Gaddafi loyalists gonna be loyal:
If that was me being held hostage, I wouldn’t know whether to call the guy’s bluff and try to escape, or assume he’s a dumb ass that doesn’t know better.
It appears to be a Russian RPG-7.
You can check out the rest of the pictures from when rebel forces took Tripoli a few days ago – HERE
Comments
26 responses to “RPG Hostage Taking – Point Blank Stupidity”
At least he’s not holding it backwards.
To be fair, you’re not going to escape that :/
To be fair, no one is going to escape that. :)
That’s pretty hilarious. Oddly enough most RPG-7 rockets don’t arm until 5 meters, supposedly. It would make a pretty big mess though, that’s for sure.
Something is odd with the person w/ the RPG. That person is too well dressed, groomed and with the bracelet to be a rebel. I mean the shirt is tucked in, with a belt. The others around him look rag tagged but he looks outta place. It looks staged…. or something else.
@ david rocket grenades could be impact or time delayed.
regardless it would be messy for everyone in that picture, especially if its anti-personnel that has a blast radius around 30ft or so
That’s irrelevant with respect to arming distance. Whether the grenade explodes upon impact or at a predetermined distance, it still needs to get past that minimum distance to arm itself.
I should have said, “predetermined time (which is made to correspond to distance).”
That’s still gonna hurt if it it Rocket Propells right into your spine :D
While you might chance the run from the RPG wielder, it appears that the striped shirt on the right edge has a more conventional firearm and would be harder to escape from.
How can you tell? I can’t see a weapon there. I think he’s just holding his left arm out like that ’cause he’s taking a piss.
However, there is yellow-shirt and his odd looking AK, and the guy in the background on the right with his rifle.
That guy in the background on the right is holding an RPG too. Even if he were far enough away for the round to arm, he’d blown everyone, himself included, up.
He is being held in a level 4 tactical wedgie from which there is NO escape!
Does anyone remember True Lies? When the BG tried to fire a rocket at a Harrier from inside a van resulting in his buddy behind him being blasted out onto the highway?
I would say this is Yeager approved BUT…. the camera guy is off to the side.
I didn’t pay attention to the title of the post until I just noticed it on my phone. I expect those rockets travel pretty straight; that being the case, point-blank range for that weapon is probably a couple of hundred meters… maybe more?
Didn’t a similar incident happen in Mogadishu where an RPG got lodged in a soldier’s abdomen? Didn’t go off if I recall correctly. Soft tissue probably doesn’t set them off
just saying, not condoning using RPG-7s for hostage taking
Without looking it up to verify – I’m almost certain that, in the incident you’re thinking of, the soldier who found himself with the RPG embedded inside him was INSIDE a Humvee. The round went through the door before lodging itself in him. It wasn’t soft tissue that caused it to not explode; it was a faulty round.
One of the Rangers (PFC Richard “Alphabet” Kowalewski) was struck by an RPG after it passed through the Humvee door. May he rest in peace.
Most likely an old round that was not protected from the weather.
Actually, most RPG 7s have a piezoelectric fuse and will detonate when it hits anything, touches skin, or even has a change in temperature. I’ve had a number of RPG-2s shot at me, and about 10% failed to detonate, leaving my squad to unknowingly drive back to base with one lodged in the electronic warfare box on the back of my MATV once. Others glanced off rocks and vehicles. One even punched a hole in my right front tire and buried itself in the soft sand of the wadi in which I was driving.
That said, an RPG fired at close range will punch an 80-something millimeter hole in something as squishy as a Ghadaffi supporter.
Exactly what I was thinking, who needs expansion when you have diameter to start with?
the exhaust will be a bitch to everyone around.
Sigh. I sure do miss Free Market Fairy Tales’ “African Infantryman of the Year” competition…
“Halt! Or I’ll take out the city block!”
“Dammit, take that away from Jamal before he gets us all killed!”
This is just another reason why I question the intelligence of the “rebels”