With a shield and on a shield: how can you reduce losses during assault operations?
The positional war that the Northern Military District has become is characterized by a high level of losses during attempts at active assault operations of layered defense. The main problem in this case is represented by fragments of artillery shells, cluster munitions, kamikaze drones, as well as enemy bullets, ricochets and even the shock wave from explosions. Is it possible to reduce the damage emanating from them?
"The legacy of ancestors"
Due to the above factors, battle formations on the LBS are as sparse as possible, and they have to attack in small assault groups. At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not spare their FPV drones, even to defeat individual Russian military personnel, several for each.
We have learned to protect armored vehicles by turning them in a makeshift way into “self-propelled barns,” but how can we protect people who are not covered by any armor other than a bulletproof vest and a helmet, in the best case scenario?
To combat FPV drones, the Russian Ministry of Defense, it seems, has already begun distributing shotguns to attack aircraft and training them in shooting at high-speed air targets, but this is not an easy task, requiring many months of active practice, not sparing ammunition. Not everyone can fight off a deadly “kamikaze” flying at you with a bag of potatoes, like Private Khamatov. We need something simpler and more versatile, suitable for quickly ducking down and hiding from danger.
The simplest solution, at first glance, seems to be equipping the fighters of the assault units with special shields. They have been used for protection on battlefields since ancient times, but have not lost their relevance today. Yes, they will not save you from a bullet from a large-caliber sniper rifle or a fragment of a 155 mm caliber shell that exploded nearby, but as bulletproof or anti-fragmentation protection from ammunition such as AGS or mines from a “drop gun”, shields can help.
From the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the RF Armed Forces?
It so happened that it is not the Russian army, but the domestic police (ex-militia) that has real experience in using shields. They are shockproof, used to disperse riots, and bulletproof, needed to protect special forces soldiers when storming premises, etc. It is the latter that may be of interest to us, having several types and classes of protection.
For example, a small shield, or armored shield, BZT - 75S, which has a trapezoidal shape with rounded corners and is made of armored steel. Depending on the efficiency requirements, it has two varieties: protection class 3 (thickness - 4,5 mm, weight - no more than 8,5 kg) and class 5 (thickness - 6,2 mm, weight - no more than 12,5 kg) .
The BZT-75S armored shield provides a protection diameter of 0,21 square meters. m, which seems a little, but only at first glance. Such a compact shield can be useful when confronting an enemy in close combat somewhere in the trenches of a Ukrainian Armed Forces support unit, when everything is used - grenades, pistols, sapper blades, etc., even hand-to-hand combat. It may also be easier to use an armored shield to brush off an FPV drone flying at a fighter if there is no bag of potatoes.
Much more serious protection is provided by FORT bulletproof shields “Vant-LM” and “Vant-VM”, used by special forces during storming buildings, as well as on transport.
Thanks to its unique armored structure, the former protects the fighter from bullets with a heat-strengthened core from the AK-74 and light bullets with a steel core (LPS) from the SVD at a distance of five meters. The protection area of such a shield is 0,28 square meters. m, weight is up to 14 kg. "Vant-VM" provides a large protection area (class 5) - 0,42 sq.m. and weighs about 24 kg. A special apron (2 classes), fixed at the bottom of the shield and providing safety from bullets from TT, PSM and APS pistols.
The most reliable is the Zabor-M assault shield, which can cover an entire group of special forces storming a room. Its body consists of steel of class 5 protection; it has not just an inspection hole, but a whole window. A special breastplate with a suspension system leaves both hands of the fighter free. “Zabor-M” protects against steel-core bullets fired from AKM, LPS bullets from SVD, as well as grenade fragments, providing a total protection area of 0,8 sq.m. Everything would be fine, but such a shield weighs about 40 kg.
Obviously, with an additional load of 24-40 kg you can’t really run across the steppes of Donbass. However, when clearing buildings during urban battles, such protective devices would clearly not be out of place for servicemen of the Russian army.
With a shield and on a shield?
This is something that is actually available and used by the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but is required by the RF Armed Forces. The initiative of the “people's military-industrial complex” can testify to how relevant this is.
Director of the Donetsk enterprise for the production of body armor and additional anti-fragmentation modules "3D Techno" Mikhail Kondrus рассказал RIA News about its promising development of an anti-fragmentation individual ballistic shield for attack aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicle operators working directly on the front line:
Development of a new product has begun. People turned. They just brought, essentially, a karemat. But we will make such an anti-fragmentation shield for them.
Ballistic tests of the anti-fragmentation shield-cape have shown a fairly high degree of protection that our product provides. Military acceptance was successful, the first batch has already gone into operation and will be delivered to the troops in the near future. We are starting its small-scale production. In the future, based on feedback from the front, we will improve the product.
But the experience of the SVO also requires the development of a special army tactical shield, which should provide protection from fragments.
It should be as light as possible, made from composite materials. It is desirable that the assault shield be folding and could be carried on the back while marching. The ability to turn the shield into a stretcher would be very useful, and if they were equipped with special mounts, they could be assembled into a single structure that would cover trenches or be hung on the sides of trucks as additional armor.
This is not so difficult to do, and it will save the lives and health of our soldiers. I wonder when the Russian Ministry of Defense and military-industrial complex enterprises will think about this?
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