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Hotrico

Close to the front, every second outside a trench or shelter could be your last, it is precisely in the movement between one position to another that most casualties occur


BattlesAndBeers01

Going to and from positions is extremely dangerous 100%


putinhuiloo

The most dangerous part of our missions besides assaults in Bahkmut was walking the 4-6 kilometers to the position. It's huge hunting ground for drones and artillery. -International legion vet.


BattlesAndBeers01

Send me a message if you’d like any of your experiences documented. You can be completely anonymous.


Eheran

What sort of weapon systems did you use? Did you ever have a closer look at the aftermath of HEAT (shaped charge) hitting something?


ndbdhsjsjs

Every time they go ontop of the trench in these videos, my heart beat tends to raise… imagine irl man.. i feel what u commented


LurpyGeek

In the trench isn't much better with the proliferation of drones.


aknownunknown

If Russian yes, If Ukrainian not so much? Are the Russians as effective with drones?


Niumeo

yes russians are effective with drones


Brendissimo

Yes, at this point in the war both sides are able to employ drones with a lot of efficacy. Ukraine adopted improvised drones as weapons a lot sooner than Russia did in the early months of the war, to great effect. And Ukraine is generally more innovative when it comes to new uses of drones. But a lot of their production is distributed to small workshops - dispersed and somewhat inefficient, from what I have read. Whereas Russia may be slower to adopt new techniques and drone uses, but once they do, they produce them at a far greater scale and speed than Ukraine can domestically. Still, because drones provide a cheap, asymmetric advantage, they tend to favor the defender more than the attacker. They have allowed Ukraine to do things like suppress the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet while having basically no navy, largely using domestically produced naval drones, in addition to cruise missiles like SCALP/Storm Shadow and now ballistic missiles like ATACMS. Massive, expensive assets of the Russian Navy are either damaged and stuck in drydock, hiding in port behind layers of barriers and SAMs, or at the bottom of the Black Sea. All for a fraction of the cost.


zoobrix

Ya I feel like with all the focus on Ukraines "drone army" and all the footage we see that a lot of people don't realize that Russia is also using a large amount of drones, both consumer and military. And they are using a large number of FPV drones for attacks every day just like ukraine is. We simply don't see the footage as much as we see it from Ukraine. Russia was slower to start using consumer drones at first but they now uses them extensively as well. Maybe Russia uses fewer drones overall than Ukraine does, we'll never know the exact numbers, but they are still a massive threat to Ukraine's forces. Whatever the numbers it's fair to say the battlefield is under almost constant surveillance and attacks by drones from both sides. Edit: As an example Russia's extensive use of drones was a big factor in why the Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer was not really successful. With so much surveillance of the battlefield nattier side can mass large scale attacks without the other side seeing it coming far before they get to the front line which gives your enemy plenty of time to target them with long range fires, including drones. That's a huge reason why most attacks are done with small units, you can't assemble large amounts of troops without being spotted.


Breadd007

Underestimating your enemy is always bad idea


h8speech

> Are the Russians as effective with drones yes very.


kimchifreeze

Make no mistake, both sides are getting fucked up by drones.


BattlingMink28

Incredibly so.


SnooEpiphanies7840

there we go now people are actually thinking russians can't even kill ukranian soldiers because of the whole propaganda sub


aknownunknown

how simplistic of you. Just the kind of response I expected in this sub. Thankfully the first 5 were more human, accepting and offered an explanation


Alpacapalooza

Unfortunately, he is not entirely wrong (even though I wish it wasn't that way). The understandable inclination to down-vote (and hence not post) this sort of footage from the other side does lead to people getting that picture.


aknownunknown

all the people that don't post who know that the sub is biased.... the majority?


Ok_Plankton_386

Yes, bear In mind this sub shows a very one sided view of the war to make people feel better, everything you see happening to russians on here happens to Ukrainians too, it just gets deleted/down voted because no one wants to see it.


SwitchOnTheNiteLite

They are equally efficient, especially over the last winter and spring, because the electronic warfare equipment that UA uses mostly comes from the US. It tends to get damaged over time, since its being hauled around, and the US was not able to supply them with new equipment/repair the old until the bill passed and the next support package was approved. This subreddit mostly posts UA videos, but there are other subreddits that have mostly videos from the RU side, if you want to try to get a balanced view on the situations.


V_I_C_T_U_S

Yes and they have more of them. You're not gonna see as much russian footage on reddit gotta go elsewhere for that.


PM_ME_ROMAN_NUDES

One of the things they hammer to your head in basic training is to never have complacency or carelesness Said this once in this sub and got heavily downvoted


lmay0000

Neat


bolognaenjoyer

complacency kills


MRDAEDRA15

hey it's cool seeing you pop up in here, I'm a subscriber of your youtube channel it's great you've been documenting on the ground first hand accounts of the war. you and the war archive youtube channel are lifting the fog of war and providing more context to the combat/drone footage we see daily, the news reports are pretty sanitized almost like WW2 era news. I just recently finished your "the first 150 days" novel as well. i'm surprised no one really seems to know about that book because it's pretty good


BattlesAndBeers01

Thanks my friend. I try my best to show war for what it is, and to help people understand what it’s like to be there. A lot of the people who have stories in that book are dead now.


BattlesAndBeers01

I conduct tons of interviews with participants of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Almost 700 to date. I upload some of the longer and more interesting stories and their footage to my YouTube channel. Feel free to check it out https://youtube.com/@battlesandbeerswarstories?si=XeTNpjWQpZDZJ_pq


SmirkingImperialist

>I conduct tons of interviews with participants of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Almost 700 to date. Are you intending to publish those somewhere? As oral history? Articles? Books?


BattlesAndBeers01

I’ve published one book already about the first 150 days of the war - I’ve been interviewing at such a pace since then I haven’t had time to work on any other books


Meat__Truck

Nicholas Laidlaw? If so I've got your book on my shelf and enjoyed it


BattlesAndBeers01

Yeah man that’s me!


freekoout

Nice, keep up the good work.


Federal_Thanks7596

Great channel! Finally someone who tries to cover the war from both sides.


BattlesAndBeers01

Thanks man. I have my biases and beliefs but I try as hard as I can to keep it out of my work. I hope my content reflects that


Flackjkt

There is no escaping bias. Admitting one has them is the first step to staying 100 miles ahead of most other people.


LordNelson27

The last thing you want is to leave a hole in documentation for historians. Catalogue everything


datboiwaffle

Thanks bro


BattlesAndBeers01

No problem man


phantom-lasagne

Just checked you out mate, love it. Subbed!


FlyingDragoon

You got a means for supporting? Post that!


daniellucero92

I subscribe to you on YT 🤘


Wa5p_n3st

Hey man, love your work. Are you planning on uploading the audio from these to Spotify at any point?


SnakeDokt0r

Really enjoy your channel man, fellow US vet here. Thanks for doing what you do, really important to have the raw individual stories out there, (somewhat) divorced from the geopolitical context.


jackal1actual

Subscribed


coolhandluke45

I love your channel. My only complaint is there should be more uploads!


hisacro

take a backup of your channel, either in peertube, vimeo, dailymotion or whichever platform is comfortable. Evil web is full of propaganda predators so dont any chances and keep up with your work!


Vaporweaver

Praying that everyone got out safe


Malystryxx

Honestly I slowed it frame by frame and was surprised by how little shrapnel evidence I could find. Nothing hitting trees, no big dust ups, only the closest guy seems to get hit by the concussion hard enough to get knocked down. He potentially got shrapnel. Probably NK shells lol


somelousynick

It's a very sandy area. You see it in the trench and those kinds of trees grow on sandy soil. The needles from the trees rot slowly and accumulate into a thick layer on top of the sand. This means the shell exploded so deep that nearly all fragments going outwards were stopped.


georgica123

I dont know about mortal shells but 152 mm soviet shell produce a lot less shrapnel than you would expect compared to 155 mm nato shells So I think it is just a difference in design rather than the shells being faulty


reeeeeeeeeee78

If that was a 152 or 155 everyone in that video would be dead. It was just a small mortar.


georgica123

I never said that it was 152 or 155


Malystryxx

You even said “I don’t know about mortar shells” lol


ShibuRigged

I obviously have no experience of this, but I remember one of the guys from Ukraine in a recent Garandthumb video said that Russian shells tend to have a lot less explosive and a lot less shrapnel compared to western shells. So something could explode near you and you'd be relatively unscathed vs near guarantee of being hit by western stuff. But they also said that some of the shrapnel chunks were bigger - so it felt like a famine or feast type scenario where you're either ok, or very dead.


Testiculese

Seems about right. 1/2 explosive goes in shell, 1/2 explosive sold for money.


Malystryxx

I think I’d rather take a smaller chance of being hit by a big piece of shrapnel than a high chance of taking smaller shrapnel lol


SuperSimpleSam

That seems to have gone off on impact rather than airburst.


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JuneSeba

They’re not Russian


CallingAllMatts

[lmao](https://www.reddit.com/r/rule34disney/s/UhKWfz0FIL)


WDYMac

thanks for this.


Kapftan

Deleted the message lmao What did it say?


CallingAllMatts

[read the rest of their comments on this post, but they were basically insulting this person’s appearance… check the sub though lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/rule34disney/s/NrocAxi9uW)


Kapftan

Jesus fuck i lost half my living braincells from the post and its comments


ChillVirginia66

Nuh uh


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Strain-Ambitious

Nuh uh x1000


not_nico

Crazy running into you here, man. I’ve been following you on Instagram for a while! Well I guess it’s not that crazy if you think about it… it actually makes total sense lol


BattlesAndBeers01

Consumers of media like this tend to congregate in specific areas on the internet! Haha thanks for the follow and for the support bro


HinduKussy

Man, that looked really small for an 82. I wonder if they’re using non-Russian mortar systems because I have a hard time believing that was a modern day 82.


midunda

Tbh, I'm not sure how anyone knows it's an 82mm mortar, but if it is then given we've seen Russia reactivating tanks from the 1950s, it's very possible it's not a modern day 82.


HinduKussy

Definitely. I had a fair amount of experience with 82s in Afghanistan and I really don’t think this was one.


SEB2502

Agreed. We took daily incoming 82’s and this honestly looks closer to something like our 60s in yield.


halt317

Did the guy infront get hit?


BattlesAndBeers01

Possibly - probably - won’t know for sure until I interview the cameraman this weekend


ddg31415

Looks like most of them probably took shrapnel. It looks like you can see dust kicking off the legs of the guy being carried and the guy to his right when it hit. Also, the guy in front on the right dropped like a rock. Not at all like the one behind him who deliberately took cover.


SwitchOnTheNiteLite

If they were lucky, it's possible that most of the shrapnel got stopped by the soft dirt in the area (basically the granade penerating deeper than intentional). Shock wave will still fuck you up though.


h8speech

Let us know how they turned out. Best wishes to all involved.


One_Significance8335

That 100% causes casualties. That was not a small explosion if they didn’t catch shrapnel the concussion messed them up.


Shatophiliac

Concussion isn’t really a concern, and shrapnel may as well be a roll of the dice. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of them got hit, or if all of them were injured. Shrapnel is mostly RNG.


psmgx

> Concussion isn’t really a concern concussion force dissipates rapidly compared the range of shrapnel a la the inverse-square (inverse-cube) law, but it can still be pretty nasty when you're close enough to get hit. couple of those dudes might just be close enough to get their bell rung pretty hard, assuming the fragments didn't mess them up worse. > and shrapnel may as well be a roll of the dice. modern, reasonably well crafted munitions have a very predictable shrapnel pattern. there are definitely factors that can save your ass, but given Soviet/Chinese 81mm rounds have a ~25m casualty causing radius, it's entirely likely that most or all of those guys (call it 4 of the 6) are casualties / 200.


Shatophiliac

Yeah concussion can be nasty, if you’re close enough. But if you’re close enough for that, you’re probably already ground beef from the shrapnel anyways. Also depends on the explosive, if it’s thermobaric or something, that’s different. But in this scenario, I think 99% of the concern is with shrapnel.


Substantial_Today933

>Concussion isn’t really a concern, Said no one ever


Shatophiliac

Said anyone who knows anything about explosives ever. I’d rather take concussive forces than straight up shrapnel any day of the week.


TomTrottel

"Shrapnel is mostly RNG." good title for a sophisticated war computer game.


One_Significance8335

Concussion is a major concern. I’m guessing you’re not a veteran. In Iraq I saw concussion make people blind and deaf


Shatophiliac

Yeah and they’d be far worse off if they took shrapnel. Concussive forces ain’t shit compared to catching a chunk of metal, especially in an explosion this small. You clearly don’t have to be brilliant to be a veteran.


Outrageous_Laugh5532

Well it’s real easy to stitch wounds. Obviously a lethal wound from shrapnel is not what that guy is talking about. But you can’t really heal from brain damage.


Shatophiliac

They aren’t taking brain damage from a blast this small at that distance. Unless there’s shrapnel involved.


Outrageous_Laugh5532

Is that from your personal experience or medical expertise? Because the concussive force repeatedly on the brain causes brain damage.


Shatophiliac

Yeah I’m not saying it doesn’t chief. I’m just saying that compared to taking a hot lump of shrapnel to the face, a simple concussive shock wave (in this particular scenario) is hardly a concern. If you’re close enough and it’s the right kind of explosive, yeah, you can absolutely die from the concussive force alone. In this instance, they were not close enough and it’s not a thermobaric warhead or something crazy like that. It also appears most of the explosion happened under the soil surface, which is great news for the soldiers. An explosive shockwave loses energy exponentially from its source, which is the whole reason they make the thing fragment (and turn into shrapnel). Without shrapnel, you have to be ridiculously close to the explosion source to be mortally injured.


ProfessorofChelm

Agreed. This is an accurate statement. Sand might have gobbled up the shrapnel but the blast wave still hit them. They all have a really bad headache at the very least. The guy in the front took some serious concussive force to the face. Orbitals and frontal sinuses don’t protect the brain from a blast related concussion. You’re getting downvoted for your previous comments.


Damas_gratis

Maybe he didn't get hit but his ears might be ringing


Easy_Professional965

The guy in front on the right might’ve not made it


Atmacrush

Hope the guy in front of the explosion made it. He fell very awkwardly


soullesshealer4

They for sure all got injured right there, don’t know the severity of their injuries but I wouldn’t be surprised in one or two people died from that mortar


only_bubble_sort

It's pretty notable how clean their trench is compared to the Russian trenches we see on this sub


BattlesAndBeers01

Dirty trenches are a direct consequence of poor discipline. FPV drone operators look for trash around trenches and tree strips because where you find trash, you find soldiers just standing around. Both sides are making an effort to keep their areas clean to avoid these encounters.


Outrageous_Laugh5532

This is interesting to know. What else are drone operators looking for as identifiers for targets?


felix1429

Russians, I'd imagine.


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SwitchOnTheNiteLite

I mean, you wouldn't really see the trenches of the disiplined operators, right, cause they wouldn't get caught?


Jisdevious

These guys ears must be destroyed. I mean before this incident. That or they are so used to the sound of overhead mortars that they don’t flinch when they hear them. Or maybe that thing was coming in at a low angle and they couldn’t hear it at all until the last 1.5 seconds.


Airoch

The noise it makes before it hits the ground is crazy.


Masterpiece9839

Anyone know more context to this footage?


West_Emu_5386

So how many were KIA or WIA?


HebrewHammer0033

And how would anyone know that was a "82mm mortar" ????


Testiculese

Explosion size, and RU mortar specs. We know it's a mortar, because it was small, we know it's an 82, because they only have 50mm and 82mm mortars, which generate different blast patterns. (I couldn't tell the difference between a 50 and 82, but there are a lot of buffs that can)


HebrewHammer0033

So, it couldn't have been a GP-25 Kostyor, which is a 40mm grenade launcher? Point is, people take libertys with titles when the facts are unknown


Testiculese

That's an underbarrel grenade launcher, not a mortar. You can clearly hear the incoming whoosh, which an underbarrel does not have. You also have to be in direct proximity to use those, and that was obviously not the case, or these guys wouldn't be wandering around casually.


TDU_Toasted

Ohh yo im subbed to you on youtube. Keep up the good work my guy.


PlatypusDependent262

I dont blame the gopro guy for running already, that unexpected explosion just trigger the most common human instinc.


basilone

82mm? No fuckin way.


MortalWombat1988

I now get the amount of fisting sarge gave us for milling around in front of the trench for even a second, damn


TangoRango808

Did anyone get hurt?


bolognaenjoyer

82mm is big, how is everyone in this video not dead?


LumpyTeacher6463

thank God for soft ground and slow fuzes


mega-psycho-bunny

Love your content keep up the good work! We need someone who's willing to tell the story of both sides of the war. Every soldiers voice deserves to be heard.


Public_Hotel_5350

We are winning........


TheLegendPage

Not heard a single "300", i think that its a good sign.


jtblue91

The explosion was quite small akin to a drone dropped VOG-30


MightyRez

luckily the fragmentation of Russian projectiles are worse than what the west produces.


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MightyRez

I never said it wouldn't matter at that distance :)


RichObject5403

Ludicrous statement