APILAS ready for firing

APILAS (Armor-Piercing Infantry Light Arm System) is a recoilless, one-man portable, single-use anti-tank grenade launcher used by infantry troops. Image File history File links APILAS_Finland. ... The recoil when firing a gun is the backward momentum of a gun, which is equal to the forward momentum of the bullet or shell, due to conservation of momentum. ... Anti-tank, or simply AT, refers to any method of combating military armored fighting vehicles, notably tanks. ... A grenade launcher is weapon that fires or launches a grenade to longer distances than a soldier could throw by hand. ... Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme, First World War. ...

Description

Weighing only 9 kg and yet having an armor-piercing capability of up to 350 - 600 mm (depending on the impact angle), APILAS is one of the most effective anti-tank weapons of the modern anti-tank warfare. The effective range of APILAS is from 25 m (it takes 25 m for the grenade to arm itself) up to 500 - 600 m depending on the aiming skill of the user. The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ... A millimetre (American spelling: millimeter, symbol mm) is an SI unit of length that is equal to one thousandth of a metre. ... The Metre (or Meter) is the base fundamental unit of length in the metric measurement system as defined originally by the French Academy of Sciences during the French Revolutionary–Napoleonic war era, and subsequently adopted by various successive International Standards Committees as the utility, elegance, and self-consistency of the...

The armor-piercing effect of APILAS is based on a special shaped charge grenade which, on impact, explodes and releases a high-speed, carrot-shaped molten metal burst. This burst penetrates any common armor plating effectively up until 300 - 600 mm of armor, concluding as a fiery explosion within the confines of the targeted tank and thus killing or at least inflicting heavy damage on the crew inside. Sectioned HEAT round with the inner shaped charge visible A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the explosives energy. ... Binomial name Daucus carota L. The carrot is a root vegetable, usually orange or white in color with a woody texture. ...

This weapon is very portable, easy to deploy and very effective. The only flaw of this weapon is that it can only be used once, so on the battlefield there has to be a supply of these weapons to keep fighting. Many soldiers have argued that APILAS is too heavy and difficult to be carried around in the midst of combat or during a march, since the weight of 9 kg starts to wear the carrier down and it only has a single fabric carrying strap which makes it difficult and painful to carry along for a longer period of time. However, when the carrying strap is properly adjusted, a physically fit soldier can easily carry the Apilas on a normal day march without noticeable fatigue and still maintain full combat readiness. Fabric may mean: Cloth, a flexible artificial material made up of a network of natural or artificial fibres Fabric (club), a London dance club Fibre Channel fabric, a network of Fibre Channel devices enabled by a Fibre Channel switch using the FC-SW topology This is a disambiguation page, a...

See also

• Finnish Defense Forces official information.