Nov 27, 2024
Roy
Workshop imagery from Ukraine shows how to dismantle a Swedish AT4 anti-tank weapon and convert it into a warhead for an FPV drone. We have seen many how-to demonstrations repurposing obsolete munitions before, but this is a brand-new weapon, likely supplied direct from the U.S., with a list price of around $3,000. Why is Ukraine cannibalizing a perfectly good Bazooka-type weapons for a drone warhead?
According to the OSINT analyst going by Roy who posted the images, the reason is simple. And it is not because of a shortage of other warheads.
“I think Ukrainians believe that unguided shoulder launched weapons have limited value,” Roy told me.
The Rise Of The ‘Bazooka’
The U.S. has supplied Ukraine with more than 100,000 unguided shoulder-launched anti-armor weapons. These are the direct descendants of the original U.S. Army 3.5-inch M-1 Rocket Launcher from WWII, universally known by it’s nickname of ‘Bazooka’. Previous anti-tank weapons relied on high-speed projectiles to pierce armor. The Bazooka used the new technology of the shaped charge. This does not need to strike at speed, but produces an armor-piercing jet of metal when it detonates.
Similar weapons, including the Soviet RPG, soon became universal among infantry across the world, giving every squad its own protection against enemy armor.
The AT4 family made by Saab Bofors is the latest generation; technically it is a recoilless launcher rather than a rocket launcher like the Bazooka but the difference is subtle. Claimed to be one of the most successful of its type in the world, the AT4 is a one-shot, easy-to-use disposable weapon. According to the company website: “For any experience level, a dismounted soldier simply aims, fires and destroys the target before discarding the empty tube.”
The name AT4 is a play on the weapon’s 84mm caliber, in the U.S. Army it is known as the M136 and has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It has an effective range of 300 meters and can penetrate over 17 inches or armor plate.
There have been relatively few videos of such weapons being used in Ukraine. Instead, most of the armor killing has taken place at much longer ranges, and often by FPV quadcopter drones, typically from three miles away and sometimes as much as twelve miles.
The Drone Munition Pipeline
FPVs are essentially racing drones converted to carry warheads. There were no ready-made warheads for them, so soldiers took to converting whatever they had. From the start, this meant strapping RPG-7 warheads to drones and flying them into targets to great effect.
Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Everything from mortar bombs to grenades to rocket warheads, in fact pretty much anything small enough, gets carried by a drone. One obvious candidate was the old Soviet RKG-3 anti-tank hand grenade. This hefty weapon was supposed to be thrown over an enemy tank in a long arc so that it struck the thinner top armor. Given that it could only be thrown about twenty yards, dangerously close to a tank, the RKG-3 was more or less a suicide weapon (the danger radius for the blast is also twenty yards). As an FPV warhead though, it can strike from long range with no risk to the user.
In addition to anti-armor shaped charges, Roy notes that some FPVs are equipped with anti-personnel fragmentation warheads and others with thermobaric charges to destroy buildings and bunkers.
Steel Hornets
Workshops like Ukraine’s Steel Hornets now produce quantities of purpose-designed drone munitions with 3D printing. Russia claims to be mass-producing them, though there is little sign of the factory-made bombs at the front.
FPV are cheap at around $500 each. With Ukraine producing more than 1.5 million drones this year there is a clearly a huge demand for FPV warheads. But they do not seem to be running out of munitions to convert.
“I still see plenty of PG-7 warheads on downed Ukrainian FPVs, so I don’t think there is a desperate shortage,” says Roy.
Rather, it is a matter of making better use of the resources they have. And the high-quality AT4 warhead, superior to Russian-made models or home-made munitions, is wasted on a short-range, unguided weapon.
“As the battlefield TTPs [Training, Tactics and Procedures] have matured they likely realized there is a low likelihood that infantry will be on foot within a couple hundred meters of armored vehicles where AT4’s are useful in their normal configuration,” Brian Davis, founder and President of munition specialists Kraken Kinetics told me. “So, they are rightfully repurposing those advanced shaped charges for FPV delivery where they will be much more effective.”
The Drone Advantage
Having the warhead delivered by drone rather than Bazooka brings obvious advantages above and beyond the massively extended range.
“The [AT4] operator is stuck on the ground with a very limited field of view,” says Roy. “With an FPV, the operator now has a god’s eye view of the battlefield, and new advantages of persistence, and ability to re-attack or switch targets.”
While the AT4 operator can only hit targets that they can see directly, the drone operator can fly over terrain and buildings and seek out targets miles away. The AT4 has little chance of hitting a moving target, FPVs can chase down trucks and other vehicles including motorbikes maneuvering at high speed.
While the AT4 operator can only hit whichever side of a vehicle is facing them. The FPV pilot can pick the most vulnerable spot. For Russian tanks, this typically means striking the turret rear where ammunition is stored and a direct hit often results in instant destruction.
“Such a system is now a precision guided weapon,” notes Roy.
These advantages – range, precision, the ability to carry out close reconnaissance before attacking, hitting moving targets – are enough to persuade Ukrainians that the AT4 warhead belongs on a drone.
The Death Of The Bazooka?
Clearly Ukraine needs more and better drone warheads. As well as local production, the U.S. is now reportedly supplying some specialist drone munitions, although no details have been given.
That does not mean that more AT4s will not be disassembled.
“Even if the battlefield dynamics changed in the future in a manner where Ukrainians in the defense could use shoulder fired AT4’s more routinely I’d argue they are still better employed on FPVs,” says Davis.
And while this may be the first time an AT4 conversion has been seen, the other side has been cannibalizing its shoulder-fired weapons for FPV warheads for some time.
“The Russians apparently believe the same,” says Roy. “They also have been disassembling their latest RPG systems for mounting the warhead on FPVs, including tandem warhead launchers such as the PG-7R, PG-32, and thermobaric warheads such as TBG-7, RMG and RShG-2.”
This does not mean that shoulder-launched weapons are obsolete. There are still situations where the instant direct effect of an AT4 in close combat might be more useful than an FPV. And FPVs may still be affected by jamming or adverse weather conditions, whereas an AT4 is always there.
But soldiers are great pragmatists. And the fact that they choose to give up shoulder-launched weapons so they can have more FPV warheads is a strong signal of how war is changing.
Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
The title makes it sound as if the Ukrainians are desperate for drone warheads, but it turns out that they aren’t desperate. They just know exactly what they’re doing … how certain weapons are best utilized.
Awesome! 🇺🇦👍