Now this is what I call real thinking. I wish it could be adopted. A diabolical plot, remind me not to become your enemy.

This has merit. I am going to see if I can find out who I could talk to about suggesting it...

A most excellent idea! I am amazed that we are not already doing this. This type of thing has been a common practice of our military in most of our major engagements in the last century. In the past it never really deterred the use of any particular weapon, but it never hurts our moral to see some of the bad guys die during an attempted ambush rather than our people. Nothing makes one feel better than hearing an explosion and rather than having an incoming missile impacting your vehicle, instead having parts of your erstwhile ambusher doing the impacting. Of course since they don't mind blowing themselves up, they'll continue to use them, probably with backup gunners "just in case Mohammed blows himself up instead of the infidel's humvee".

The idea has merit. It won't stop them from using the shells in IED's, though. That seems to be the only hole in the plan, but it is a big one. RPG rounds can still be used with a remote trigger, like a cell phone or a wireless doorbell, just like a questionable tank or howitzer round might, so we would essentially be handing the insurgents more explosives, with the caveat that they have to be more creative with them.

The downside to this idea far outweighs the upside.

1) If this is truly a decoy round, it must be essentially indistinguishable from a normal round. How do you safeguard against these rounds being intermingled with rounds our troops use?

2) Since this round is supposed to be designed to blow up in the users face, will it also be unstable to handle, perhaps resulting in unintended casualties to "non-combatants" or combatants whose deaths would cause tremendous political damage.

3) Since part of the job is disarming the Iraqi's, how would one know if the rounds being confiscated were "good" rounds or decoys? This gets back to the intermingling dilemma.

4) Another problem is rounds which explode in the face of children or women who really are combatants, but purport not to be. When they explode, the enemy can claim that the rounds were actually from American guns, not exploded decoy rounds.

Bottom line. The risk of intermingling with ammunition supplies for American troops is too great. Any markings which would identify the decoy rounds would be quickly found out, negating any lasting impact manufacturing the decoy rounds would have. Also, until we are willing to accept that purported "civilians," including women and children are actually combatants, and are willing to treat them accordingly, decoy rounds have too much bad political potential.

Sorry, nice try.

Do the Iraqi insurgants use Russian designed RPGs (e.g. RPG-7) or US RPG equivalents (e.g. M-72, M-136). Being able to use ammunition scavenged from your dead enemies is obviously an advantage for guerillas, so there probably is some pressure to use US arms.

Our troops don't use RPG-7s, Scott, at least last I checked. (Certainly they're not issued them; if some of our Spec Ops guys pick up RPGs for ersatz use, well, we'd best TELL THEM that there are decoy rounds. Hell, we could tell the entire world - the point is to make nobody want to use an RPG.)

I don't see that it will be any more "unstable" and "dangerous" to innocents than a normal RPG round, which, after all, is still designed to blow up, and is a rocket, after all. (Explosion on ignition is not really any more dangerous to non-combatants and children than explosion a little after ignition, is it? It's not like the suggestion is to make it explode if you drop it or jostle it.)

As far as confiscation goes, it doesn't matter much which you've got, since we simply destroy rounds we confiscate. If wse destroy some decoys, no harm done. The point, after all, is to make the enemy uncertain about the safety of his weapons (to himself).

And, well, as to the fourth one, that's life. Doubtless nobody will believe that the RPG launcher they were holding could have anything to do with being a combatant; given that the jihadis and their tools lie about the US outright all the time, I don't imagine that it's a significant objection that they could lie about something else, too.

I think it's unlikely that the US would be able to infiltrate the enemy's ammunition supply enough to kill significantly more mujahideen than are being killed already in the good old-fashioned way.

hmm. I think we should replace them, yes. The ones we replace them with should be armed with a little mechanism that, when you light one up, flips out a little flag that says, "Bang". It should also have a delay mechanism so that when the jihadi leans in to get a closer look at it, THEN it will blow up.

I have been spending too much time thinking about cartoons. Thank michele.

also, if we place a box full of fake grenades for insurgents to "find", what are the chances that they're going to use all of those grenades? all it will take is two of them to go off prematurely before the terrorists figure that the whole case of explosives is bad and not use them. at which point we've just supplied them with a case (-2) of explosives for free.

creative thinking is needed in a fight like this one, but this particular creative idea i think is DOA.

This type of deception was carried out in Vietnam quite widely by the SOG operatives. It was fairly successful there. Something similar has been done in Afghanistan as well.

Iraqi insurgents don't qualify for the Geneva Convention, since they dress in civilian clothes and do not fight for a recognized government. They might even be considered spies, subject to summary execution when detected. Infiltration of enemy groups with summary execution of combatant cells in toto, might prove the most successful strategy of all.

Possibly a safer idea would be to swap the launchers instead of the grenades. That way we can continue to keep confiscating the grenades.

All you would need to do is (slightly) reduce the amount of backblast that would be allowed throught the exhaust. It would only take a small change in the tube (and it couldn't be fixable). The rest of the blackblast would then maim, blind or kill the shooter.

One reason that the grenadiers can bring down a helicopter is because they change the timing (max revolutions) on the grenade to explode sooner (at lower heights) -this trick is taught by Al Qaeda and was first used against us in Moghidishu. You could change the timing to have the grenade explode after a few revolutions (or about 2 feet from the grenadier).

Scott: As others noted, the simple solution to your objection is to have our troops not use RPGs, or use a radically redesigned version. This in effectd disables most that are currently used in the field by the bad guys, and would be rather cheap from our perspective.

It's certainly no silver bullet, but it would definitely be disruptive to the terror networks, and relatively cheap from our perspective.

I understand the Israelis have perfected an airborne surveillance method, including use of unmanned inexpensive drones, to detect and destroy roadside bombs. If so, they could probably inexpensively detect terrorists. Maybe just by tracking anyone wearing a mask. Then kill him from out of range.

I have never understood why all the masked Arabs attending funerals for their Hamas, el Aqsa brigades, Hezbollah and other heroes have not be targeted en masse for aerial destruction. (Sort of like bumping off one of the old time "five families" of New York by killing everybody who showed up for one of the godfather's funerals.)

Also, the first-born sons of all the known terrorists could be targeted for assassination. That would get their attention real quick, and possibly modify their behavior.

Ruthless, you say? Like the LRDG of World War II, my motto is "who dares, wins".

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Ok, here's some reality.

1) The RPG's that the insurgents are using are picked up in one of the hundreds of huge ammo dumps scattered around Iraq.
2) Our troops don't use RPG's. The ones being used are the venerable RPG-7's that the Soviets handed out like halloween candy.
3) Violation of the Hague Convention (I know, a reach but what the heck!)
4) RPG's never, NEVER destroyed an M1 tank. Takes one hell of a lot more sophisticated round than an RPG. An RPG will just cause the armor to ring.
5) RPG's are NOT used as IED's. Instead, they are using, mostly, artillery rounds.

OK, now, having been an old fuddy-duddy, how bout this?

We implant a chip into thousands and thousands of the artillery shells and RPG rounds in ammo dumps. that chip, on receipt of a coded radio signal, will detonate the round. Then, periodically, a Blackhawk sending out the coded radio signal flies over cities and detonates the ammo.
(Thanks to David Gerrold)

didn't we have a nice little box that would broadcast out intermittant radio signals that bounced up and down the frequencies out to about 1,000 yards back in the late 70's early 80's that we dismissed as causing too many civilian casualties? i think they dismissed it around the time people started driving trucks loaded with explosives into emabassies and such. if they wouldn't go for that, they won't go for exploding (early) rpg rounds. however, i think it's a time honored tradition in the special forces to "treat" a few rounds and leave them behind whenever they discover a weapons cache. at least it used to be.

This sort of thing was done in the Vietnam War. SOG troops would salt captured stores with a handful of rounds filled with explosives instead of gunpowder. Really played with the VC's minds.

If we could pull it off, this would be MOST effective.

"1) If this is truly a decoy round, it must be essentially indistinguishable from a normal round. How do you safeguard against these rounds being intermingled with rounds our troops use?"

How about putting little RFID chips in them? Troops equipped with RPGs in the field could scan their rounds before going out for the day, just in case. The only problem would be making sure the enemy doesn't learn how to detect the chips.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/337/1/1/

I believe this was done (if I remember my dad's war stories) in India (?) to the British(? again, not sure). But basicaly they threw bad rounds into the weapons store, and when they used them in battle (muskets?) they would actually shoot backwards through the soldier firing the shot....?

Maybe use a bright marking die in the dummy rounds. This would mark the black hats for later collection and umm . . . . disposal as well as avoiding potential collateral or friendly damage.

spiffo

This is terrible. It reminds me of the way the CIA would plant AIDS infected cocaine and crack in ghetto neighborhoods in order to kill people of color. And what, while I am here I might as well mention this, if a child picks one up and accidentally shoots it and kills himself. You Republicans always talking never thinking.

As the mother of a SEAL, can I help with the building of these?

Andre, these insurgents/terrorists need to be stopped. Our enemies in Iraq are but a few compared to the Iraqis that want to be able to live in a country they can be proud of. Or, are you someone who doesn't think that the Iraqis deserve to live in freedom and without fear.

And quit repeating those ridiculous fantasies. Nothing you ever write again can be taken seriously.

I hear that the British fought a Muslim uprising in India in the 1800's by promising to bury any dead insurgents in a pig's skin. The Muslims believed that this would condemn the dead to hell instead of paradise, and the insurgency faltered.

Just a thought. Maybe there's something to this.

This would certainly make the PC crowd upset!

Still seems like a pretty good idea to me.

Buster said "4) RPG's never, NEVER destroyed an M1 tank. Takes one hell of a lot more sophisticated round than an RPG. An RPG will just cause the armor to ring."

Ahem.... http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292236-2336437.php

An RPG-22 is still an RPG....

"And what, while I am here I might as well mention this, if a child picks one up and accidentally shoots it and kills himself."

What are the odds of that? The kid's not going to accidentally fire it. He has to prep it first, which takes a little know-how:

http://www.ak-47.us/ShootingNews.php?num=246

Its likely that the only people firing these weapons will be adults who know what they're doing.

AIDS infected cocaine and crack planted by the CIA ... heh. That's a good one. Clue to Andre, AIDS is spread through bodily fluids and dies very quickly outside the body. The AIDS virus would not survive in a cocaine matrix, making it an utterly ineffective means of transmitting the disease if the men in black ever sought such a thing. I'd take inventory of your ideas before criticizing anyone's thinking. The tin foil hat is really snazzy though, I'll give you that.

Hey, I thought of this too. It's a *great* idea. Another method of infiltration: certainly there are arms dealers selling/manufacturing RPG ordinance. It wouldn't be too hard to pay off some of these guys to mix some of our own cooked rockets into the mix.

I had another idea that was related: use a computer and a big broadcast tower to call every cellphone number in Iraq on a cycle, repeatedly. So that the average cell phone will ring once a day (one ring only). Do the same with garage door opener frequencies. The insurgents use these to remote detonate bombs. It would be nice if the bombs detonated while they were transporting them...

"Ahem.... http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292236-2336437.php

An RPG-22 is still an RPG...."

Interesting. An RPG-7 DID knock out a tank. Also, what could that 'mystery penetrator' be? I would automatically assume depleted uranium, but who--outside of the US military--has access to such ammunition?

Scott,

1) There's no possibility of confusion between RPG-7s or RPG-29s and what we use.

2) Being fused to detonate on firing is no more "unstable" than being fused to detonate on impact.

3) It doesn't matter if we capture some back -- we're destroying them anyway.

4) Wouldn't make a difference -- they're already using women and children as shields and are proven shameless liars. Women and children using arms are armed combatants and we're not pretending that they aren't.

Grenades with the delay fuse removed (so they explode as soon as the spoon opens) are a good idea, as well as mortar rounds fused to go off on firing. 7.62x39mm ammo loaded with C4 instead of gunpowder will blow the rifle up in the firer's face.

I'd be curious in knowing how many weapons belonging to the "friendly" Iraqis are being used against us?

Hmmm.

Sorry folks but these are impractical ideas. Interesting ideas, but not something that either could, or would, be implemented.

If you really want to support the troops and make their lives easier, complain. Complain to any member of Congress that looks to score political points off the backs of our soldiers. Complain to any news organization that decides 45+ days of Abu Ghraib is really something that everybody wants.

Right now those two things would do a great deal more than any ideas on salting defective munitions. The media alone, concentrating on Abu Ghraib, has cause enormous harm to the War on Terror. And their broadcasts are being used as justification for attacks, and as a means of recruiting for those attacks.

The War can't be won here at home but it can be lost here.

Regarding RPGs that could penetrate a tank's armor: Perhaps Iran is using its nuclear program to develop depleted-uranium RPG projectiles to be smuggled into Iraq.

I kind of think Andre was kidding...

as a former sholder of vietnam i feel that insted
of doing this rea rpg shells, why does not the govt just nuke everyplace thats found to have teroists there, one or two cities destroyed will be a bigger deterament to these assholes howard

i fell just as you do howard these people are not worth losing our people for, i also am a
vet from vietnam/cambodia

No no no. I want to see exploding ROCKS. You know, like on Star Trek. Just drop 'em out in the Palestinian 'hoods....

To hell with all these intricate plans. Just off-load a covey of Daisy Cutters over them and let God sort them out.

I have a similiar idea but for nuclear bomb components. I think an important tool to help slow the proliferation of nuclear weapons would be to flood the blackmarket with faulty bomb components, faulty triggers, perhaps spiked uranium which is likely to blow up (in a standard chemical, non-nuclear explosion) if treated to standard enrichment methods, etc.

Hopefully, this would force any nation attempting to develop the bomb to have to develop everything in-house which should make the process much slower and much more costly.

Same thing for missiles. I would make a lot of fake Scud-C's (if this is possible) with faulty
guidance systems and parts that easily corode, etc.

I have a similiar idea but for nuclear bomb components. I think an important tool to help slow the proliferation of nuclear weapons would be to flood the blackmarket with faulty bomb components, faulty triggers, perhaps spiked uranium which is likely to blow up (in a standard chemical, non-nuclear explosion) if treated to standard enrichment methods, etc.

Hopefully, this would force any nation attempting to develop the bomb to have to develop everything in-house which should make the process much slower and much more costly.

Same thing for missiles. I would make a lot of fake Scud-C's (if this is possible) with faulty
guidance systems and parts that easily corode, etc.

If I remember correctly, the AK-47 tends to be the weapon of choice for these thugs. Why not insert enough C-4 into a round to foul the bolt and crack the housing of the weapon.

All you'd need to do is make a few cases of the "ammo" and dump it into the combat zones. I don't really think that too many of the thugs are going to go out of their way to check the ammo, until they fire their weapon.

All they'd have to do is drop boxes of the rounds all over the countryside and let the thugs figure out for themselves which round is the good one...

One less AK firing away at our guys is one more grunt coming back home. And just picture the look on the Muj's face when his weapon ceases to work, and he's pulling shrapnel out of his face...

In the early 80's, the CIA sabotaged the Soviet Union's economy, by letting their industrial spies steal software to run their natural gas pipeline that had hidden flaws in it. The software worked for a while, then went haywire, creating a monumental explosion and fire, which (along with the loss of the revenue the pipeline was supposed to be delivering) did significant damage to the Soviet Economy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002

Wayer, you mean we gave Windows ME to the commies?

Interesting idea. I know special forces did these sorts of things in Vietnam and such. But I see a rather major problem with it... You can't just leave dummy rounds sitting on the road. Terrorists aren't just going to walk up and go "Hey! Wow! Free RPG rounds lying around! Cool!" And start picking them up.

You'd have to leave these rounds at ammo dumps/weapons caches.

And you can't rig EVERY round in a cache, or the bad guys will pick up on it real quick and dump the entire load.

So, coalition forces find a load of RPG rounds. which would you prefer they do? Destroy the entire stack, so none can be used against us, or salt it with a few bad rounds, which also means leaving the GOOD rounds for insurgents to use?

The effects on terroist morale when their RPG's start blowing up may be substantial. But is it equal to the political impact of having american and coalition soldiers killed by RPG rounds we could have destroyed outright? (Ira is one big ammo dump, so it's not as if they can't get rounds elsewhere I'm certain... But do you think the Media will care?)

Just a thought.

I think it was General Pershing who "dropped" a few salted rounds for the Muslim rebels to find in the Phillipines.

And no, depleted uranium is not used in RPGs. The difference is the older RPG-7 round used a cone shaped penetrator, some newer versions use a more expensive, harder to manufacture trumpet shaped penetrator that gives better performance. In both cases the actual penetrator is copper. Shaped charge penetrators are driven with such speed that the strength of the armor doesnt matter, but rather only the inertia.

The penetration of the M1 tank in question was through relatively thin armor on the side, not through the frontal armor.

If you've seen one, you've seen em all.

An alternative would be to replace the PG-7 warhead (which is what the RPG-7 uses) with an inert warhead, perhaps filled with paint. That would make it pretty useless from an operational perspective, and it would give our guys a chance to shoot back. One could replace ALL the rounds in a given cache, and not worry about it.

Another alternative is to fiddle with the rocket motors. The RPG round, if I remember correctly, has a two section rocket motor that consists of the booster (a fast burning motor that kicks it out of the launcher fast) and a sustainer (a slower burning motor that ignites when the round is a safe distance from the gunner). If you make the motor just a small charge of colored smoke, you have a nice marker for the troops to spot and shoot at.

Now, given that you need to be in a fairly clear area to launch an RPG because of the back-blast, and the fact that you need to expose yourself to fire it, that makes you vulnerable to return fire. Marking the location of hostile troops with colored smoke is a darn good idea (and they probably won't live to warn their buddies about it).

The germans did this already during WWII with their "Potato Masher" stick grenades. Doesn't make it a bad idea though.

I believe the M-1 that was "disabled" by the RPG merely lost a track. Be advised that the Army designates combat vehicles "disabled" for relatively minor damage.

Explosive in AK rounds and doctored grenades were used in Viet-Nam. They were insterted into ammo dumps along the Trail. Worked well too.

Cyberludite:

Beautiful!

Salting the hundreds of Iraqi ammo dumps is a splendid opportunity. Since the terrorists are already pilfering the stuff anyway, the self-immolation option will cause less pilfering.

Hokiepundit, I kind of wish Andre was kidding. Unfortunately, there are plenty of idiots who believe that ridiculous crap.

BTW the terrorist towel heads are using what used to be considered the eastern block version of the rpg rounds, mostly now made in China...

Back in S.E. Asia one little trick to use was to gimmick the rounds for the AK-47 by inserting a small dab of C-4 in place of the powder and reinsert these rounds as the second or third round in a clip of dropped AK...

Nothing says loving, like a rifle bolt blown back into a towel head's face...

Ref the M1; it *was* penetrated through the side armor by what was believed to have been a later-version RPG-7. Call it what you want, it burned through the skirt and side armor just above the track, across the crew compartment, and then penetrated a couple of inches into the armor on the other side. Crew survived and the gunner's flak jacket saved his life when the penetrator clipped the back of his seat (and flak jacket). Photos of this were available at BlackFive's site 05 November 2003 but the original report was removed. The tank crew had good things to say about the automatic fire suppression system. The vehicle was repairable.

And anything to make the enemy doubt their equipment is a good thing.

I remember reading somewhere about a more potent weapon ... their own religion. We'd be too wimpy to use it, though.

Supposedly the British were having trouble with some Muslim-type guerillas in some region. So they caught a bunch of them, executed them, and sprayed their bodies with pig fat or blood, thus denying them entry into what someone has called their "x-rated paradise."

They let one guerilla "escape" to tell his pals. Allegedly the problem cleared up pretty quickly.

The British Army did this during the Malaya insurgency (but with fragmentation grenades).

And the answer is...
Make two types of rigged RPG rounds; those that explode on firing and those that fire normally but can be remote detected/detonated. When you find a weapons cache, replace/refit what's there with a mix of the two. Then in field, you have three possibilities; a)You've never seen the shell, nothing you can do about that, b) it's one of the 'explode on firing' types, you don't need to do anything about those, or c) it's a detectable round, which means your guys on the ground get a heads up that they're walking into an ambush, which should be enough of an edge, if not you can light 'em up. Make portable 1000 yard detection/detonation gear (I think 1000 yds is outside an RPG's effective range) and have every patrol and/or convoy carry it.

My gosh! In checking this post today I am astounded at the number of discussion posts on this subject! It seems to have generated a lot of interest. As I mentioned way back in my previous comment, this idea has been employed by our military and others many times over the course of the last century of military conflict (and who knows, maybe before that).

There seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of some as to exactly what an RPG is, and how it works although some have tried to explain. First, it should be made clear that the RPG is NOT an issued weapon to US troops. We have equivalent but different weapons. This is not to say that some have not been picked up and used in the heat of battle (I know of a few incidents of this).

Secondly, modern anti-tank weapons penetrate by using one of two methods. Either a kinetic penetrator (a solid hardened metal warhead) or a shaped charge projectile (high explosive anti-tank or HEAT). A kinetic projectile just pushes its way through the armor by brute force using a combination of velocity and projectile mass. This is the type of warhead which is sometimes (but not always) made of depleted uranium. An Abrams WAS penetrated by a depleted uranium (DU) round of about 25mm (hmmm the chain gun on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Apache helecopter are 25mm and use DU in their anti-armor rounds...friendly fire?). DU has the added advantage over other penetrator materials like tungsten steel, of having an incendiary effect upon penetration to the interior of the tank. RPGs do NOT use DU rounds (not nearly enough velocity). RPGs use high explosive shaped charge rounds, like most other hand-held anti-tank weapons (bazooka, panzerfaust, dragon, etc.). This type of warhead cuts through armor by using a specially shaped charge to create a focused jet of superhot gas and molten metal. The advantage to this type of warhead is that the superheated gas and metal that penetrates to the inside of the tank is very incendiary. Super high velocity and high rotational speed from rifled weapons can have a deletory effect on a shaped charge weapon's effectiveness, so rocket type weapons are perfect for their use. They also have a penetration ability seemingly out of proportion to the weapon size. RPG's also have other types of warheads available such as high explosive fragmentation, and several variations of shaped charge projectiles. The Russians even developed a fuel/air (thermobaric) warhead, although I'm not sure how effective a FA warhead less than a few thousand pounds would be.

I still think this is a good idea, and would not be suprised if this is not already being done. One just has to be careful about using confiscated weapons if this type of program is in place.

A better solution would be to stop using HUMMVEEs for convoy protection and patrolling. Tracked vehicles like the Bradley, and an upgraded version of the venerable M113 APC (used by some National Guard units but left behind when they went to Iraq) have a much greater survivability to RPG attacks. Particularly if equipped with RPG stand-off fences. Even armored HUMMVEES are toast when hit by an RPG round. It doesn't even take a shaped charge round to defeat an armored HUMMVEE, The anti-personnel HE-frag round will destroy one. So even though I like the booby-trapped RPG round idea, giving our troops the right equipment would be an even better idea.

"It won't stop them from using the shells in IED's, though. "

If they also respond to a coded RF signal, then we get to remotely detonate IEDs before they're close enough to our guys to do any damage.

"This is terrible. It reminds me of the way the CIA would plant AIDS infected cocaine and crack in ghetto neighborhoods in order to kill people of color. And what, while I am here I might as well mention this, if a child picks one up and accidentally shoots it and kills himself. You Republicans always talking never thinking."

Oh, dear. I can't make up my mind if the poster is kidding or not. If yes, well done. If no ... dear Lord what are they teaching in school these days?

I suggest that U.S. troops bring some crop dusters to Iraq and, accompanied by "correspondents" from the pro-terrorist web sites and all other media, spray a solution that includes pig fat over all known munitions dumps. I understand that few Islamo-terrorists would even THINK about touching those munitions.

I read somewhere that the Israelies had managed to mix exploding bullets in with ammunition the PLO obtains. It seems that relatively quickly the Palestinians discovered a way to tell good bullets from bad, but it takes a lot of time to check all the bullets.

What about planting GPS locators in some fake munitions left in Iraq? When the munitions move, call in an airstrike on their new location. We can get the workshops where the IEDs are made this way. Or rig the munitions to be detonated by radio signal when they move. That way we don't have to get up off the couch to fight them. We just click "Kill" on the remote.

We could also spray the munitions with dye, perhaps dye that only shows up in infrared light. When our GIs stop suspicious characters, they can shine a light on them to see if they have traces of dye on them. Or they can shine the infrared light around to see if there are traces of dye that has transferred to doors and buildings, tracking the bad guys to their lairs.

We could also mount a psychological campaign against the insurgents by planting the rumor that we have contaminated the weapons dumps with chemical and biological weapons. Spray the dumps with chemicals that make people sick but not dead to lend credence to the rumor. Maybe plant dead animals around the dumps to pump up the fear factor.

Tantor

The US Army is very paranoid about rifles exploding, as troops become reluctant to pull the trigger. In WW-I we had a few 1903 Springfields explode an figuring out why was the top priority of the ordnance department. Rumors about defective weapons travel like wildfire on the front lines, and can severely degrade morale.

Anyway, the booby trapped RPG is a good idea, but you could also remove the charge and replace it with a GPS equipped cell phone, which would broadcast its position once an hour. Given the weight of the explosives in the warhead you should be able to hold enough Li-ion batteries for about 6 to 8 months of operation, given a two-minute wake-up and lock cycle for the GPS, and about 15 seconds of transmit time. The only question would be getting the fuse or other component insulated from the main body so it could act as an antenna, and whether that antenna would be any good.

Since it's a cell phone you could also program it to go active on command as a listening device, and these cell phones already can broadcast their position to a GPS map on an equivalent cell phone. That would allow a sergeant to see the position directly, without having the data have to pass through a dozen other hands.

You can even use vehicle tracking software that's already commercially available, and if you had enough of these "bugged" RPGs out there you'd probably start seeing paths like little trails of ants.

Of course, if you used some explosives as a potting compound to hold the batteries you get another cute capability. Not only can you see where Habib is, track him, and listen to his conversations, but you could holler back a cute one-liner right before you *99 him with the phone activating a switch to set off the explosive potting compound.

Last year I figured you could probably make them for maybe $600 each, not including all the lithium batteries. It might be worth a shot.

Montie,

Actually, the Apache uses a 30mm gun that fires a dual-purpose HEAT round. (The shaped charge will punch through 3" of steel, and it also has decent shrapnel effects.)The Abrams that was disabled by a 25mm gun was hit in the back by a Bradley, which was firing at someting beyond the tank. (D'oh!) It knocked out the engine & caught the APU on the turret on fire. The Abrams' crew was able to bail out safely.

Buster, ever hear of Lt. Col. Steve Russell, CO 4ID? I recall a news saying that he actually used a RC-car controller taped to his dashboard with the levers locked into a position, as the bombers were using bombs rigged to detonate on the frequency of the RC cars, so he'd drive around and automatically detonate any munition of this sort within 300 feet of his Humvee ...

Cybrludite,

OMG! Yes you are right. The Apache's Boeing M230 is a 30mm weapon, and does use HEDP/HE ammo, I had a slight brain malfunction there. As to the shot from the Bradley into the Abrams, Ah-Ha, just as I suspected. I still say "tracks" are the best and quickest solution to this problem. While obviously not invulnerable, they are certainly more survivable in the current environment when properly equipped.

yksgib suggested "...use a computer and a big broadcast tower to call every cellphone number in Iraq on a cycle, repeatedly. So that the average cell phone will ring once a day (one ring only)."

Uhh, the cellular system switches _are_ a computer. All we need to do this is add a command in the switchroom computer.

However, as soon as that's done, the terrs will start using a series of touchtone codes to trigger the device once the cellphone answers, a la 'port knocking'. If the right code sequence is heard in the first second or two of the call, it goes boom; otherwise not.

That will keep us from being able to remotely detonate systems, as we can't call every phone and then run every possible code within that first second or two.

--

However, as to the RPG issue? Salt them with a shaped charge which only blows up in the direction of the operator. Screw up the sustainer motor, and put a bright colored dye in the launch motor, to mark the grave of Foolish Fuad, who tried to smite the US, mwahahaha.

Had the same idea for sabotaged RPGs about a month ago - passed it along to the CIA via their website. Doubt they'll do it though...

I sent my idea to the CIA last year, Rumplestiltskin, but it's like a black hole.

But while I'm on the subject I should mention this interesting idea from 2002, published in the UK Telegraph.

They make the armor as two plates seperated by an electrical insulator. Put a big charge across them and when the jet of metal from the shape charge shorts them it gets immediately vaporized. It seems to work pretty well.

Beautiful idea, but I see a hole: If I were a terrorist and caught wind of this idea I would probably test out each batch of ammo by remote and discover which batches were contaminated with the booby trapped rounds.

In World War Two slave laborer's in German armament factories that made the fuses for German hand grenades managed to sabotage a significant portion of the grenade fuses, cuasing them to blow up almost immediately after the fuse was lit, before the German soldier would have time to throw the grenade at the enemy. This became such a problem, that by the last year or so of the war German troops would routinley throw out any box of fuses (packed separately from the grenades forshipping) manufactured after a certain date, knowing that there was a good chance any of those fuses would cause a grenade to blow up prematurely. I imagine there are Americans alive today because Germans they were fighting had no greandes they dared use for fear of these bad fuses.

I was told this story by a German veteran of World War 2 who remembered having boxes of grenades and no reliable fuses, making the grenades about as useful in combat as a 1 pound club. No fuse, no bang.

This idea is so good I would be surprised if there is not something like it already happening. None of the objections raised here are even slightly a problem, and most are laughable, showing little to no knowledge of how these weapon work.

Kim, [Blush]

Massey's idea is a clever one. And it's been done before.

During the war in Vietnam, US Naval Intelligence devised and carried out Project ELDEST SON, in which Naval SpecOps assets would raid known North Vietnamese and Viet Cong ammunition caches and plant boobytrapped ammunition of various types, from rifle ammunition to artillery shells. Similar raids were carried out by Army SpecOps assets under the auspices of Project POLE BEAN and Project ITALIAN GREEN.

It did not make much difference. Then again, how many battles did the NVA and VC win against US troops?