China's panzerfaust, a really small RPG

szbd said:

Well, at that time the frontlilne soldiers got worse than that. But anyway, they finally chose to copy RPG instead of this thing.

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China had the type 69 (rpg copy) since, well, 1969. The type 79 were meant to increase anti-tank power in close combat, without reducing rifle men in a squad. The close combat scenario went away as Chinese gained tanks and Soviets calmed down, and that's why this went away.

type 79 mini rocket never went into mass production. From 1979, the factory that produces type 69 (RPG), Jiangbei machinary factory in Anhui, began research of new infantry rocket, that is PF89

In the 80's China wanted to copy everything from the West, canceling many domestic programs. The PF89 was the attempt to match AT-4. Also in 1979 we fought Vietnam where they had no tanks. Probably the soldiers preferred the longer range RPG over there.

No, you got it wrong. PF89 is a rocket while AT-4 is a missile. They have different range, different accuracy and different fire power. The AT-4 counter part is HJ-8. PF89 is similar in the idea with type 79 mini rocket, just much bigger and powerful.

zaky said:

maybe not the best work but I am tiring

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very nice picture! the smoke figure looks like a demon.

at-4:

Now we got two AT-4

Interesting situation indeed, two systems with same designation.
The discussion is about AT4 / M136 LAW

not AT-4 SPIGOT.

An infantry AT weapon that sacrifices range for penetrating power would be a good idea, the thing with most modern infantry AT weapon is that their range are unnecessarily long and don't have enough penetrating power, engaging enemy armour at the range of 300m shouldn't be the job of light infantry, they should fight enemy tanks in close terrain, so, it will be best for them to have a weapon with a range of 50m and be able to penetrate the side armour of modern MBT's potentially fitted with ERA.

Current man portable "LAW" like grenade launchers can already do that out to about 200-300 m. The thing is, MBT is only a small fraction of the combat vehicles out there. Long range ATGM, even if unable to penetrate the frontal armor of the most-protected MBT, is still often useful. And that range is very useful property on its own.