What the cannon fodder is being issued...

[Pluvious]

Link to tweet

[Tetrachloride]

1. I am awaiting word if my friend got his orders.

.

[Jim__]

2. So he conscripts 300,000 soldiers and doesn't have decent weapons for them.

Time for Putin to pull his head out of his ass.

[underpants]

3. I don't mean this cynically but Russia has never had a problem throws bodies at a war

[temporary311]

11. Yeah, but its not like the old days.

They got away with it in WW2 because it was an existential fight, they received something like 15 billion (in 1940s dollars) via lend-lease, and the average Russian woman had like 5 kids.

Today, its an invasion of choice by a madman trying to Frankenstein the Soviet Union back into existence, the country they're invading is getting the lend-lease, and the average Russian woman has like 1.2 kids, with a significant percent of those kids having fetal alcohol syndrome.

[Victor_c3]

16. Also, the Russians lost 20% of their population in WW2

I feel this stunt will lead to the overthrow of Putin once the losses really start to rise.

[Kaleva]

13. No but it hasn't always been succesful

Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, WWI.

[Midnight Writer]

4. How many guns could Putin buy if he sold one of his yachts?

[cbabe]

5. Going to war with the army you have

https://www.motherjones.com › politics › 2005 › 03 › going-war-army-you-have

"Going to War With the Army You Have" - Mother Jones

The answer lies just beneath the surface of Donald Rumsfeld's now infamous statement, "You go to war with the Army you have.". This is a comment pregnant with meaning for organizational ...

https://www.nbcnews.com › id › wbna4731185

Frantically, the Army tries to armor Humvees - NBC News

When Hart died in a small-arms ambush in mid-October, the Army had no official plan to "retrofit" most of the 12,000-odd Humvees in Iraq. This in spite of continuing attacks on convoys and...

[rsdsharp]

6. "I wouldn't take this rusty piece of shit to war."

https://m.

Jesus, did they bury those rifles in mud? They don’t have cosmoline in Russia?

[keithbvadu2]

7. Making of Guns With Hands in Pakistan

Making of Guns With Hands in Pakistan

AKs, pistols, many guns by hand

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=making+ak+47+in+pakistan

[getagrip_already]

8. it doesn't matter what guns they are issued..... or any at all....

80% of the casualties in this war have been caused by artillery. Troops aren't dying in street fighting, or as light infantry troops clash with each other. Sometimes, but not the bulk of the deaths.

They are dying when they git hit by heavy weapons.. Rifles don't help.

What russian doctrine calls for is for the infantry to probe enemy defenses backed by artillery (tanks and fixed guns). When they encounter resistance, they typically die quickly by heavy machine gun fire and mortar rounds. If they caught in fields big guns fire air bursts above them.

Then the russian tanks pull back and pummel the area with shell fire. Then they try again with fresh troops another day, or in another place. Rinse, lather, repeat.

When they finally take a town, it is usually rubble with few surviving residents.

Most of the rifles issued will never be fired.

[grantcart]

9. Excellent points but they will try and shoot drones.

[uponit7771]

10. +1, and RA is still centralizing it's artillery storage to the point they can be blown up ....

... with surgical strikes and shut down their whole offensive strategy.

More troops looks like more cowbell right now until Russia fixes the part where they cannot mass troops, etc. Without them getting blown up by long range artillery like HIMars etc

[Amishman]

23. they have to keep their ammo centralized, their logistics model doesn't allow other options

Command is to slow and cumbersome to coordinate distribution from a decentralized network.

Their bizarre reliance on loading and unloading everything by hand ties up truck far longer at each destination, and means each stop need abundant manpower to handle it.

Their shortage of trucks means they can't handle the extra trips from spreading out their ammo dumps.

Also given their huge problem with corruption and theft, they keep supplies centralized to keep their own people from stealing and selling off materials.

They lack the expertise and equipment to change their methods much.

[Pachamama]

12. Based on just the looks of that equipment, the Russians will likely die from a mishap of these

…weapons jamming or worse.

Munitions and equipment not properly maintained is dangerous and likely to malfunction

[DFW]

14. Putin intends to close off "the" border?

Russia’s borders with other countries, plus its coastline, make the concept of “the border” a laugh when referring to the Russian Federation. Russia, including Belarus, since Lukashenko is Putin’s stooge at this point, has borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Poland (Belarus border), its restless Caucasian neighbors and the “stans” of Central Asia, China, Mongolia, and the Pacific coast. I leave out North Korea deliberately, as Russian guys will not be streaming across that border. But there are so many borders, VVP will never be able to block them all.

Someone ought to send him some Vietnam era protests from the USA, remind him of what “hell, no, we won’t go!” means, and why it was heard so loud and so often.

[GreenWave]

15. We need to get out our war protest songs.

Transcribe them in the Cyrillic.

This is one I can never find except this excerpt

High above the city
He's manning his station
He's dropping his cool
On the demonstration.

[Pluvious]

25. That reminds me of Pink Floyd...

“Foreword, he cried from the rear. And the front ranks died.”

“The general he sat, and the lines on the map, moved from side to side”

[GreenWave]

26. I thought, I will check out their lyrics and see.

They have about 2,000 songs. I had no idea. Still it may solve the mystery.

[Emile]

17. When the new Russian soldiers enter Ukraine they should surrender

immediately.

[GoCubsGo]

19. From what I have been reading, a lot of them intend to do just that.

Can't say I wouldn't do the same.

[NickB79]

18. AK's are virtually indestructible

You literally can bury them in mud and they'll still work once you hose them down.

The only issue would be if the internals rusted enough to affect cycling. Or, if the ammo was stored in similarly crappy conditions.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

20. They're terrible at intercepting incoming artillery.

[EX500rider]

21. Almost better then the 81 year old rifles designed in 1882 the troops in the Donbas were getting

That’s right. A 19th Century rifle, first fielded when the phonograph was cutting edge technology and James Garfield was President, is reportedly showing up on a 21st Century battlefield.
I mean, c’mon. This rifle was first manufactured the same year that the coward Bob Ford assassinated the outlaw Jesse James.

Link to tweet

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[yortsed snacilbuper]

22. Russian Casualties Sympathy level

[Emile]

24. What Putin does not understand is he is opening the Ukraine border for the new soldiers to surrender

[Genki Hikari]

27. Good grief

I don't remember much from my gun care class, but I wouldn't want to use any of these to defend myself.

How could any supposed modern military let its materiel get in such wretched condition, other than rampant corruption?

In a real military without out of control corruption, these guns would have been stored in better conditions and set up with routine maintenance. You don't have to baby the guns, but, jeez Louise, you do have to keep them protected from humidity, clean and oil them once in a while, check functionality, and so on.

Some of them might--might--be salvageable. Rust in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean the gun is unusable. However that would depend on:

a) If the corrosion hasn't advanced to the point that there's serious degradation of the metal, especially the barrels (gun nuts and metal workers have a term for the degradation that I can't remember);

and

b) If these poor saps would get both the time and materials to bring the guns they can save up to snuff.

Given how far gone the rot has infected every part of Russia, I don't have high hopes of either being the case. These poor kids are being sent to their slaughter unprotected, and all for one puny man's fragile ego. Russia has never been a functional nation, in any of its iterations, but this latest one has taken dysfunction to ridiculous extremes.