Carl-Gustaf
Carl-Gustaf is a Swedish manual anti-tank grenade launcher, weighing 14.5 kg. The most common grenades for it are cumulative. They are able to penetrate up to 400 mm of armor. There is also a version of grenades that penetrate 500 mm of armor and ignore dynamic protection. It has armor-piercing and fragmentation projectiles for destroying fortifications and fragmentation projectiles for defeating enemy soldiers. Can create smoke screens and area lighting.
The weapon itself was indeed named after King Carl X Gustav, who conferred naming privileges upon the weapon’s original manufacturer, Carl Gustafs Stads Gevärsfaktori (“Rifle Factory of Carl Gustaf’s Town”).
Trained 2 soldiers can fire up to 6 shots/min. The speed of the released grenade is 250 m/s. The effective firing range is 350–400 m against moving targets, 500 m against stationary ones. However, laser-guided ammunition can be fired at a distance of up to 2,000 m. The newest versions are 2014 with intelligent programming of munitions. There are many different munition options, including tandem HEAT to defeat reactive armor.
On 28 February 2022, Canada announced the transfer of the first batch of these grenade launchers to Ukraine. There is a video with Kharkiv Teroboron, which is learning to work with Carl-Gustaf.
Ukraine’s Kharkiv Territorial Defense Forces used Carl-Gustaf to destroy a T-90M main battle tank, arguably the most sophisticated MBT that the Russians have deployed in the invasion. Ukraine's Defense Ministry posted a video on Twitter 10 May 2022 showing an aerial view of a tank far in the distance just before it was struck and engulfed in flames that sent a black mushroom cloud of smoke into the air. The ministry said that territorial defense fighters used a Swedish Carl Gustaf handheld anti-tank grenade launcher to destroy the tank near Staryi Saltiv in Ukraine's Kharkiv oblast (or province) and thanked Sweden for the assistance.
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