The big advantage that Carl-Gustav offers is that it’s much cheaper per round than smart munitions like Javelin.
“In the case of Ukraine [they’re] using these things for against everything from guys behind cover to light armored vehicles, soft skin vehicles and, of course, main battle tanks.”
Used by more than 40 countries.
Carl-Gustav can’t fill the top attack role NLAW and Javelin use against tanks. “But it can cripple a main battle tank and. And with some of these advanced warheads, it can affect a not just a mobility kill, but an outright Kill, at least from the rear.”
“And if you blow off a track, the thing isn’t moving and it can then be killed perhaps another way, or the crew will simply abandon it.”
There are 15 different types of shells, including smoke and illumination.
They’re also working on guided munitions.
They’re also working on a confined-space munition with reduced back-blast, which sounds really useful for urban warfare.
Models produced are M1 (starting 1946) through M4 (2014).
A wide variety of rounds, including antipersonnel and two-phase charge designed to defeat reactive armor.
Most of NATO uses it, including the U.S., UK, Germany, Poland and all three of the Baltic states.
Ukraine managed to take out a T-90 with it.
Whether it’s better than an RPG-7 probably comes down to training and use case. The RPG-7 looks to be a lot more portable, but I’m betting the average Carl-Gustav build quality is better.
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 15th, 2023 at 11:57 AM and is filed under Military, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Mr. Picky insists on pointing out that a bazooka was a pure rocket-based system; the Carl Gustav is a pure recoilless rifle system. RPG-7 is a hybrid somewhere in between the two; there’s a recoilless bit that serves to expel the round and get it away from the firer, and then a rocket motor ignites, carrying the munition to its destination.
Carl Gustav’s lineage is uniquely Swedish, going back to the Carl Gustaf 20 mm pvg m/42. The Swedes did not derive these systems from anything earlier like the Davis or Kropatschek recoilless systems. The 20mm m/42 was actually the first shoulder-fired recoilless system, anywhere.
The US used to have the M67 90mm Recoilless Rifle, but that was replaced by the Dragon AT missile. The other major recoilless system we had was the jeep-mounted M40 106mm Recoilless Rifle, which was the system that the TOW system replaced in US service.
Doctrinally, the old 2.36in Bazooka was the WWII standard for basic infantry AT work, with a couple of different cannons in place above that. Korea saw us issuing what should have been on issue in WWII, the 3.5in Super Bazooka, which was also when the various recoilless systems came in to replace the AT cannons. The M67 90mm likely owes something to the Carl Gustaf, but the damn things were about twice the size and a hell of a lot heavier. We still had them on issue as late as the early 1990s, in some Engineer units (and, the Ranger Regiment…) for use in bunker-busting. In my opinion, the Carl Gustaf was the superior weapon, in that it was much smaller and a lot easier to carry while still delivering about the same punch.
It’s a niggling point about the “recoilless rifle” vs. rocket thing, but it does make a difference. A rocket just needs a tube to stabilize things; the tube does not have to hold pressures the way a recoilless rifle does; it’s strictly there for guidance and protecting the firer from rocket exhaust. A rocket-based system will continue to burn after firing, making it much easier to track where it came from as it comes at you. A recoilless rifle, on the other hand, is using a cannon round and venting a bunch of the propellant gases out the back through a venturi in order to counterbalance the recoil. I suppose that that venturi effect being utilized could make it possible to say that there really isn’t much difference, in that both systems make use of rocket-type tech, but… Yeah. The really major thing is, with a recoilless system, that you won’t have a burning rocket motor giving the projectile a signature pointing right back at your firing position. If you can mask the launch signature, you’re golden…
Also, do note the difference in those videos: The Carl Gustaf rounds are in those cylindrical plastic cases they’re carrying around. This means that the rounds are protected against damage as you go running around the battlefield, something that is notably lacking with the RPG-7 system. I’ve seen RPG-7 rounds damaged beyond usability and abandoned in the course of operations, and I’ve been told by EOD guys that it’s not outside the realm of possibility for a damaged RPG-7 round to detonate upon an attempt to fire it, which is why they tell anyone who might run into one during the course of combat to just leave the damn things alone, aside from blowing them in place.
If you ever want an illuminating view into Soviet/Russian munitions…? Talk to the guys in EOD. Spend an afternoon in a classroom with them, and you’ll go off ever wanting to do their job, ever, especially when it comes to cleaning up Soviet munitions.
I was sitting in Kuwait back in 2003, out in one of the camps. The Kuwaiti Army experienced a significant emotional event when all that cheap crap they’d bought for Desert Storm from Warsaw Pact stocks just decided to blow the f*ck up one day, in storage. It took their EOD, our EOD, and a bunch of contractors months to clear all that crap out of the desert, and I have no idea how many Kuwaiti nomadic types and their camels got blown up wandering through all that stuff. It was scattered over a good chunk of the desert to the northeast of Kuwait City, and you were still turning up stuff months later. Soviet munitions were not designed with longevity or safety in mind; the West Germans wound up demilitarizing a bunch of what they found in the former East Germany, rather than try to even move it. They thought they could sell it or use it, but the ammo for the East German rifles produced toxins when fired, and most of the artillery wasn’t safe to move, let alone fire. At least, by NATO and West German standards… The Finns wanted to buy a bunch of it, but were told that while they could buy it, transporting it on German rail lines or roads was off the table. That’s how unstable a lot of that ammo was, and while I suspect that the West Germans might have been a tad on the “Safety Sally” side of things, they also weren’t entirely wrong about it, either. Look how many Soviet ammo dumps have blown up all by themselves, since the fall of the Soviet Union…
Having fired the M2 version a number of times, here’s a tidbit: if you fire it more than three times a day, you’re considered likely for tramatic brain injury. totally serious here.
Mr. Picky strikes again… There are two major lines of recoilless systems out there. One would be the sort with a blow-out base, like the Carl Gustaf, and the other would be the sort with a perforated cartridge case. In my second paragraph of the above post, I refer to the Kropatschek system, which isn’t actually a recoilless thing. What I meant to type, and forgot until re-reading what I wrote, was “Kromuskit”. That name evolves out of the names of the two guys at the Infantry school here in the US who were responsible for the perforated cartridge case design, Kroger and Musser. They actually got to a workable system before the official program did, which was hell-bent on copying a German blow-out base design. Their initial 57mm weapon got used in WWII and on into Korea, while the basic system got copied and built into the later 75mm and 105/106mm systems. These are all identifiable by the bulbous chamber area that accommodates the gas venting off the cartridge case and being re-directed to the rear. On base blow-out designs, the chamber area is simply a smooth continuation of the barrel. Carl Gustav and the old M67 90mm were base blow-out designs.
Totally true, although I believe that only applies to specific rounds, and can be ameliorated by wearing proper protective gear. I think they wanted you to double-up on hearing protection, as well; earplugs as well as muffs.
The same deal is true with the AT-4 disposable AT weapon. It’s basically a disposable one-time use Carl Gustav, anyway…
I’m not sure how bad the old M67 was, with regards to the TBI issue. I know that firing that sumbitch was always a significant emotional event, and it was a spectacular display piece in any firepower demonstration. Especially that damn flechette round… You watched that bastard denude a stand of fir trees of their needles, and you felt a sense of awe/power at the sheer volume of destruction you’d just delivered that’s hard to match.
That must have been it. I’m using the VPN now and it is working fine. I think it was an Instapundit link that got me here in the first place. Of course, I could say that about pretty much every site I frequent. Thanks!
I could get to you with my VPN, but couldn’t submit the last comment until I disconnected it. This is getting too complicated. I think I will go take a nap.
Mr. Picky insists on pointing out that a bazooka was a pure rocket-based system; the Carl Gustav is a pure recoilless rifle system. RPG-7 is a hybrid somewhere in between the two; there’s a recoilless bit that serves to expel the round and get it away from the firer, and then a rocket motor ignites, carrying the munition to its destination.
Carl Gustav’s lineage is uniquely Swedish, going back to the Carl Gustaf 20 mm pvg m/42. The Swedes did not derive these systems from anything earlier like the Davis or Kropatschek recoilless systems. The 20mm m/42 was actually the first shoulder-fired recoilless system, anywhere.
The US used to have the M67 90mm Recoilless Rifle, but that was replaced by the Dragon AT missile. The other major recoilless system we had was the jeep-mounted M40 106mm Recoilless Rifle, which was the system that the TOW system replaced in US service.
Doctrinally, the old 2.36in Bazooka was the WWII standard for basic infantry AT work, with a couple of different cannons in place above that. Korea saw us issuing what should have been on issue in WWII, the 3.5in Super Bazooka, which was also when the various recoilless systems came in to replace the AT cannons. The M67 90mm likely owes something to the Carl Gustaf, but the damn things were about twice the size and a hell of a lot heavier. We still had them on issue as late as the early 1990s, in some Engineer units (and, the Ranger Regiment…) for use in bunker-busting. In my opinion, the Carl Gustaf was the superior weapon, in that it was much smaller and a lot easier to carry while still delivering about the same punch.
It’s a niggling point about the “recoilless rifle” vs. rocket thing, but it does make a difference. A rocket just needs a tube to stabilize things; the tube does not have to hold pressures the way a recoilless rifle does; it’s strictly there for guidance and protecting the firer from rocket exhaust. A rocket-based system will continue to burn after firing, making it much easier to track where it came from as it comes at you. A recoilless rifle, on the other hand, is using a cannon round and venting a bunch of the propellant gases out the back through a venturi in order to counterbalance the recoil. I suppose that that venturi effect being utilized could make it possible to say that there really isn’t much difference, in that both systems make use of rocket-type tech, but… Yeah. The really major thing is, with a recoilless system, that you won’t have a burning rocket motor giving the projectile a signature pointing right back at your firing position. If you can mask the launch signature, you’re golden…
Also, do note the difference in those videos: The Carl Gustaf rounds are in those cylindrical plastic cases they’re carrying around. This means that the rounds are protected against damage as you go running around the battlefield, something that is notably lacking with the RPG-7 system. I’ve seen RPG-7 rounds damaged beyond usability and abandoned in the course of operations, and I’ve been told by EOD guys that it’s not outside the realm of possibility for a damaged RPG-7 round to detonate upon an attempt to fire it, which is why they tell anyone who might run into one during the course of combat to just leave the damn things alone, aside from blowing them in place.
If you ever want an illuminating view into Soviet/Russian munitions…? Talk to the guys in EOD. Spend an afternoon in a classroom with them, and you’ll go off ever wanting to do their job, ever, especially when it comes to cleaning up Soviet munitions.
I was sitting in Kuwait back in 2003, out in one of the camps. The Kuwaiti Army experienced a significant emotional event when all that cheap crap they’d bought for Desert Storm from Warsaw Pact stocks just decided to blow the f*ck up one day, in storage. It took their EOD, our EOD, and a bunch of contractors months to clear all that crap out of the desert, and I have no idea how many Kuwaiti nomadic types and their camels got blown up wandering through all that stuff. It was scattered over a good chunk of the desert to the northeast of Kuwait City, and you were still turning up stuff months later. Soviet munitions were not designed with longevity or safety in mind; the West Germans wound up demilitarizing a bunch of what they found in the former East Germany, rather than try to even move it. They thought they could sell it or use it, but the ammo for the East German rifles produced toxins when fired, and most of the artillery wasn’t safe to move, let alone fire. At least, by NATO and West German standards… The Finns wanted to buy a bunch of it, but were told that while they could buy it, transporting it on German rail lines or roads was off the table. That’s how unstable a lot of that ammo was, and while I suspect that the West Germans might have been a tad on the “Safety Sally” side of things, they also weren’t entirely wrong about it, either. Look how many Soviet ammo dumps have blown up all by themselves, since the fall of the Soviet Union…
Having fired the M2 version a number of times, here’s a tidbit: if you fire it more than three times a day, you’re considered likely for tramatic brain injury. totally serious here.
Mr. Picky strikes again… There are two major lines of recoilless systems out there. One would be the sort with a blow-out base, like the Carl Gustaf, and the other would be the sort with a perforated cartridge case. In my second paragraph of the above post, I refer to the Kropatschek system, which isn’t actually a recoilless thing. What I meant to type, and forgot until re-reading what I wrote, was “Kromuskit”. That name evolves out of the names of the two guys at the Infantry school here in the US who were responsible for the perforated cartridge case design, Kroger and Musser. They actually got to a workable system before the official program did, which was hell-bent on copying a German blow-out base design. Their initial 57mm weapon got used in WWII and on into Korea, while the basic system got copied and built into the later 75mm and 105/106mm systems. These are all identifiable by the bulbous chamber area that accommodates the gas venting off the cartridge case and being re-directed to the rear. On base blow-out designs, the chamber area is simply a smooth continuation of the barrel. Carl Gustav and the old M67 90mm were base blow-out designs.
Trivia, but… Ya never know.
You can tell it was made by Saab because the key is located on the console between the seats:o)
BTW, do you block this site for people using VPN? never can seem to connect when I’m using one.
@Ed in Texas,
Totally true, although I believe that only applies to specific rounds, and can be ameliorated by wearing proper protective gear. I think they wanted you to double-up on hearing protection, as well; earplugs as well as muffs.
The same deal is true with the AT-4 disposable AT weapon. It’s basically a disposable one-time use Carl Gustav, anyway…
I’m not sure how bad the old M67 was, with regards to the TBI issue. I know that firing that sumbitch was always a significant emotional event, and it was a spectacular display piece in any firepower demonstration. Especially that damn flechette round… You watched that bastard denude a stand of fir trees of their needles, and you felt a sense of awe/power at the sheer volume of destruction you’d just delivered that’s hard to match.
I do not. Though I don’t know what BlueHost or WordPress does about VPNs.
Be sure to try on a day I’m not Instalanched…
That must have been it. I’m using the VPN now and it is working fine. I think it was an Instapundit link that got me here in the first place. Of course, I could say that about pretty much every site I frequent. Thanks!
I could get to you with my VPN, but couldn’t submit the last comment until I disconnected it. This is getting too complicated. I think I will go take a nap.