Russian special military operation in Ukraine #45

mnztr wrote:Wagner base in Belarus..?

I do not think Belarus wants to host the Prigozhin faction of Wagner long term. This may well be their new base, but they will likely be moving on off
to Africa or elsewhere in the near term. They are not reliable.

Most probably because MT-LB is almost "paper" thin and can be penetrated from some angles with 7,62x51/54mm rounds.
To have any effective engagement range with a gattling gun from non elevated position you would need to be within 1km range from your target.
RPGs and ATGMs are very cheap considering their usefulness. The MT-LB will just simply not survive to have any relevant chance to lay fire on the enemy.
Real IFVs had little chance even using their superior 25/30mm canon without getting killed by ATGMs.

Actually an interesting idea... if you have lots of the old 57mm rockets lying around the place they made them in enormous numbers and decided they were obsolete in the 80s and stopped using them and used 80mm rockets instead. Recently they improved the 57mm rocket with a better rocket motor and more powerful payload but to rain explosives on a target 3-4km away this would work fine. The 82mm automatic mortar mounted next to it would be pretty good for doing much the same... about 4km range with HE bombs lofted so both could fire from behind cover at targets found and identified by drone...

As a direct fire vehicle it would be vulnerable. Used with drones at indirect targets like troops advancing in an open field or down a road would be rather interesting and it should have pretty good mobility because neither weapon is particularly heavy and the Vasilek uses standard 82mm bombs AFAIK. Being breach loaded it might not fire the longer newer bombs optimised for longer range use, but they will have plenty of ammo for it I suspect.

(Edit: an added advantage would be that if they can work it out so it works well (it seems to be attached to the turret in such a way that the old MG turret can rotate and elevate the pod so if it works you could do the same with the new flat pack rocket pods and with new 57mm rockets being more powerful and more effective it might even be better... but if it isn't they could always use an 80mm rocket pod instead. I suspect correct coordination with drones might make this a useful weapon... even against troops in trenches because using it at extended ranges would mean the rockets will come down at an angle making them rather more effective than any rounds fired by a direct fire weapon that does not have air burst ammo.)

Most probably because MT-LB is almost "paper" thin and can be penetrated from some angles with 7,62x51/54mm rounds.
To have any effective engagement range with a gattling gun from non elevated position you would need to be within 1km range from your target.
RPGs and ATGMs are very cheap considering their usefulness. The MT-LB will just simply not survive to have any relevant chance to lay fire on the enemy.
Real IFVs had little chance even using their superior 25/30mm canon without getting killed by ATGMs.

But you have to allow for tactics, 12.7mm rounds do not rely on velocity to be lethal to humans, their projectiles are weighted to go through light protection layers before killing people inside so even angled up and fired at 2km or more if the enemy is mounting an infantry heavy charge to overwhelm the defenders... especially if a lot of the enemy troops are in civilian SUVs I would think this weapon would actually be interesting.

Its main problem is its enormous rate of fire, but at long range that would just mean a better density of fire and more chance to hit a target.

They had special duplex rounds for helicopter gun use with two lighter projectiles instead of one to essentially double the rate of fire but using bullets that were still rather heavier than normal rifle calibre rounds so they still hit very hard.

Used on its own it would probably be next to useless but with a drone as a spotter so you could correct fire this could actually be rather interesting to deal with human wave attacks which might be coming in a desperate attempt to push the Russian lines back somewhere on the lines so they can claim a victory.

These guns are used in helicopter pods with a single four barrel 12.7mm machine gun and two four barrel rifle calibre gatling guns to fire at enemy troops on the ground and to use up lots of ammo real fast not much can beat them... but equally the sight of those tracers coming in... about 5,000 rounds per minute in 12.7mm HMG calibre and about 12 thousand rounds per minute in rifle calibre machine gun fire all from one pod would be pretty off putting...

I'm sure this guy was just a civilian aid worker having a pizza

American ex special forces mercs in Ukraine are normally called Journalists or Aide Workers... they are the new white helmets.

GarryB wrote:
Actually an interesting idea...

And very old one, used in waste numbers in Afghanistan already. It has high angle of attack, and was very useful for coverage/suppresive fire upwards on the hill slopes. For the same reason, used in Chechenya with results.
But Vasilek on a barrel is a new concept for me

mnztr wrote:

Personally I thin they will participate again. If you look at the initial reasons why they were removed. Its legal. Because the PMC cannot operate on Russian territory, which now includes Donbas. However, Belarus is not Russia, and attacking Ukraine from Belarus is an ideal use for Wagner. Maybe without Pregozhin, or after him being told to shut up if he wants to come back alive. Maybe they will even attack Lithuania. After all if a bunch of terrorists attack, does article 5 apply?

Of course not, and that is why there is so much noise in Poland and the Baltic superpowers.
Nobody even try to cover the fact, that there is a regular training program for insurgents being carried in all of them. Bandera thugs have been trained in Poland for years, which I find especially disgusting. When Lukashenko is telling about trained and equipped terrorist units to be used against Belarus, he is dead serious. It would be something similar to the Ukronazi intrusions in Belgorod area.
Having a few thousand strong PMC to assist your regular border forces and army is not a joke, considering that it is about 20-25% of the whole Belarussian army.

kvs wrote:
Mercouris is in the grey zone between NATzO fantasy spew and reality.   There are no "western" analysts who are in the reality zone.   But this does
no mean Mercouris is to be written off.   He is one of a tiny number of voices for sanity in the NATzO west.  

I can't stand his voice tone, so whatever you say bro

Thought you guys would get a good chuckle out of this.... remember when this special operation started and lots of Russian men decided there were other places they had to be... the "boy" at the end of this video is particularly amusing... pretty obvious why he left but I wonder whether the Russian military would want him for anything other than Bayonet practise...

GarryB wrote:They had special duplex rounds for helicopter gun use with two lighter projectiles instead of one to essentially double the rate of fire but using bullets that were still rather heavier than normal rifle calibre rounds so they still hit very hard

I also thought about it and it would be actually quite a wall of projectiles coming towards your opponents.

12,7мм дуплет (12,7 1СЛ и 12,7 1СЛТ) (1985)


The issue is, from the articles I have read regarding this duplex projectile is, that they have no virtual application in the Russian military and YakB 12,7mm gattling gun is not used anymore in Crocodiles, except of old  training version of Mi-24D versions. The gun pods GUV-8700 where they still are used they probably just use up the Soviet Stock or switched totally to standard 12,7x104mm rounds.

I haven't found any conclusive information if they are still in production/use. Maybe for export.
But overall the effective range is 1000-1200 meters for Helicopters (elevated position).

The other aspect I forgot to mention is, when you are a damn unfortunate soldier sitting in a MT-LB with full knowledge that on a battlefield that thing is just as useful as a cardbox with wheels, from fear you will be on the brink of psychological and moral collapse. I personally wouldn't even like to sit in a T-90M or BMPT let alone in a MT-LB. If I would be able to decide I would rather be some stupid "fister" artillery ammunition mover.

There are many jobs in the military that are safer but not necessarily less morally taxing. Look at how vigilant Russia is witholding of killing every EVAC/MEDICS vehicle. So many footage of medics that are observed and not touched and only killed when they are used as a logistics vehicle for redeployment/supply of weapons and ammunition.

Anyways, it's hell for everyone involved.

Why is no one putting this on a MT-LB?

Oops, my mistake... at first glance I assumed that was the four barrel 12.7mm gatling gun of the old hinds and the machine gun pods used by their helicopters, but that is the 6 barrel 23mm gun of the MiG-31 and Su-24...

I seem to remember seeing that mounted on a ground vehicle robot and its compact ammo and low recoil would probably make it an excellent fire power vehicle.

The BMPT concept was based on the overwhelming cannon fire from what was essentially an air defence vehicle that spat enormous numbers of relatively small explosive rounds at an enemy position at once and a 23mm gatling gun firing 150 rounds a second... perhaps in 20 or 40 or 60 round bursts would be devastating... we have seen the effect of twin 23mm ZU-23-2 cannon in forests in the Ukraine... this gun has rather less velocity but is throwing rounds at a much faster rate and the projectiles are the same.

A water cooled barrel and a BMP-3 sized vehicle full of ammo that is remote controlled could launch enormous numbers of HE shells at a target in the blink of an eye...

I also thought about it and it would be actually quite a wall of projectiles coming towards your opponents.

That would be 10,000 rpm, which is quite a lot, but then the 23mm gatling pictured above can fire 23mm shells at that rate with the much better advantage of HE rounds throwing out shrapnel around their point of impact which would be even more effective I suspect.
(nice pic too... thanks)


The issue is, from the articles I have read regarding this duplex projectile is, that they have no virtual application in the Russian military and YakB 12,7mm gattling gun is not used anymore in Crocodiles, except of old training version of Mi-24D versions. The gun pods GUV-8700 where they still are used they probably just use up the Soviet Stock or switched totally to standard 12,7x104mm rounds.

I haven't found any conclusive information if they are still in production/use. Maybe for export.
But overall the effective range is 1000-1200 meters for Helicopters (elevated position).

The other aspect I forgot to mention is, when you are a damn unfortunate soldier sitting in a MT-LB with full knowledge that on a battlefield that thing is just as useful as a cardbox with wheels, from fear you will be on the brink of psychological and moral collapse. I personally wouldn't even like to sit in a T-90M or BMPT let alone in a MT-LB. If I would be able to decide I would rather be some stupid "fister" artillery ammunition mover.

There are many jobs in the military that are safer but not necessarily less morally taxing. Look at how vigilant Russia is witholding of killing every EVAC/MEDICS vehicle. So many footage of medics that are observed and not touched and only killed when they are used as a logistics vehicle for redeployment/supply of weapons and ammunition.

Anyways, it's hell for everyone involved.

The issue is, from the articles I have read regarding this duplex projectile is, that they have no virtual application in the Russian military and YakB 12,7mm gattling gun is not used anymore in Crocodiles, except of old training version of Mi-24D versions.

They do have portable Kord guns they run around with but I suspect they would prefer to use it against vehicles and prepared positions instead of just infantry for which this ammo is more appropriate. For use against enemy infantry I would say 30mm and now 40mm grenades would also be more effective with HE rounds than solid shot from a HMG.

As can be seen in your animated gif, despite being split into two projectiles each round is still very substantial and would do quite a bit of damage to the human anatomy.

The other aspect I forgot to mention is, when you are a damn unfortunate soldier sitting in a MT-LB with full knowledge that on a battlefield that thing is just as useful as a cardbox with wheels, from fear you will be on the brink of psychological and moral collapse. I personally wouldn't even like to sit in a T-90M or BMPT let alone in a MT-LB. If I would be able to decide I would rather be some stupid "fister" artillery ammunition mover.

The irony is that it seems that such logistics people were the ones most likely to get captured and tortured by the enemy nazis.

Being in a light vehicle is probably not a lot safer because a battlefield is a dangerous place... robot vehicles and telecontrolled vehicles and drones would be my preference... but the MTLB would be mobile in conditions where other vehicles are stuck and good support with drones and air power would be important too.

There are many jobs in the military that are safer but not necessarily less morally taxing. Look at how vigilant Russia is witholding of killing every EVAC/MEDICS vehicle. So many footage of medics that are observed and not touched and only killed when they are used as a logistics vehicle for redeployment/supply of weapons and ammunition.

Which might make the nazis feel better but that does not seem to be honoured by both sides... I mean the enemy openly target civilians so red crosses mean nothing to them if they got the chance.

Something to be said for the tank level armour of the BMPT... but even they are not 100% safe either...

Dangerous game war...

mnztr wrote:Personally I thin they will participate again. If you look at the initial reasons why they were removed. Its legal. Because the PMC cannot operate on Russian territory, which now includes Donbas. However, Belarus is not Russia, and attacking Ukraine from Belarus is an ideal use for Wagner. Maybe without Pregozhin, or after him being told to shut up if he wants to come back alive. Maybe they will even attack Lithuania. After all if a bunch of terrorists attack, does article 5 apply?

Exacly, furthermore they are the same mercenaries that tried tò organise a coup against Russia. If the do Something strange they can also Say that Wagner Betrayed even the trust given them by Lukashenko, so neither Russia or Bielorussia have anything to do with those terrorists (the plausible deniability so much loved by US and CIA).

I think that after Wagner's putch attempt they were given a sort of last chance but they are expendable.
Basically the only way for them not to be killed by russian secret service is to become a sort of suicide squad.

I also have heard the possibility of preemptive measures to let Wagner loose on Poland in a very versatile manner to be able to react to whatever may unfold before them.

Now, they are "outcasts" are not officially related to Russia as officially stated by both sides and perceived even by the enemy as Anti-Russians. Now in theory Russia can always say, told you, they went rogue and we have no ties.

Imagine Wagner doing sabotage on Polish lands and raid some of the airfields.

i think that is a win win situation. No more Murican one-sided abuse of such situations. Let them have their own medicine.