This blows: Type GBP113A, PLA’s Rigid‑Flexible Combination Bangalore Torpedo

The PLA’s engineering troops have always been unapologetically in love with explosives. Satchel charges? Still there. Dynamite bricks? Absolutely. And of course, the immortal Bangalore torpedo, which refuses to die no matter how many decades pass or how many glossy brochures promise “next‑generation breaching solutions.”

Why?

Because the PLA loves tools that are cheap, modular, and reliable.  Errrrr, with heavy emphasis on the cheap part. Anyone who has ever looked at a PLA infantry TOE knows exactly what that means.

Enter the latest evolution of this 100‑year‑old classic: the GBP113A Rigid‑Flexible Combination Bangalore Torpedo. The name alone tells you what the designers were thinking:  “What if we made the Bangalore… bendy?”

The idea is simple:

• Traditional Bangalores are rigid tubes.
• The GBP113A uses a rigid‑flexible hybrid structure, allowing it to curve with the terrain, snake under obstacles, and reach places a straight tube can’t.
• Once in place, it still delivers the same satisfying big bang engineers have relied on since the trenches of WWI.

It’s very PLA:

• Take a century‑old concept.
• Add practical improvements.
• Keep costs low (emphasizing the cheap part again)
• Field it widely.

For breaching wire, clearing narrow lanes, and doing all the unglamorous pioneer tasks under fire, a bendable Bangalore is exactly the kind of incremental upgrade the PLA is famous for.  

Worth noting: during the 1984 Sino‑Vietnamese border clashes, every PLA assault‑engineer ‘Pioniere’ team carried Bangalore torpedoes for breaking through the Vietnamese fixed positions.

 

 Photos from 1980 Sino‑Vietnamese border clashes/Battle of Battle of Laoshan

 

 

 

 

Sunday, March 29, 2026

This blows, PLA 200G dynamite brick/satchel charge

Old‑school PLA vibes here. Troops from a brigade of the 73rd Group Army carrying on the proud tradition of solving problems with dynamite. One takeaway from the war in Ukraine is that the humble satchel charge or the TM‑62 anti-tank mine acting as one, is still extremely effective in urban combat/house clearing. Sometimes the classics just refuse to retire.