World War III

[Nickdfresh]

I don't have one of these! Would be too big for the trails I run in the Gladiator

I know Caterpillar makes a line of off road construction stuff like this such and end-dumps. I've driven a Uke (articulated-end-dump actually) a long while back where we had a deep excavation up a trail to a partial concrete "racetrack" and trail where we dumped contaminated soil to load out on dumps to take to a burn facility to clean the soil. It was fucking fun! Like mountain biking but also scary as fuck at times. One guy that was a decent dude, but a bit of a lazy retard, flipped over a (Volvo) Uke while dumping soil off a dirt ramp. It wasn't tough to do except they wanted production so you had to do everything fast and rushed. Then the Army Corp safety guys would see us whipping around the track corners at 30mph and bitch that we were going too fast and being unsafe so we would literally get yelled at by the super/foreman to speed up and go faster in the morning, then "slow the fuck down you're going to kill yourself", literally an hour later. Good times...

[twonabomber]

I don't have one of these! Would be too big for the trails I run in the Gladiator

[Nitro Express]

Special ops guys are interesting to talk to. I’m on the search and rescue in my county so I talk to the SWAT guys in our Sheriff’s Department. Everyone is liking the 300 Blackout. It’s pretty much replaced 9mm sub guns for building clearing in the subsonic loading. You can use a standard carbine lower with a pistol upper and run a can with it and it works fine. You don’t have to switch out the buffer or recoil spring. You can throw a 300 blackout carbine upper and run supersonic loads and get 7,62x39 performance out of it. In hunting loads it’s an excellent deer and hog cartridge where shooting distances aren’t very far.

[Nitro Express]

I've talked to a few soldiers and some of them were top tier special operations. Not one of them would carry an AK as a preferred weapon in combat except as a last resort. The M855 will take a second to cause a massive internal bleed due to the yawing. In Vietnam, they would find Vietnamese NLF and PAVN that ran after being shot by the M193 round similar to circumstances of soldiers shot with musket balls in the Civil War, they'd rifle their uniforms trying to pull the rounds out because they could feel the internal bleed. The M855 is also quite more effective at knocking people down than the 5.45mm..

It boils down to what you are used to. In Israel some people liked the Galil and others liked the M4’s we gave them. All I know is a guy who was in actual combat said the 7,62x39 round took people out of the fight better than the M844 round. Apparently the short 123 grain bullet does some yawing as well and it has more mass.

[Nickdfresh]

Rig a red dot on a AKM that isn’t shot out and it’s a deadly 300 meter rifle. It’s going to do the job.

I've talked to a few soldiers and some of them were top tier special operations. Not one of them would carry an AK as a preferred weapon in combat except as a last resort. The M855 will take a second to cause a massive internal bleed due to the yawing. In Vietnam, they would find Vietnamese NLF and PAVN that ran after being shot by the M193 round similar to circumstances of soldiers shot with musket balls in the Civil War, they'd rifle their uniforms trying to pull the rounds out because they could feel the internal bleed. The M855 is also quite more effective at knocking people down than the 5.45mm..

[Nitro Express]

We really dropped the ball with post Soviet Russia. We could have avoided the whole mess but our military industrial complex loves war profits too much. They will always create situations to justify a war. My main concern is the bear can bite hard if you corner it. Playing these kind of games with a nuclear power is very dangerous. Now we’ve pushed Russia and China together. You wan’t to keep those two separate. Now they are waging economic warfare on us and doing a pretty good job of it.

[Nitro Express]

Rig a red dot on a AKM that isn’t shot out and it’s a deadly 300 meter rifle. It’s going to do the job.

[Nitro Express]

I was talking to someone who was in Falluja and he said the 7,62x39 round was very effective. He said he was getting good hits on people with the M855 round and he had to shoot several times to drop the person. One square hit on the Marines he was fighting with took them out. In winter conditions an AKM is nicer to operate with gloves on your hands. The Ruskies did design them good for that. Another good thing about AKM’s is the standard steel magazines last forever. You can pound nails with those. The drawback is they are heavy but it’s definitely the arm the peasants no worries rifle.

[Nickdfresh]

My guess is that the Russians won't bother much with 7.62x39mm, those issued the AKM are just targets and cannon fodder. I did see pic's of some Ukrainian troops with AKM's, guessing they were National Guard or volunteers...

[Nitro Express]

I go to a range that rents machine guns. They have an AK that gets rented all the time and has had a lot of rounds through it full auto. Everything is pretty robust but the recoil spring has a wire loop assembly that will eventually break. The barrels are pinned in so replacing a barrel is a more major deal than a M16 where a big nut holds the barrel in place. I’ve never heard of anyone having a problem with an extractor on an AK. Those seem pretty robust. Really not much to go wrong. Accuracy can vary. I’ve seen some AK’s shoot two minutes of angle and others notgroup for shit. Maybe the barrels had a lot of rounds through them and are worn. I’ve never had a jam ever with one and I’ve put thousands of rounds through AKs. It’s most likely going to go bang. Whether you hit anything is another question.

[Nitro Express]

If they are using AKM’s they can’t use their standard 5,45x39 round. They would have to use 7,62x39. So yeah logistical problems throwing that into the mix. The weakest part of the AK system is optics. People trained well on those rifles can operate as good as people with a more modern firearm. Magazine changes are easy to fuck up but for a seasoned operator it doesn’t seem to be a problem. But on the modern battlefield modern optics are what give you the edge. A soldier with a red dot, night vision and heat signature sensing capability has a huge advantage over a soldier with only iron sights. If I had the choice of a rifle with full auto capability or a rifle with a good red dot sight and no full auto, I would take the red dot.

[Nickdfresh]

You have to be careful with some of that old Russian stuff. The old RPG’s have an impact fuse on the nose. If the tip of the rocket hits something hard it explodes. Some rust usually isn’t going to affect a Kalashnikov. The Soviet ones were built really well. The bore and gas system is chrome plated so it won’t rust. Some pitting isn’t going to hurt anything unless it’s a spring. The spring might fail. One problem area is the bolt carrier return spring. The assembly can fail due to a lot of use or extreme corrosion. It’s a part that takes a real beating.

It's also not going to hit anything, the Russians are introducing a whole new stream of ammo taxing their already shit logistics and the ammo itself is also very old. Reliable or not, the rusting AK47/AKM derivatives will never likely be remanufactured well enough to be an effective arm. But I suspect the 'cannon-fodder' who get these won't need resupplying though...

[Nitro Express]

You have to be careful with some of that old Russian stuff. The old RPG’s have an impact fuse on the nose. If the tip of the rocket hits something hard it explodes. Some rust usually isn’t going to affect a Kalashnikov. The Soviet ones were built really well. The bore and gas system is chrome plated so it won’t rust. Some pitting isn’t going to hurt anything unless it’s a spring. The spring might fail. One problem area is the bolt carrier return spring. The assembly can fail due to a lot of use or extreme corrosion. It’s a part that takes a real beating.

[Nickdfresh]

Russian troops have turned to Wikipedia to find instructions on handling weapons and used 1960s-era maps in the country's invasion of Ukraine: NYT
John L. Dorman Dec 17, 2022, 12:35 PM

From the start, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was riddled with strategic blunders, with a military force that was unprepared for the conflict and logistical issues that have hobbled the Kremlin.

In a New York Times investigation detailing Russia's failures throughout the conflict, the story of Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is one of the clearest examples of the poor decision-making that has defined the invasion.

While in combat, the troops in the naval brigade lacked sufficient food, maps, critical medical supplies, or walkie-talkies, and they were forced to use 1970s-era Kalashnikov rifles — with some members having to resort to using Wikipedia to locate instructions for using certain weapons — according to the report.

In interviews with The Times, several members of the brigade told the newspaper that some of the newly-enlisted military fighters had little experience with guns and spoke of having few bullets to use in combat.

The members were initially told by their commanders that they wouldn't see combat, per the report. But once they witnessed their comrades being killed around them as Ukrainian forces were firing upon them, they realized that they weren't told the truth about their role in the conflict.

A Russian solider named Mikhail — who in October witnessed many of his comrades dying near the Ukrainian town of Pavlivka — told The Times that of the 60 members of his platoon, 40 were killed and just eight members eluded serious injuries.

"This isn't war," Mikhail told the newspaper from a hospital near Moscow. "It's the destruction of the Russian people by their own commanders."

Russian President Vladimir Putin displayed a high degree of confidence in the country's military when he launched the invasion of Ukraine in late February.

But nearly ten months later, Russia has been unable to defeat the Ukrainian military and has found itself shunned and isolated from the West.

According to The Times, Putin "spiraled into self-aggrandizement and anti-Western zeal," which drove him to make the decision to invade Ukraine "in near total isolation."

Per The Times report, Russia's invasion plans showed that the military expected troops to march across Ukraine and swiftly take control of the country, with officers being instructed to bring along their dress uniforms and medals for military parades in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

The Russian military, which was seen as a formidable force before the conflict, in actuality had been "severely compromised" by longstanding corruption, per the report.

Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine relied on old maps — some from the 1960s — to navigate their way across the country, and many used their cellphones to call numbers in Russia, which allowed Ukrainian forces to locate and attack them. The Times report also detailed how some Russian pilots flew their planes as though they weren't in peril.

In January, the retired Russian Gen. Leonid Ivashov, having seen reports about the impending conflict, wrote an open letter stating that a full-scale war with Ukraine would jeopardize "the very existence of Russia as a state."

"Never in its history has Russia made such stupid decisions," Ivashov told The Times during a recent phone interview. "Alas, today stupidity has triumphed — stupidity, greed, a kind of vengefulness and even a kind of malice."

Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, pointed to intervention by the West in assessing Russia's numerous setbacks throughout the conflict.

"This is a big burden for us," he said, referencing the strong NATO support for Ukraine. "It was just very hard to believe in such cynicism and in such bloodthirstiness on the part of the collective West."

Since the conflict began, the Biden administration has continued to send advanced weaponry to Ukraine, including high-speed, anti-radiation missiles.

As of November, the United States has committed $66 billion in aid to Ukraine.

[Nickdfresh]