NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently said that Russia has introduced a "new style of war." “They are sending their military without chevrons, green men, and this is combined with a complex informational or“disinformation”campaign. This is a new style of war that we will have to deal with. And we began to prepare to improve our ability to repel such hidden attacks ". However, he cannot even imagine what this very “new style of war” could really become if double standards continue to flourish and Western democracy is imposed on countries.
In their science fiction novel "Predatory Things of the Century" written back in 1964, the Strugatsky brothers prophetically described the society of the future, in which hunger and banditry exist along with abundance, where coups take place with machine guns from water pipes, and "freezing grenades" are made from parts of super refrigerators. Well - today we are just entering such a future and in order to correspond to it, including in military affairs! But what does this mean in practice? Yes, only that military support to "our insurgents" can be carried out in such a way that the weapons sent to them will not even be considered a weapon, but will act very effectively. But those who help "not our" weapons with real world journalism will criticize in every possible way. The traditional one is always more visible and obvious! Well, you don't have to go far for examples. At one time, when only regional media existed and there was no global Internet, the USSR, for example, actively supplied PPSh submachine guns to China, Korea, Vietnam, and then SKS carbines and Kalashnikov assault rifles. Today it turned out to be a “gift of fate”: you can always say that “ours” found them in old warehouses, or recaptured them in battles from “not ours”. Worse, the novelties of weapons, and, in particular, modern grenade launchers, thus, today you can’t put the nervous reaction of the West to this weapon in the hands of fighters in southeastern Ukraine was seen by everyone who watches TV. However, the ingenuity and experience of history can help everyone out here. Who can prevent the introduction into the country of … New Year's fireworks of a large caliber, which, being supplied to firms in the name of the name, can later be used for … shelling of administrative buildings before they are seized ?! Where there are primitive bottles with "Molotov cocktails" before them, after all, you have to throw them with your hands. And here - everything is like in a real multiple launch rocket system! Well, one can imagine the burst of such fireworks in the room …
Kalashnikov assault rifles are clearly not suitable for seizing government buildings and facilities, since they are rather bulky and cannot be hidden under clothes. This means that to arm such assault groups, you need to use submachine guns like the Czechoslovakian "Scorpion" for the American 7, 65-mm cartridge (during the Warsaw Pact, this was almost the only weapon created for Western ammunition and today it is very convenient!), Israeli "Mini-Uzi" and "Micro-Uzi". "Scorpio" was supplied to Africa and Latin America, so there will be no problems with it, because you can buy this weapon anywhere and from anyone! The same is the case with the Uzi and the American Ingram M10 submachine gun. At one time, relatively large consignments of these weapons were delivered to the countries of Central and South America, so that any new supply of "Ingrems" to this region can be explained by the fact that "the insurgents seized them in warehouses." Even the old British "walls" can do a good job in this situation, the main thing is to know well the region to which they are supplied, well, for example, to Northern Ireland.
Thus, we hypothetically solved the problem of arming the assault groups of insurgents, well, say, in the Republic of Typhoonia, where regular troops, as now in Ukraine, are armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles of 5, 45-mm caliber or American M16 rifles. But how to achieve fire superiority over soldiers with this weapon? At one time, the Dragunov sniper rifle proved to be excellent at a firing range of 300 meters. However, since the 80s of the last century, hostilities increasingly began to be conducted at distances of about 500-600 meters. And now the Americans, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, faced the fact that the Taliban fired at them with Lee-Enfield rifles from distances of up to 800 meters, and US infantrymen, armed with an M16 automatic rifle, could conduct aimed fire no further than 450 meters. that is, there was practically nothing to answer them! The reason is that the small arms of 5.45 and 5.56 caliber, which are widespread today, at a distance of 500-600 meters are not capable of solving combat missions. And this is just one of the "calls" that the insurgents today need to be supplied with completely different weapons from those supplied yesterday, or perhaps those that were supplied to them at the beginning of the twentieth century? And here's how: having armed them with … rifles from the period of the Second, and even the First World War, plus a certain amount of quite modern weapons!
"Lee-Enfield" SMLE N1 Mk. III (photo
For example, the same British ten-shot "Lee-Enfield" will do, but especially - however, it directly depends on the country - the old Lebel rifles. Why? Yes, simply because they, again, could be found in warehouses even during the war, this is, firstly, and secondly - because of their long range. At one time, the Kurds, and they cannot be denied the ability to handle weapons, were given 10 Lee-Enfield rifles for one Lebel rifle, and all because the latter had an aiming range of 1000 yards (914 m). "Lebel" could boast of fatal shots at a distance of 2000 m, which was proven in the battles with the aborigines in Madagascar. In addition, a bullet made of tombac alloy had great penetrating power, so no modern bulletproof vest would protect against it! The Canadian rifles of Charles Ross, which were used as sniper rifles even during the Second World War, were also distinguished by their high accuracy. But they were in service with territorial formations, which means that even now they can be stored somewhere in warehouses! By the way, it was these rifles in the amount of 16 thousand pieces that Bolshevik agents tried to bring to Russia on board the steamer John Grafton in 1905 and equip the Bolshevik and Gapon military organizations with them, that is, all the same militants or insurgents. Even today, these rifles can be found in museums and private collections, ammunition is produced for them, and most likely they are also stored in large quantities in warehouses. In any case, after getting them, one way or another, or even setting up their production "semi-antique" at home and creating an appropriate stock, you can send them to the right place at any time, and the fire advantage of insurgents at a long distance will be evident, and losses government troops may well become prohibitively large.
Lebel's rifle
M1 Garand
But this weapon seems to be very old. M1 Garand rifles are much more affordable, so they don't even need to be produced again. It is quite possible to buy them and, say, put everything in the same Typhoon. However, in the aspect of waging information wars, the rifles of the First World War are still preferable. After all, how can the very fact of using such a weapon be presented to the media? "Freedom Fighters Armed with Rifles of the First World War!" - sounds great, doesn't it? That is, it is precisely today that the time has come when the “old but good” weapon is experiencing a rebirth and the relevant organizations need to think about it. Machine guns "Vickers" and "Madsen" - the latter, by the way, is still in service with the Brazilian police, although it began to enter service in the years of the Russian-Japanese war - this weapon is not inferior in quality, but in many respects superior modern designs and quite suitable just for insurgents!
It is not bad to arrange for them to release such an effective type of weapon as grenades. Moreover, there is nothing difficult in this. The main thing is to have a chemical plant at hand, where you can start the production of explosives from literally everything that is at hand. By the way, just recently in Tyumen, Internet sites with 15 recipes for making explosives were discovered, and the local prosecutor's office sent a statement to the court banning information on the manufacture of explosives, incendiary mixtures and gas bombs. On two other sites there, they talked about making a "Molotov cocktail", but … a description of effective explosives is even in the old TSB (Great Soviet Encyclopedia). Ethylene glycol dinitrate, and trinitrophenol - the famous picric acid, and even such exotic as dynamon of the "T" brand - an explosive made of ammonium nitrate and ground peat or grade "Zh" in which sunflower cake is used instead of peat - all this is there! By the way, in the same Ukraine there is more than enough of this cake!
Stielhandgranate 24 (or M.24)
A tin can, a plastic tubing from a plumbing store, interconnected and filled with any suitable explosive - here's a ready-made high-explosive grenade. The fuse - grating with a grater and a ball on a string, similar to that of the German Stielhandgranate 24 (or M.24) grenade, known as the "potato grinder". You don't even need to talk about how to turn it into a fragmentation one. It is important to set up in advance the production of fuses for it from the most affordable and diverse materials, so that they can then be sent where needed. And there, on the spot, they could make grenades like "from everything that is at hand." Bolshevik militants also traveled to Macedonia on the eve of the 1905-07 revolution. brought the "recipe" for making a Macedonian bomb, so international cooperation in this area has a very long tradition! It is interesting that many of these home-made grenades, including those with faceted cast bodies, were specially filled with ordinary black powder and were detonated without a detonator, but with the help of a fuse cord. Therefore, such a grenade was quite safe, and the low blasting power of the gunpowder made it possible to crush the body into large fragments right along the notch, which only increased the lethality of these grenades! Well, the Vietnamese at one time combined the body of the "lemon" with the handle and the fuse from the "potato" and produced them in factories in the jungle in huge quantities.
Stokes mortar
The "heavy weapon" of the insurgents is, first of all, a mortar, and in many armed conflicts of the twentieth century they made them from water pipes. Such mortars, however, cannot shoot army-type mines. But who's stopping to turn cardboard tubes for winding linoleum into shells? The fact that they look like a cylinder does not matter: the 76, 2-mm mines for the first Stokes mortars looked exactly the same, and only then they acquired the familiar teardrop shape. And if this form suited the British in 1917, why should modern insurgents object to this? The main thing here is to have a powerful explosive charge in them and a reliable fuse, which is triggered by a blow and … that's it!
At the same time, the bomb launcher (or gas launcher) became a type of mortar. They appeared first among the British, and then among the Germans. Structurally, it was a fairly strong pipe with a hemispherical bottom! A projectile with a charge or a cylinder with liquid gas or a combustible mixture was inserted into it. The barrels were buried in the ground at different angles when firing at different ranges, connected by electric wires and, on command, fired from them in a volley or burst. The firing range reached 1300 - 1800 m - quite enough by today's standards. The weight of the explosive charge in the shells for such bomb launchers reached a pound or more, so that their effect was very strong.
They are advantageous today because these weapons can be delivered legally to almost any country, since their parts do not look like weapons in any way! Barrels and shells - as semi-finished products for the production of gas cylinders, then separately screwed-in bottoms, and only then, also separately, fuses with powder retarders, which will be filled in on the spot! By their design, they can be quite similar to those used in shells for the bombing guns of the Peksana system, and it is simply impossible for a non-specialist to understand that it is simply impossible in front of him.
Rockets "Kassam"
Rockets today can also be produced in artisanal conditions. After all, do Palestinian militants from the Hamas organization make Qassam missiles and launch them towards Israel? So why shouldn't the insurgents in the Republic of Typhoon do exactly the same and launch them at government troops? The entire technology of their manufacture was clearly demonstrated on TV. You only need a high-quality bottom with oblique nozzles so that the rocket rotates in flight after launch. Well, in order to launch such “cashams”, you don't even need machines: you put them on supports on slate sheets, in grooves - and set fire to the ignition cords. And again, the main benefit is that practically everything needed to produce such missiles is available in modern civilian factories. Only individual parts are needed to speed up their release, and they can be delivered to the required regions in advance or in connection with the emerging need.
Under the guise of New Year's fireworks, it is possible to supply insurgents with PATs - a “parachute and cable” rocket system used by the British during the war. She showed herself not very well against aircraft, although she still shot down aircraft. But now helicopters are operating against insurgents at low altitudes, and this is where the PAT will be especially effective. In fact, it is a small rocket, followed by a steel cable, which drops to the ground by parachute. A palisade of "stalemates" is capable of blocking the way for any helicopter, and a blow with the blades on the cable can lead to their breakage. But even if this does not happen, there is usually a small bomb on the PAT cable, which is blown up after the cable is wound around the propeller and this is where the loss of the blade is guaranteed!
By the way, in this way you can even make an effective MANPADS! We need a pipe with a diameter of 120 mm and a "filling" of seven small-sized high-speed missiles with an instant fuse. The Germans tried to release something similar at the end of the war, but did not have time. But who prevents this device from being improved today? Seven missiles flying out at the same time and covering a large area of the sky missiles have a good chance of hitting, so we simply compensate for the lack of a guidance system with the amount of ammunition - that's all!
However, since we live in the XXI century, it is necessary to remember that almost the main weapon today is … UAVs! And if so, why shouldn't the insurgents have them? For example, I saw on sale in a children's toy store a not too expensive helicopter with a remote control and a video camera installed on it. The image from it could be projected onto the laptop screen, and it was controlled using a remote control with two levers. By the way, the baby's name is "Parrot Bebop" (sounds like it's the name of a pet), but, nevertheless, it has a built-in 14-pixel camera and a battery that can fly for 12 minutes.
"Parrot Bebop"
However, its flight time is not very long. Now, if at least 30, then it would be a completely full-fledged combat drone. All that is needed is one more control channel, connected to a strong but thin metal tube fixed under the fuselage. And it contains a feathered arrow-bullet, a powder propellant charge and - a plastic container with a shot, of the same weight with a bullet.
The drone flies, we control it, it "sees" the target, we aim the crosshair at it and fire a recoilless shot on command, which does not affect the device itself. Such "toys" can work both along the front edge of the enemy's defense and in his rear, knocking out soldiers and commanders, staff workers and … foreign military advisers! And the main thing is psychological pressure on his troops! I left the hut early in the morning to recover, until I got there … then this drone showed itself to you! Moreover, because of its small size, such a device does not hurt, and you will notice, and you will not be able to knock it down, even more so!
It is clear that the preparation of all this "machinery" and "sets of prefabricated samples of homemade weapons" will take time and money. However, it is worth it precisely within the framework of the challenges that time is throwing at us right now! At one time, the actions of the Basmachi in Soviet Central Asia were largely disrupted by the supply of ammunition to them, in which explosives were placed instead of gunpowder, and these were cartridges for British "Lee-Enfield" rifles and this was one of the best operations of our OGPU! During the civil war in Spain, the Francoists through shell companies bought weapons for … the Republicans, spoiled it, and as a result, grenades exploded in their hands, and the same thing happened with cartridges that came from the USSR, as it were! And this also required a lot of effort and money, but as a result it was the Francoists who won, so we can say that it all paid off completely!
It is believed that only one mine-warehouse, located in the zone of control of the "separatists" in the South-East of Ukraine, contains from one to three million small arms, including weapons from the Second World War: Mosin rifles, PPSh submachine guns, Maxim machine guns and other systems. It is not known whether from there or not, but one such legendary "Maxim" appeared in Slavyansk back in April. But similar strategic warehouses, with weapons dating back to the last century, are in many other regions of the planet. And they may well provide supplies for "wars of a new type" for many years to come, for which it is required that they only be in the sphere of our influence! So you can even sympathize with Fogh Rasmussen, he has not even seen a real "new war" generated by the traditional Russian ingenuity and rich imagination!
