Iran’s RPG Surprise

Back on December 8, 2005, DID ran a story about Forecast International’s market forecast for the $5.33 billion man-portable anti-armor and bunker buster weapons market over the next decade. We mentioned that the Russians were poised to dominate production with the RPG-26/27, and that the market itself was bifurcating into state-of-the-art, high cost designs (mostly from Europe) and cheaper, simpler weapons (mostly Russian and ex-Soviet) – but there was also a piece of interesting information embedded deeper in the report. “Iran’s Defense Industries Organization (DIO) will be the most significant player involved in RPG-7 production during the forecast period. Iranian licensed production of the RPG-7 will account for 4.25 percent of all new man-portable anti-armor and bunker buster weapons production, worth 2.88 percent of the total market value, through 2014.” That translates into a production total of over 80,000 weapons, with half of that estimated production occurring in the 2005-2008 period. Three guesses where many of those RPG-7s will end up… and have a look at “Phase Four Operations in Iraq and the RPG-7” by the US Center for Army Lessons Learned. Readers interested in the full report should contact FI.