A crude mix of wood and metal, with a blast end trumpet resembling a diabolical musical instrument, the RPG is terrifying: No one forgets the sight and sound of it — the whoosh, the blue-gray smoke and the slightly wobbly rotation of the projectile’s flight. Fear lies on both sides: The RPG’s shooter has to have the courage to get within 200 or 300 meters of the target, according to Russian journalist Artyom Borovik in The Hidden War, his classic account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
RPGs brought down the helicopter in Black Hawk Down. “Basically, the RPG singlehandedly lost the Russians their first Chechen War,” writes Gary Brecher, author of a newspaper column on military strategy. Half of all U.S. deaths in the first months of the current Iraq War were caused by RPGs, according to a study by the Center for Army Lessons Learned. Osama Bin Laden posed with RPGs, and John Kerry is seen holding a captured Viet Cong RPG in his war snapshots. In 2000 the Real Irish Republican Army launched RPGs at the headquarters of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. War rugs woven by refugees in Pakistan and Iran show RPGs in their patterns, along with helicopters and jets…
Patton ends his even-keeled appreciation by hoping for a design that might do as much good as the RPG has done bad. Will someone write a testament like this to the cell phone, or the digital camera?A version of this piece originally ran on Motherboard.The RPG-7 carries cultural and social overtones, like another sturdy Russian weapon: the AK-47, whose biography is the subject of C. J. Chivers’s recent book, The Gun. It figures in photos and films as an icon of rebellion. Just as one man’s insurgent is another’s freedom fighter, the RPG can be seen as either the sling of David against totalitarian Goliaths or the terrorist’s Saturday night special. The RPG threatened the Stryker vehicles that were the centerpiece of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s new military strategy. “The RPG-7 will be around for a good while yet,” says Col. Grau. "It is a proven, cheap killer of technology which will continue to play a significant role — particularly when conventional forces are pitted against irregular forces.”