Barrack buster

Mk-15 Barrack Buster
IRA's Barrack Buster mortar
Type	Improvised mortar
Place of origin	Northern Ireland
Service history
Used by	Provisional IRA
Wars	The Troubles
Production history
Designed	1992
Manufacturer	home-made
Specifications
Shell	HE 196–220 pounds (80–100 kg)
Caliber	320mm (12.75in)
Maximum firing range	275 yards (250 m)
Detonation mechanism	impact

Barrack buster is the colloquial name given to several improvised mortars, developed in the 1990s by the engineering group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The first barrack buster—known to the British security forces as the Mark 15 mortar—fired a 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) long metal propane cylinder with a diameter of 36 centimetres (14 in), which contained around 75 kg (165 lb) of home-made explosives and had a range of 75 to 275 metres (246 to 902 ft). The cylinder is an adaptation of a commercial 'Kosangas' gas cylinder, for heating and cooking gas, used in rural areas in Ireland.

It was first used in an attack on 7 December 1992 against an RUC/British Army base in Ballygawley, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, injuring a number of Royal Ulster Constabulary officers.

The barrack buster belongs to a series of home-made mortars developed since the 1970s. The first such mortar—Mark 1—was used in an attack in May 1972 and it was soon followed by the first of a series of improved or differentiated versions stretching into the 1990s:

The intensification of the IRA's mortar campaign in the late 1980s forced the British government to increase the number of army troops in Northern Ireland from its lowest ebb of 9,000 in 1985 to 10,500 in 1992. The IRA's use of mortars combined with heavy machine guns compelled the British Army to build their main checkpoints more than a mile away from the Irish border by 1992.

These mortars have been used by the Real IRA, who also developed their own fuzing system, in the 2000s. Furthermore, what appears to be a similar or identical mortar technology has been used since 1998 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). ETA in Spain was in 2001 rumoured to have built mortars "very similar" to the IRA's. The possible transfer of this mortar technology to the FARC was a central issue in the arrest in August 2001 and later trial of the so-called Colombia Three group of IRA members who were alleged by Colombian authorities and the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs to have trained FARC in the manufacture and use of this mortar technology.