This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army began phasing it out in the 1990s. The Pakistani Army still uses it. An 82mm smooth bore breech-loaded, tripod-mounted, recoilless anti-tank gun (likely an S-10 or Type 78/65 recoilless gun) is not exactly a “high-tech gadget” as one reporter claims. But it is a certainly a new entrant into the proxy war in Kashmir. Now, the Indian army is not fielding tanks in the counter-insurgency operations in the state. So the jihadis have been given this weapon to take on the armoured trucks and troop carriers.
The anti-tank gun was part of a large cache of arms and ammunitions seized by the Indian army in Kashmir. It’s arrival might suggest that Pakistan is recalibrating the capital-to-labour ratio of its proxy war against India. Update: Mihir opines that an old anti-tank weapon is a downgrade: “if this anti-tank gun is indeed being introduced by the Jihadis, it might actually signal growing desperation and shortage of material among their ranks.”
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