A powerful weapon widely used by government forces and rebels in the Syrian civil war comes from China, according to Chinese analyst “military industry black technology”.
The war in Syria has been going on for 10 years since it started in 2011, with the U.S., Russia, Turkey and other countries competing to wrestle there.
As Syria’s military equipment is backward, all types of old weapons are still being used heavily in fighting in Syria’s wilderness, desert and mountains, but the consumption of weapons and ammunition is high on all sides of the battle, so Syria, which lacks heavy weapons, has opened its eyes to the propane gas cylinders used in everyday life.
Although propane gas cylinders are commonplace in everyday life, the compressed liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is not less powerful when exploded, and the cost is much lower than that of artillery shells, so they are very easy to mass-produce.
When launching a household 10-liter gas tank, the explosive power of the “propane gas cylinder howitzer” that appeared on the Syrian battlefield is equivalent to 150 kilograms of TNT explosives or 3,000 grenades. The explosive power of this “gas tank” shell is amazing, and its lethality has exceeded the imagination of Chinese military fans.
In 2015, the Syrian rebels uploaded a video of a propane gas cylinder howitzer, which could easily destroy an intact four or five-story residential building with one or two howitzers.
After the Syrian rebels first used this propane gas cylinder cannon, Syrian government forces also began to manufacture such artillery shells, the difference is that the government forces added a tail fin to the propane gas cylinder to improve its flight stability and filled the canister with a certain amount of gunpowder to increase its explosive power.
For the Syrian rebels, they generally use seamless steel pipes as barrels (or even drainage pipes in cities) and build a simple stabilization device using angles and sandbags to use them as mortars, but the range of such shells is within 300 meters, and their accuracy is so poor that they can only be increased in number to make up for their shortcomings.
The Syrian government forces are different. They developed their own indigenous artillery to launch such gas tank shells, and they also cleverly modified the excavators from XCMG group of China. The front bucket of the excavator was removed and replaced by four barrels. These barrels were modified with large propane gas cylinders and fixed together by steel bars. This type of artillery can be used for mobile operations by the excavator. As soon as the fire was fired, there was dense smoke, so it was called a “volcano howitzer”. The range of this type of artillery can reach 3.5 kilometers, which is quite powerful among home-made weapons.
The ammunition for “volcano howitzer” is usually made from a combination of propane gas cylinders and welded large-diameter steel pipes and stampings, and was originally quite popular in war-torn areas of the Middle East such as Afghanistan, which lacked industrial foundation, and is a piece of cake for countries like Syria that have few industrial foundations. But this for the need to solve the urgent needs of the Syrian government forces, slightly reduce some security is also acceptable.
Especially after the guidance of Russian military experts, Syria’s “volcano howitzer” is no longer the traditional simple rocket. Among them, the “top-topping” is the Syrian government army’s “Sun” rocket launcher. Based on the old-fashioned BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle chassis, it is equipped with a “volcano howitzer “, and it is modified with an amazing large-caliber rocket launcher!
The large, 250-kg high-explosive warheads in its 220mm nests can still destroy common concrete houses on indirect hits, which is why the Syrian government forces call “the Rocket Sun”.
In a 2013 encounter between the government forces and the rebels in a small town, the government forces placed 20 propane gas cylinder bombs and fired them in unison, producing an explosion equivalent to detonating 2,000 kilograms of explosives and toppling hundreds of soldiers on the spot.
Because of this highly efficient incident, propane gas cylinder bombs have been widely adopted and remain one of the mainstream weapons until now. However, after all, this weapon is homemade, not built according to the manufacturer’s specifications, so there are a lot of shortcomings, such as dumb fire, explosive combustion is not sufficient, the accuracy is not high, the operation is more difficult, it is basically difficult for novices to use.
As the gas canister howitzers’ hit rate can only rely on luck, basically, it cannot carry out precise striking tasks, can only be used as a means of suppression, but can cause very great psychological pressure on the opponent.
In addition, even if the propane gas cylinder artillery does not kill people directly, it can burn them to death, and the pain of being burned by fire is thousands of times better than being shot and killed.
In addition, in addition to the Syrian battlefield, according to the video footage released by the Azerbaijani military, the local armed groups in the Naka region have appeared in their defensive positions with homemade “mortar shells” made of propane gas cylinders.
Speaking of which, Syria’s gas-can artillery may have some ties to China. Last year, the story of Kong Deyao, a post-90s man from Shandong province, China, who produced propane gas cylinders that could sell 300 million a year, became popular on the Chinese Internet.
After Kong Deyao faced the gas tank inventory stockpiled by his family’s factory, he keenly realized that China has basically fully rolled out natural gas and gas pipelines, and the domestic demand for gas tanks has become smaller and smaller. The gas tanks that the Chinese do not take seriously are the sweet pastry of many South American and Middle Eastern countries and even a symbol of wealth.
So he began to sell propane gas cylinders to many countries in the Middle East through online e-commerce platforms, and his first foreign order came from Yemen. Yemen’s Ministry of Energy ordered two standard containers of propane gas cylinders from him, which made him feel excited.
Subsequently, more and more such orders came from the Middle East, and they all bought propane gas cylinders of excellent quality from him. In 2019, his Middle East sales of gas tanks reached 150 million. The unit price is estimated to be 300 yuan, so these propane gas cylinders could be equivalent to 500,000 shells.