AGS-17 Plamya

The AGS-17 Plamya ("Flame") is a Soviet automatic grenade launcher developed from 1965 by the OKB-16 design bureau, later KB Tochmash, under Alexander F. Kornyakov. Its designation stands for Avtomaticheskiy Granatomyot Stankovyi, "automatic grenade launcher, mounted". The requirement was for a light weapon giving infantry close- to medium-range fire support against personnel and unarmoured targets such as trucks, half-tracks, jeeps and sandbagged machine-gun positions. Prototypes entered trials in 1969 and mass production began in 1971 at the Molot plant.

The AGS-17 is a heavy infantry support weapon fired from a tripod or from a vehicle or fixed installation, delivering 30 mm grenades in direct or indirect fire against soft-skinned and fortified targets. It operates by blowback, feeding from a metal drum holding a 29-round linked belt, and fires at 400 rounds per minute out to a range of 800 to 1,700 m. The rifled barrel is removable to spread barrel wear, and the tripod carries fine levelling gear for indirect-fire trajectories. At 31 kg it is a genuinely crew-served weapon.

Ammunition is 30x29mm belted with a steel case. The VOG-17M is the standard high-explosive fragmentation round; the VOG-30 uses a better explosive filling and an improved fragmentation design that substantially increases the blast radius, and the VOG-30D entered service in 2013 for both the AGS-17 and the AGS-30. Smoke and practice rounds are also available. The Bulgarian manufacturer Arcus builds AR-ROG hand grenades from VOG-17 cartridges, and comparable improvised grenades are known as khattabkas. In August 2023 Russian forces in Ukraine began receiving VOG-17 grenades factory-modified for release from commercial drones.

Two variants exist: the AG-17A, an aircraft-mounted version with a thick aluminium barrel jacket and an electric remote trigger, fitted to Mi-24 gun pods and Mi-8 door mounts, and the AGS-17D vehicle-mounted equivalent. Soviet troops in Afghanistan valued the weapon highly, using it both on the ground and on improvised mounts on armoured personnel carriers and trucks. It remains in Russian service as an infantry fire support weapon and in various vehicle mounts and turrets, though it is being replaced by the AGS-30, which fires the same ammunition at half the weight. Users include Bulgaria, whose Arsenal AD builds a modernised AGL-30M, China, whose Norinco copied examples captured from Afghan mujahideen, Serbia and Montenegro as the M93, Vietnam as the SPL-17, and Iraq under licence, alongside Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Georgia, North Korea, Syria and Turkey. Finland and Latvia both retired theirs in favour of the HK GMG.