Type RPG In service 1988-present | Place of origin Soviet Union Designer Bazalt | |
Used by Russia, Soviet Union, Iraqi Insurgency, North Korea Wars Iraq War, First and Second Chechen Wars | ||
The PG-7VR is a tandem charge RPG warhead designed to penetrate up to 750 mm rolled homogeneous armour equivalence of explosive reactive armor and the conventional armor underneath. It is also capable of penetrating two metres of brick or 1.5m of reinforced concrete; this is the normal penetration of the main charge.
It was designed in 1988 by the Soviet Union weapons company Bazalt and based on the RPG-7 but modified to penetrate explosive reactive armour. The small precursor charge at the tip of the rocket is designed to hit the reactive armour before the main charge and detonate it. The reactive armour plate should deploy, exploding and disrupting the precursor charge's HEAT jet. As reactive armor is usually single usage only, this renders that particular block of reactive armor useless and unable to protect against the much larger and more powerful main shaped charge. The main shaped charge is a full calibre warhead (filled with 1.43kg OKFOL), explodes and is supposed to penetrate the target through the weak spot created by the precursor charge.
This weapon has been showing up in use by Iraqi insurgents. On 28 August 2003, it achieved a mobility kill against an American M1 Abrams hitting the left side hull next to the forward section of the engine compartment. It penetrated a fuel tank, flooding the compartment with fuel.