Analyst: Armenian-Modified Grenade thrown During Bush Address

Civil Georgia, Georgia
May 21 2005

Georgian Military Analyst Irakli Aladashvili wrote in May 16-22 issue
of Kviris Palitra weekly, that a hand-grenade thrown during George
W. Bush public address in Tbilisi was not a Soviet-made RGD-5, as
reported earlier, but its slightly bigger, modified version which
was produced during and after the Nagorno-Karabakh war in Armenia.

The newspaper publishes the pictures of the grenade, with bear a
timestamp of May 10, 2005, 16:58. The grenade itself has a marking:
D-100-403. According to the analyst, if the producers of the modified
piece used the soviet system of marking, the last two digits indicate
the year of production – 2003. The grenade thrown in Tbilisi weighs 310
grams without a fuse, the original RGD-5 weighs the same with the fuse.

The grenade, according to the author, failed to detonate because of
a faulty fuse. Fuse of the grenade contains a trigger with a spring,
which, when released, hits a capsule-detonator, which in turn explodes
a grenade.

Aladashvili says, initial investigation shows that the trigger has
worked, as there is a characteristic denture left at the centre of
the detonating capsule by the trigger. The detonating capsule of the
type KD-8M has a copper casing and contains quicksilver as a detonating
agent. This very capsule has failed to detonate, as author speculates,
either because it was faulty, or because the spring of the trigger
proved too light.