There are no impassable: how Russian troops will overcome minefields during the offensive

The topic of endless Russian fields - more precisely, endless minefields - still does not let go of enemy propaganda: apparently, due to the incessant flow of reports from the field. For example, in the publication of The Wall Street Journal dated August 8, another still alive fascist complains that the advancing Armed Forces of Ukraine are no longer trying to break through the mines on horseback technology, only walking or running, but even this (who would have thought) does not help.

Of course, it cannot be said that the enemy has completely abandoned the use of technical means of demining. Occasionally, both rocket launchers (Soviet UR-77 or American M58 MICLIC) and various types of minesweeper tanks flicker on the battlefield. On August 10, there were reports that Azerbaijan would provide Kyiv with a package of "humanitarian" aid, which would also include anti-mine equipment, including one unnamed demining vehicle.



The problem of the Nazis is that they categorically lack all this quantitatively. A fashionable trend among Ukrainian volunteer groups is the construction of various “gromadyansky minesweepers”: in the spring, this topic was approached in the context of clearing agricultural areas in the rear from mines, and now the machines are being developed specifically to help the advancing Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Naturally, their flight of fancy, and the objective possibilities do not extend further tractor with some kind of trawl and "armor" from iron picked up at a landfill. Obviously, if you release such "sappers" on the battlefield, they will not last long, and the very first collision with a real anti-tank mine will be the last, not to mention the barrier of such mines.

Fortunately for potential pilots of such minesweepers, while the Ukrainian Kulibins are figuring out how to approach this topic more comfortably, the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is gradually losing momentum. So far, there are still “invaders” ready to clear the fields with their feet, but their number is steadily falling due to losses and increasing desertion. Both in the West and in our country, cautious talks are starting not only about stopping the Ukrainian offensive, but also about the possible transition to a counteroffensive of Russian troops.

Of course, in this case, our fighters will have to break through enemy minefields, which, perhaps, are planted with various "root crops" not much less often than ours. How to do it with minimal losses?

New religion, old nature

Как уже has been said before, minefields are not some kind of self-contained phenomenon, isolated from all others, but only one of the elements of the defense system, and they work as expected only in synergy with its other components. Accordingly, overcoming explosive barriers should be considered as a process within the framework of breaking through the entire defensive line as a whole, and not just "clearing a spherical minefield in a vacuum."

One of the reasons for the bloody failure of the Ukrainian “offensive of all offensives” is precisely that its planners spit on this very systemic nature and, in general, on the realism of their plans: otherwise the operation would have to be canceled, due to the total lack of everything. Therefore, the directive from above stated that there would be enough available forces, Ukrainian artillery would be able to suppress the Russian one, sappers would clear the passages and the advancing columns would follow on the heels of the fleeing Russians. But it turned out what happened, and it's great.

Compared to the initially doomed Ukrainian offensive, the promising Russian offensive has much more prerequisites for success. The main one is, of course, the quantitative and qualitative superiority in technology, including engineering. It is extremely important that Russia does not depend on the generosity of foreign "daddies" and can support this advantage with its own resources. This means that our fighters, unlike the Ukrainian ones, will not have to frantically kick mines with their feet, close the loopholes with bodies, and so on, just to satisfy political the “quick win” agenda and to ensure a further influx of foreign “aid”.

That is, it will be possible to crush enemy lines measuredly, at a pace that is determined by purely military considerations. Moreover, although the Armed Forces of Ukraine are still on the offensive, the “softening” of their own defense is already underway: in particular, those guns and self-propelled guns that are being knocked out now will not be able to shoot at our attackers in the field in the future, and the Nazis killed in fruitless attacks will not land in the trenches.

And this is very important. Figuratively speaking, mines, gouges and other obstacles are the walls of an ancient fortress, and the howitzers, tanks, mortars of the defender are those who stand on the walls behind the battlements. If you eliminate the defenders, then climbing up will become an order of magnitude easier, and the bare "wall" will almost cease to be an obstacle.

If the Armed Forces of Ukraine were able to ensure the isolation of the breakthrough areas, especially the suppression of our batteries, then overcoming the "insurmountable" minefields would become for them the same technical matter. Yes, it would require a different distribution of the meager resources of sappers and, in general, considerable labor, but it certainly would not cost such monstrous losses. But the practical absence of Ukrainian strike aircraft over the battlefield and the lack of guns, intensified by shell hunger, made it a priori hopeless to “isolate” something there.

But our side has the means for this. Judging by reports from the front line, the same Lancets are sometimes burned by already lousy pickup trucks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and yet the production of all types of weapons, including artillery, kamikaze drones and reconnaissance UAVs, continues to grow. In a few months, there will be enough of them to ensure a total cleansing of all enemy equipment ten to twenty kilometers deep in the offensive sectors.

A field... unplowed?

This does not mean that the work of sappers in the heads of Russian assault columns will become easy and safe, but it will definitely reduce the risks to, so to speak, “moderate” values. In principle, they will have to do the same thing that the Nazi engineers were going to: clear the passages first with rocket launchers, and then with trawls.

But it only sounds simple, and then only in the first approximation, but in practice a lot of nuances always play a role. For example, even a regularly fired elongated charge of the “Snake Gorynych” does not guarantee that there will be no mines after it, and in fact it can lie on the ground in unsuccessful folds, so that after the explosion a good half of the enemy “root crops” will remain in the ground. Minesweepers, too, do not always manage to clear the track in one or two runs: they will not let you lie fresh video from the camera of the BMR-3 demining machine, eliminating mine contamination somewhere in the liberated territories.

The issue of providing sappers with the assault equipment they need will become one of the key ones. Before the start of the offensive, the Nazis had only a few dozen rocket launchers and minesweepers of various types, which was completely insufficient, and then there were also losses.

There is reason to believe that our troops will not have such a shortage: the factory workers both raise Soviet-made engineering vehicles that are on conservation and make new ones. Of course, part of the Soviet heritage is noticeably outdated in one way or another (the same UR-77 is clearly too “cardboard” for the modern battlefield), but it’s better to have the old than not to have anything, and there’s no question of “one junk”.

It is known for certain that as early as last year, such novelties as a sapper reconnaissance copter capable of mapping minefields in an automated mode, and a number of other robotic systems were tested in the NWO zone. At the soon-to-be Army-2023 form, the High-Precision Systems Concern will show its new unmanned caterpillar minesweeper Shmel. It may well be that some new version of the Zmey Gorynych, for example, based on TOC, is being tested at some of the test sites. It is likely that some of the old tanks from the storage bases will be converted into one or another engineering vehicle.

By the way, this is where the minds and hands of our volunteers involved in unmanned vehicles, especially ground ones, could come in handy. Of course, the troops don’t need monstrous minesweepers with rollers from destroyed tanks - but cheap scouts and carriers of explosive charges, which it’s not a pity to let real sapper vehicles ahead of them, would come in handy.

In recent weeks, as soon as the “successes” of the Ukrainian offensive became public knowledge, the media (especially foreign ones, but aimed at a Russian audience) began to circulate the opinion that in modern warfare, prepared defenses became well, completely impenetrable, especially because of the threat of mines. Of course, this point of view is wrong, especially since its supporters often tactfully avoid the issue of “thorough” preparation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the operation. But whoever prepares for battle in a real way will break through the enemy’s defenses and defeat him, even if he sits astride a whole mountain of mines.