Shaped charges & IEDs ???

Just saw a news item about alleged Iranian involvement involvement in Iraq which showed some so called IEDs which featured shaped charges and were clearly not missiles of any kind.

Now, think I understand how shaped charges work but can anyone explain to me how they could work in a road-side-bomb as it was always my understanding that they required actual contact with armour to be effective.

Also isn't the use of the term IED a little misleading if they are actually using high tech military grade devices.

 

Not really, IED means improvised explosive device, which can include any kind of home made bomb (basically encompassing anything not mass-produced). The various republican paramilitary groups especially produced some pretty sophisticated stuff all of which would be classed as IEDs.

AFAIK a shaped charge works by channelling the explosive force in a specific direction, in the case of HEAT rounds this creates a jet of extremely hot gas which melts its way through armour. A similar effect could be created if the target vehicle was close enough with a suitable amount of explosives, or the charge itself could be fired (remotely or automatically) at the target. Lets face it, it's not going to need a big charge to take out a Landrover.

 

Hollow charges don't work terribly well if they are in contact with the armour, it actually works better if there is a short distance between the device and the target. Having said that, it's likely that what was being referred to was an Explosively Formed Projectile. It's like a hollow charge but with a very shallow cone or dish which on detonation forms a very nice projectile that remains lethal for several hundred meters. Google "Explosively Formed Projectile" or "Self Forging Fragment".

Not exactly the simplest thing to design, and hence suspected Iranian involvement.

Due to the fact that it's acronym spells 'heat' it's a common misconception. The jet that is produced is metallic (usually, although you can use just about anything but metal works best) and is technically still a solid, it's just in a superplastic state that means it behaves like a liquid, hence when you see the resulting penetration it looks like something has 'splashed' through the armour. You often see it referred to as a liquid or even plasma but I believe I've been told that even if all of the energy in the explosive was converted to heat it wouldn't be enough to melt the liner which when you look at how much explosive is in such a warhead seem reasonable to me.

 

Gryle

That hits the nail on the head I think. Stubby cylinders with a concave copper cone at the business end is what I saw.

These are hardly things you could slap together in your kitchen - sophisticated foreign involvement almost certainly involved - whether Iran or not - I'm slightly dubious about such intelligence these days (since the WMD stuff in fact).

 

Shaped charges are easy to manufacture after you have the explosive charge. The knowledge of their benefits are not however. Someone from a professional organization has gotten in and doing this. It is well known Iranians did this with Hezbollha and they are a few hundred miles away. It is a lot easier to do the same thing in Iraq. I have no doubt Iran either is sponsoring it or turning a blind eye from those that are.

 

All you need is components ( especcialy explosives) and a machine shop. Not too difficoult to produce if you know what you are doing. I seriously doubt Iranian involment. On the other thought what do you think those few 100 tousands Iraqi weapons production specialists that were fired by Bremmer are doing right now?

 

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there is nothing very hight tech about it , a milk can filled with explosives , shaped with a headlight reflector ( parabolic ) and a hemispherical copper plate
the whole thing is garage grade , not government issue .
a good search around the web plus some experimental tinkering could account for it .

the real problem is ...where did the missiles wich took half a dozen US choppers came from ?
is there more around ?


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Agreed.

Trainng and equipment is coming from somewhere.

 

That's correct, there are no end of machine shops in Iraq that could build the actual EFP device, however optimising the design might be a little trickier. Things you need to know but probably won't find with Google: Explosive thickness, explosive composition, projectile plate material, plate thickness, plate profile, etc. And if you find these devices across the country all built to the same specifications that would suggest possible foreign involvement.

By the way, is there any particular reason for the

style of thing?

 

Acctualy optimisation is not to difficoult. Various regimes/parties cooperate quite frequently. For example when F-117 was shot down over Serbia Serbian conclusions were quite widely distributed among interested parties (Russia, China, Iraq...). Same goes for conclusion and succesfull designs of improvised weapons. For example compare films of home-made katyusha rockets used in Afganistan by mudjahediin and films of identical devices used in Iraq by all militias. It is only natural that succesfull designs of EFP devices would be quite well known by now among interested parties.

As i said in my previous post. Bremmer sacked large number of profesional weapons production specialists from quite large Saadams weapon production industry in his debaathification fiasco. What do you think those specialists are doing right now?

As for missiles that are responsible for helicopter losses they could be old Stingers that US supplied to the likes of Osama (unlikley as they would be almost 20 years old by now) or widely used and produced Igla or Strela missiles. Tracing last two mentioned missiles would be problematic as they are most widely used shoulder fired AA missiles and are in production all over ex SSSR and are used for long time. I belive that even if serial nubers are known it would be almost impossible to trace their origin (supplier) before they ended in Iraq.

 

Oh, how so?

Which would basically be confirmation of foreign involvement, wouldn't it?

 

Testing the design is mother of optimisation. Other way is high tech with computer simulations but basicly you still have to test the thing few times.

Foreign involvment could mean that Hezbollah gave the info on design long time ago. Do not forget that Saadam had quite succesfull and large weapons industry and that most of the specialists were sacked after the occupation (together with few huderd thousands of proffesional soldiers). Do you think that Iraqis are idiots and are incapable to produce such simple devices? Most of the theoretical concept can be found on the net (like the link few posts back). All you need to do is to experiment a bit to optimise the design. Explosives are not a problem in Iraq as few hundered tonns were stolen from unguarded storages in 2003. Doubt that other components would present a problem for POI (pissed off Iraqi).

The net is a beutifull thing you can even find plans for GPS signal countermesures (JDAMS, Tomahawks are suddenly very inacurate). All you have to do is have some knowledge on basic electronics (diodes, transistors...). BTW thing is ussualy disguised as cigarete pack.

 

Well of course you can develop them just using testing, I would have thought that a group of Iraqis setting off into the desert every couple of weeks to set off a couple of dozen EFP devices and mesure their effects might have attracted some American attention. Finite element modelling would get most of the way there and no one would be the wiser. The easiest is if someone else just hands you a working design.

Hezbollah uses EFP mines?

Yes. I posted that.

 

AFAIK they were the pioneers in their use.

Why head into the desert if you can test them in realistic setting (read against US wheicles)

 

Because that makes it quite hard to properly test your results...

 

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The iED have been around the " palestine /lebanon front " for a decade or more , like the kazzam rockets or the suicide belts ,
the designs is a ground up evolution ,
if anything the crudity of those devices point out to no official iranian government involvment ,

If teheran was seriously pissed off , modern weapons would appears in great quantity ,
imagine thousand of RPG , claymores and shoulder fired AA missiles manned by all the shia who own a favor to iran ,
I.E. the totallity of the current iraky government plus every armed shia militia ,
the quasi totality of the police and iraky army , now trained and equiped by the U.S.army, would turn on their trainers like rabid dogs
thousands of highly trained and motivated " volunteers " would pass from iran across the undefended border to swamp every small allied detachment .

That would be iranian involvement !
A british military man said that teheran could take basra in one afternoon with three mollahs in a truck with megaphones






ps Gryle the dots are for esthetic , I like a bit of elbow room

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That would be in my opinion a realistic assesment of the situation in Shia part of Iraq.

BTW
We are cutting our forces in Iraq by 50%. From 4 trainers in Bagdad 2 were made redundant.

 

Well there you go, you learn something every day. All the reports I've heard previously suggested all the Isreali tanks and so on taken out by Palestinian groups relied on stacked AT mines or simply masses of explosives.

As Ricky said you couldn't be sure of the results, like if the projectile formed properly, it's final velocity, or performance against light armour like that of the armored Hummers, or maybe even something like an FV432.


jeaguer, fair enough

 

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the palestinians had the trick of burrowing under a road and fill the tunnel with explosives , no visible external signs ,
under franco in spain , the ETA did the same to get a spanish prime minister
hezbollah favored the road side bomb triggered by a watcher , with video as proof , those video were commonly shown on iraki TV in the nineties's ,
that was copy-cat ( copy-catted ? ) widely today in irak
a commonality is not the proof of organised connections ,
anyone with a given problem would found the same set of solution .

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