L14A1 Carl Gustav 84mm Anti Tank

[Sentryduty]

I seem to recall an article recently that the Charlie G was resurrected in afghan to take out buildings as it was cheaper than using Javelins? !

The Carl Gustav was still a standard piece of kit during my deployment to Afghanistan in 2006, (snapshot in time) they were either racked in the holder of the Platoon Commander's LAV, (right hand side next to the turret) or humped by the PL Weapons Det. whenever we were on chopper ops and dumped in the backside of nowhere. They made a decent sized hole in a mud wall or grape hut when needed. These would have been the original all steel versions without carry handle, the marginally lighter composite ones with the nice carry handle being phased in over the next few years. While we didn't have the Javelin in Cdn. inventory, we did have the ERYX, which was to the best of my knowledge, was not deployed to Afghanistan. It (ERYX) was a pretty piece of kit to look at, and the thermal sighting system was useful for exercise OP duty, but in reality the missiles were prohibitively expensive and despite being "qualified" on the system I had only fired on the sim range and had never seen a live missile during the whole of my career.

As an aside we still had Short Range Anti Armour Weapons (Light) SRAAW(L) which we commonly called an M72 deployed at a scale of 2 per section, and back at the PL level the 60mm mortar enjoyed a good bit of use during '06 usually deployed without bipod or C2 sight, just the small baseplate. Part of my loadout was to carry 2 HE bombs for the 60mm in my patrol pack.

Even in modern times the Carl Gustav (Carl-Gee in our slang) seen success on the modern (tankless) battlefield and helped provide a local force multiplier along with the C6 MG, M72's, the M203, and of course the 60mm mortar when arty or fast air may not have been available.