New Army "Caliber Configuration Study"

[LRRPF52]

RPG warheads that are no joke are the thermobaric versions. The RPG-29 will smoke your bags lights out before you know what happened. It will reduce buildings to rubble in a flash, literally. Effective range is significantly reduced though, due to warhead payload and drag, since it is what it is.

A lot of them were transferred to Hezbollah and Syria, and have been used to take out Abrams. They are any combatant's nightmare if you think about what happens when a thermobaric warhead does its thing. I would list several examples, but I won't since you would all recognize them immediately, then say, "You mean _ _ _ was a thermobaric charge?"

One of the most effective small elements is the organization of 3-man teams using a mix of SVD's, PKM's, and RPG's. 3 teams composed of these weapons can wreak havoc on a significantly larger force, and have done so from Chechnya to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Joker31 mentioned training of the Taliban, and that they aren't stupid. If you know the history of the region, the Mujaheddin received better training in how to run an insurgency, to include better small unit tactics training than 99% of any US infantry soldier will ever receive if big Army keeps doing what they do.

That program was run and really envisioned largely by a former enlisted SF NCO turned SF officer, who went to work for the CIA in their ill-advised arming and training of the Muj in the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989. They ran training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Regions with the Pakistani ISI supervision, and turned on a major "kill Russians" program, which back-fired on us with 9/11 in more ways than one.

The improvised explosives and mines courses that were taught to them were completely gloves off, as were the small unit tactics and UW logistics networking. I have been able to interview several Soviet Afghan War vets to hear what it was like on the receiving end of the EFP's and booster grenades, and things really changed for the Russians once this UW program went into effect.

Soviet Spetsnaz GRU units were operationally tasked with interdicting the CIA's clandestine logistics network, as well as taking out Mujaheddin insurgents, but there wasn't much they could do once this integrated UW force was turned loose with the training and equipment they had, especially including the Stinger MANPADS. I have a book about it entirely in Russian that is one of the best books on the Afghan-Soviet War you will ever find, specifically written for the GRU Spetsnaz Veterans. They were hell-bent on just proving that the US was providing Stingers to them, and took great pride in the recovery of one of the used launchers in its case. The CIA did a one-for-one rule where if Mr. Muj wanted to receive another missile, he had to bring the used one back so it wouldn't end up sold on the black market.



As to calibers and how they were structured across the UW force, the former SF NCO/officer was very instrumental in configuring it, and he was adamant about stopping the Lee Enfield rifles from being proliferated anymore (original CIA program was to just annoy the Russians), and demanded that Central Asian Bureau adopt a modern small arms mix of AKM's, heavy machine guns, RPG's, and anti-aircraft weapons. There were some RPD's (Type 56 Chinese copies), and other small arms sourced from mainly China and the Middle East, but the combined mix of weaponry and training was really more than the Russians could deal with.