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Russia unveils anti-APS RPG

Years before the Army is to deploy its active protective system for armored vehicles, a Russian firm has unveiled a weapon designed to thwart it.

The RPG-30 fires a tandem-charge rocket-propelled grenade immediately after launching a decoy warhead in an adjoining tube, according to a Nov. 19 article by ITAR-TASS, the Russian news agency. The decoy is meant to distract an active protective system like the Army’s Hard Kill and the Israeli Trophy so that the tandem charge can land a one-two punch against modern armor. Its developer, Moscow-based Basalt, has completed development and testing and will begin deliveries to Russian and other militaries in coming months, the news service reported.

“It has a standard 105mm tandem warhead, but what the difference is it has a decoy or a dummy charge that fires a few seconds ahead of the main warhead,” said Jonathan Pruiksma, an intelligence specialist with the Army’s TRADOC Intelligence Support Activity, Wargaming, Experimentation, Test and Evaluation Directorate. “It is basically a prototype and they [the Russians] are advertising designed to defeat explosive reactive armor and active protection systems.”

Pruiksma said it’s not clear whether the RPG-30 will be able to get past the Army’s Hard Kill active protection system, which is slated to enter service in 2015. Hard Kill uses radar to spot incoming weapons, then fires small missiles at them.

“In order to overwhelm it, you need to fire enough rounds at it. Some APS systems may have dozens of charges,” he said. “What is interesting is they are starting to think through the challenges of explosive armor and active protection systems. It will be interesting to see how it tests.”

One analyst noted that Hard Kill was designed to fight off multiple incoming weapons.

“The real operational question is: Can the two rounds launch in such close proximity to one another that the sensor cannot distinguish between the two or can’t launch two defensive weapons in time?” said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Va.-based think tank.

Nevertheless, the RPG-30’s emergence shows how the world’s arms makers are starting to react to complex active protective systems. Their reaction to these expensive protection systems mirrors the 21st-century reaction to expensive armored vehicles: inexpensive and easily dispersible weapons.

“With a small rocket in a secondary tube, the RPG-30 is nothing more complex than to try to overwhelm the defense with a cheap offense. They now have doubled the number of rounds they can fire at the defender,” Goure said. “The battle between offense and defense never ends. Guns get bigger and armor gets bigger. This is another round of that, although one of the things that is significant is that the countermeasure is out before the measure is out.”

Pruiksma said Basalt’s earlier tandem-charge RPG-29 — “an old 3.5-inch bazooka” — had damaged some M1 Abrams tanks in Iraq. Hezbollah used the RPG-29 to damage some Israeli Merkava tanks in Lebanon in 2006.

The ITAR-TASS article called the RPG-30 much more destructive than its predecessor.

”Experts estimate that RPG-30 penetrates up to 650 millimeters of most modern tank armor after piercing reactive armor, more than 1.5 meters of steel reinforced concrete barriers, 2 meters of brick and nearly 4 meters of wooden barriers. Evasion from this grenade is virtually impossible,” the ITAR-TASS article said. “In combat, this grenade launcher is capable of destroying any types up of advanced tanks (and known prototypes), other armored and non-armored vehicles, as well as the live force and secure reinforced compounds.”