Wait, what? “Komsomolskaya Pravda”? Komsomol was the Soviet youth league (the “kom” part is for “communist”), Komsomolskaya Pravda was a Soviet newspaper founded in 1925. How is it still around, in “capitalist” Russia?
Brand value?
After the breakup of the USSR it was privatized and is now owned by a company connected to sanctioned oligarch Grigory Berezkin.
« Trademarks are capitalist, tovarisch! »
Mortar rounds only weigh about four or five pounds and the drones I saw only carried two or four rounds that were simply dropped, no recoil involved.
The video purports to be a machine gun. The lightest machine gun in the US military weighs 22 pounds with ammo. Add on the structure you need to hold and rotate the gun and you are talking about a lot of weight, and that’s not even taking into account the recoil from the gun firing on full automatic. It’s unlikely you could hit anything with it from more than a couple feet away and you’d be lucky if the whole thing didn’t shake apart.
Frankly, I don’t see a use for it. If you are going after enemy drones, there are already dirt cheap drones that you can crash into enemy drones much easier. And if you are looking at ground targets, the mortar is much better as it’s an area weapon and doesn’t need the accuracy of a machine gun.
Hypothesis: it could be a one-off stunt build solely intended to be featured in this video with the hope that it goes viral among Russian troops and makes the terrified green grunts even more paranoid that every little drone buzz means a new form of death raining down from the sky. The experienced soldiers will dismiss the video for the practical reasons noted, but it could be worth spending a couple hundred bucks max on this goofy little robot if it means taking yet another tiny chip out of the morale and cohesiveness of the new recruits being shoveled into the meat grinder.
While I agree that the recoil from a machine gun would be problematic for a drone, you don’t need to rotate the gun when you can just rotate the entire drone. That would save a bit of weight and complexity.
More likely:
Bastards. They’ll flood the srea and remove a major source of hydro power.
Cite Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 19 | Institute for the Study of War
It really sounds like an outraged hive of metal bees.
Not for the first time, on Russian state TV they openly discuss committing war crimes against the civilian population of Ukraine.
I rather like this idea. It’s actually a much better plan than trying to actually field the drone.
IIRC, they show the gun rotating both up and down and side to side. I’d have to go back and look again.
Russian lawmakers Andrey Gurulyov and Konstantin Dolgov advocate freezing, starving the Ukrainian civilian population
Gee, I wonder if that sounds familiar to anyone from Ukraine? Let’s see, starts with “Holodomor”, can’t quite recall the rest. Fuckers.
The withdrawal of civilians from Kherson and Russia’s seeming admission that it will have to withdraw from Kherson strikes me as dangerous. They could be preparing to blow the dam, or they could even be hoping that Ukrainians bring in mass forces to take and hold Kherson and that’s where they’ll use a tactical nuke.
I think they’re thinking flood. Equivalent short-term damage to a WMD but none of the political issues of actual WMDs.
Here’s a map of potential flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which would be a war crime:
The Russians also claim that Ukraine has a nuclear bomb in Mykolaiv, north of Kherson, which they will set off and blame on the Russians, in order to drag NATO into the war.
They’ve already telegraphed the bullshit by floating the idea that Ukraine will blow the dam. It’s pretty clear that this is the Russian “strategy” at this point.
That, and starving/freezing the Ukrainian population in a re-run of the Holodomor.
Russia has ceased to be a civilized country.
How, exactly, does a nuclear-equipped nation with a comic book villain despot get prosecuted for war crimes?
Yes, I read this as laying the groundwork for blaming the Ukrainians when they blow up the dam or use chemical weapons.
I’m not convinced it ever was.
Will the Russians stay to fight in the city of Kherson or not? From Rus standpoint the disadvantages are: 1) they’ll be fighting undersupplied and resupply will very likely continue to get increasingly more tenuous as the battle rages, 2) the forces deployed there now represent the lion’s share of Russia’s experienced combat troops still remaining. Their loss really can’t be replaced. Advantages: 1) fighting in an urban environment is a force multiplier for the defenders and will result in greater casualties to Ukr. forces attacking, 2) would result in the destruction of Kherson, thereby denying Ukr. of its economic benefits, and moves closer to the larger Russian goal of destroying the Ukrainian state.
I was thinking the same thing.