so I would assume RPGs could cause some nice shrapnel. Once again, I've sadly never touched a RPG, and I'm not gonna look up schematics jusr for this, so I don't know what the casing to explosive ratio or whatever, but I found that detonation velocity was much more important than the amount of explosive in creating consistant shrapnel

Scoring does work to enhance fragmentation. The HIMARS Unitary warhead also features such scoring. The key difference is that the scoring is on the interior. It must be inside for it to have an effect.

@@y0h0p38 You are indeed on to something. The term for the metric which produces this kind of effect is brisance. Explosives with higher brisance produce more of a shattering effect. The underlying mechanism is actually to do with detonation pressure, not velocity, although detonation pressure and velocity are correlated.

Single piece of shrapnel is largely what happens when there's not enough boom to completely overcome the strength of the material, e.g. when someone shoots a pressurized canister and it's only the compressed gas expanding. HE is a far more energetic beast; more boom => more pieces of smaller shrapnel.

@@Steve-mr5un The side the scoring is on would have no effect as the material would be the same strength either way.

Thanks for watching!

Glad you enjoyed it

Ball bearings cost far more to make than a piece of stamped steel sheet.

@@zoiders Guess what's available in basically every hardware store, sporting goods store, etc? YOu buy a jar of BB's and some glue, then go to work. Less involved than taking sheet metal, cutting it to the right dimensions, scoring it evenly and at a depth so it fragments reliably but doesn't get cut through, then bending it around a mandrel so it fits the right size and shape and fabricating a locking piece to attach it with. And then it produces less consistent, reliable fragmentation than the BB's.

apply adhesive to the warhead and then roll it on a surface covered in BBs or shot, sort of akin to what they do when blowing glass to apply color

Logic would dictate that it was considered at some point and they went with the option that best fit with they resources and limitations, no?

@@zoiders Inferior BBs, i.e. not to any specified roundness, are super cheap. You can even improvise their production by "blowing bubbles" in an oil bath: Push liquid metal through a small pipe that ends in the bottom of said bath. Drops will form.

Probably did. The RPG-7 has quite a few rockets, all different weights and drag. It's no stranger to inaccuracy.

Thank you, appreciate it!

Oh yeah, Yuri :)

link?

Just search nucking_futs_yuri

@@TheArmourersBench I NEED AMMO! NO MORE ROCKETS! (feeds another AT4 through the hatch)

@@AZREDFERNAH YES I REMEMBER! "rocket? :D" - "no, ammo!"

Being a sleave with a base ring for retention, it won't be that heavy. The sights will be off, but would be very easily compensated for, and figured out. It's not like the rocket motor was designed to just barely be capable of powering the warhead. Such a design that is barely capable of moving the warhead would be extremely unreliable.

Yeah I would guess they might, but no way of confirming it from the available photos.

i heard that you cant really detonate c4 without an electric detonator

@@sickmit3481 The detonators used with it are pretty much just smaller high explosives that can be electronically activated. C4 needs a strong impulse to detonate, which can typically be provided by another explosion. It is very stable otherwise though, so you can shoot it, burn it, and do all sorts of stuff with it without it going off.

Because its been a long time since governments capable of buying those warheads in large numbers have experienced large scale trench warfare.

Probably mediocre. Fragmentation at that height spreads out too much for imprecise fire to have a great effect. It does aid the suppressive effect though, as you'll notice the additional fragments splatter down around you. Now, if you shoot one through a window, that might be another story for anyone in the room...

@@erloriel You only need one small piece of shrapnel hitting an artery for it to be fatal.

Lower than expected effectiveness most likely. The scoring is too shallow for the thick sleeve, so it doesn't create even fragmentation. And the sleeve placed on the engine section is purely dead weight as the engine remains basically intact during warhead detonation, and contains no explosives.

since the ukis are winning the war, they must be super effective - that is if you believe their propaganda :)

@@holdfast5332 Looks to me like he's getting consistent airbursts, so he knows what he's doing - maybe they're going off a tad too high, and like OP hints in his question, I wonder if it's particularly useful. Against Green con scripts the morale effect could be good.

Yes I think so.

The HEAT charge focuses most of its energy forward into shaping the cone penetrator, but some energy will also be released radially away from it. So there will still be enough energy to produce fragments from the sleeve wrapped around it

There may also be some added explosive inside the sleeve but it's impossible to confirm that from the available imagery.

Same question I had. Also seems like it would have a negative effect on accuracy as it shifts the intended center if mass of the warhead and adds drag.

@@AmericanDiscord He's using it in an indirect fire manner and I'm pretty sure he's consistently (and therefore presumably intentionally) getting airbursts out of them. Maybe they have a huge stock of these things and seeing as the Russians are rapidly running out of working armour, don't mind wasting RPG rounds like this.

Shaped charge can focus forward 25...35% of energy. Other energy goes around as usual.

Possibly slightly. Depends on how heavy the various sleeves are.

Yes they've made modern ones now though that have a switch on for either option. A lot,of offensive grenades have no fragmentation and rely purely on concussive and pressure force. Tbh theyre useless beyond throwing into enclosed spaces.

They could put laser seekers in the fins like the 70mm hydra rocket

Yeah, the "time out" explosion was a measure to avoid litter the field with unexploded granades while on the advance; the idea to use it as a kind of air burst came after.

Yes, there have been. Most of the Ukrainian military are now dead and as a result, Zelensky is not enlisting 45-60 year-old men to fight his war, since 90% of the Ukrainian young men are dead and burried

@@baneofbanes 1. Im American 2. There is no stalemate. If this is what CNN tells you to repeat, I can understand your lack of critical thinking. Ukro-nazis are talking today about surrendering. A stalemate is when neither side can advance. Russia is advancing whooping ukro a$$ on a daily basis. All you have to do is ;look at the Ukrainian battle map map online

@@onlinebills9169 if there’s no stalemate than why haven’t the Russians or Ukrainians made any significant gains in the last year? And if you’re an American that’s just pathetic, spouting off literal Russian propaganda that has no basis in reality.

​@@onlinebills9169cope

well, think about rocket launchers in general, how much recoil do they have?

@@user-cr3ti1vj6f a considerable amount There’s usually a limited number of rounds/rockets one man can withstand in a day

I have! Here you go ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KTvsf94J31M.html

@@TheArmourersBench Oh nice!

Could be couldn't they.

If the point is to yeet shrapnel all around an enemy position, accuracy isn't so important. Anti-tank use needs a direct hit, but anti-personnel use can be a "close enough" kind of deal.

It's psychological supressive fire(with an RPG😂). 10%chance you will get hit... but if you do you will be mangled. The unpredictable nature makes it more terrifying