by MATTHEW MOSS

Developed for Spetsnaz units and the KGB in the mid-1960s, the Soviet PB—also known as the 6P9—took the proven Makarov PM design and incorporated a two-stage, integral suppressor.

During World War II, the Soviet NKVD had used suppressed weapons, including M1895 Nagant revolvers fitted with clip-on “Bramit device” suppressors. As the Cold War escalated, the Soviets began the development of new silent firearms.

The Izhevsk Mechanical Plant introduced the PB, designed by A.A. Deryagin, in 1967. The PB is basically a heavily-adapted Makarov PM with a shortened slide and a repositioned return-spring. The design retains the Makarov’s exposed hammer, double-action trigger and slide-mounted decocker.

The Makarov PM’s standard return-spring was problematic once you added a suppressor to the basic design. The Chinese recognized the problem and positioned their Type 64’s return-spring above the breech.

In laying out the PB, by contrast, the Russians placed the return-spring in the pistol’s grip and attached it to a swinging lever located beneath the right-hand-side grip panel.

The weapon’s suppressor is semi-integral, with the rear section encompassing the ported barrel, which is wrapped in steel mesh that acts as a heat sink. The longer second section contains three steel baffles held in place by the suppressor’s frame.

For transport, the front section of the suppressor is detachable. This also allows the firing of the weapon with, or without, its suppressor attached.

The suppressor reduces the pistol’s report to approximately 127 decibels. The PB feeds from an eight-round magazine and chambers the standard Soviet nine-by-18-millimeter cartridge.

Fully assembled, the weapon is 12 inches long and weighs approximately one kilogram. Production of the PB was continuous until the mid-1980s. In the early 2000s, there was a surge in demand that compelled production to resume.

The PB remains in service with Russian special forces and intelligence units.

This story originally appeared at Historical Firearms.

by MATTHEW GAULT

May is a month of holidays in Russia. With the official start of spring plus Labor Day, Victory Day and Orthodox Easter all taking place within days of each other, Russians spend the month celebrating.

And if Russian president Vladimir Putin has his way, there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky to spoil the fun. In 2016, Kremlin planned to spend $1.3 million to eliminate clouds and ensure a lovely May.

Russia and other countries do this all the time. Weather-manipulation is old news. In 2008, the Russian air force accidentally dumped a 55-pound bag of concrete—one of the substances it uses to disrupt weather—on a suburban Moscow home.

China deployed the same technology to keep the skies clear during the Beijing Olympics. Dubai seeds clouds to create rain rather than disrupt it. Thailand maintains a Bureau of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation. Several U.S. states also manipulate the weather.

Militaries love the technology and its implications, but rarely raise a cloud in anger. A U.N treaty stays their hands. But that doesn’t mean that world’s armed forces—particularly in America—don’t at least research weaponized weather.

One U.S. Air Force white paper from the 1990s proposed creating artificial clouds of very, very tiny “nanomachines” that could, in theory, manipulate the weather, spy on the enemy down below and even steer lighting to fry targets on the ground.

Yes, this sounds ridiculous, but other tech that the paper proposes—and which might have seemed impossible in 1996—is either here or coming soon. So maybe smart clouds aren’t far off.

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by MATTHEW MOSS

French gun-maker Louis Debuit’s late-1940s-vintage PM9 was quite unlike almost any other submachine gun. The weapon’s action was a conventional short-recoil mechanism capable of cycling at up to 750 rounds per minute.

However, it was the PM9’s method of slowing the bolt that was so unique. The PM9 made use of a “flywheel” bolt—that is to say, the bolt moved backward and was slowed by a piston-like rotating crank. The connector between the crank and bolt traveled vertically as the bolt cycled.

The bolt and rotating action resembled a piston and crank in motion. Yes, weird.

Debuit originally chambered the PM9 in French 7.65-by-20-millimeter longue, like the earlier MAS-38. However, the manufacturer Merlin Gerin switched this to the nine-millimeter cartridge that had become popular during World War II.

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by SEBASTIEN ROBLIN

When the 1950s T.V. documentary series Air Power got around to covering the opening battles of World War II, it unfortunately reinforced a popular, and entirely incorrect, notion.

“The Polish air force is caught on the ground,” narrator Walter Cronkite grumbled over images of German bombers pummeling Polish installations. “The Polish air force is destroyed in three days.”

That’s exactly what Nazi propaganda reported after the German conquest of Poland in 1939. But it turns out Nazi propaganda wasn’t entirely honest.

Despite being badly out-classed and out-numbered three-to-one, Polish fighters shot down a large number German aircraft in the chaotic early days of the conflict. Warsaw’s air arm resisted effectively for nearly a week—and, at reduced capacity, continued fighting for more than two weeks.

That’s a Hell of a lot more than three days.

The German Luftwaffe certainly made an effort to destroy Polish aviation on the ground—but the stubborn Poles refused to just roll over.

In 1939, the Polish air force relied entirely on domestically-produced aircraft but devoted just $2 in funding per capita to air power, compared to the $100 per capita Germany allocated.

Conceived primarily to support the army on the ground, the air force had one each independent fighter and bomber brigade and spread out the rest of its aircraft in mixed detachments assigned to ground formations.

There were 445 aircraft in combat units, with additional aircraft in reserve or training units. Not a huge number. But the Polish air arm did boast a strong pilot training program.

In 1939, the German Luftwaffe was unquestionably the most advanced air force the world. The main formations assigned to the invasion of Poland, Luftlotte 1 and 4, counted 1,302 aircraft between them.

The Luftwaffe’s frontline fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf.109, could sprint at 354 miles per hour and was armed with twin 20-millimeter cannons and machine guns. Supporting the Bf.109 was the new, twin-engine Bf.110 fighter-bomber, which could reach a speed of 348 miles per hour and was even more heavily armed than the Bf.109 was, but was a clumsy dogfighter

The mainstay of the Polish air force was its 132 gull-wing PZL P.11s, which were state-of-the art monoplanes—in 1931. By 1939, the P.11 was several generations behind. Armed with just two machine guns, the P.11 was more than 100 miles per hour slower than the 109 was.

Warsaw’s air arm also fielded 30 even older P.7 fighters. As war grew imminent, the Poles tried to acquire more-advanced Hawker Hurricane and MS.406 fighters from England and France, respectively—but at the outbreak of conflict, these were awaiting shipment and assembly through Romania, nominally a Polish ally.

The Luftwaffe deployed Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers for ground support. Though slow-moving and vulnerable, Stukas had already earned a reputation in the Spanish Civil War for the terrible howl of their sirens as they executed precision bombing attacks at near-vertical angles.

Finally, two twin-engine medium bombers—the older, pencil-thin Do-17 and the heavy-lifting He-111, famous for its all-glass nose—bombed cities and military installations during the Polish campaign.

The Polish bomber force was not as obsolete as the fighters were. Warsaw’s 120 P.23 Karas strike planes were only slightly inferior to the German Stukas, while the 36 twin-engine P.37 Łos light bombers in the bomber brigade were modern designs capable of attaining 280 miles per hour.

The Polish air force also employed hundreds of light RWD and PWS-26 liaison aircraft to help army commanders communicate and spy on enemy troop movements.

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by STEVE WEINTZ

There are few natural forces that kill so many and cost so much as the hurricane. Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,500 people and Hurricane Sandy flooded lower Manhattan. Neither New Orleans nor New York City have completely recovered.

We can’t stop them. The best thing we can do is run away or, failing that, take cover. But others have asked whether we could do more. America has the most powerful weapon on Earth at its disposal. Why not use it on Mother Nature? Why not nuke a hurricane?

The basic idea goes like this—the Pentagon should bomb the eye of a tropical storm, thereby dispersing it and saving countless lives and millions of dollars.

It’s ridiculous, but in the early days of atomic energy and under the auspices of a federal project aimed at the peaceful use of nuclear weapons, one meteorologist attempted to convince the world it was a sound policy.

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After months of trying, Ukrainian forces have finally begun landing blows on the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s most powerful surviving warships.

On Sept. 9, the Ukrainians carried out a combined missile and drone strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s main anchorage in Novorossiysk, 350 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian navy claimed one of its Long Neptune ground-launched anti-ship missiles struck the Russian missile frigate Admiral Essen with its 570-pound warhead. “The long-range Neptune finally reached the Admiral Essen,” the navy crowed.

Satellite imagery of Novorossiysk seems to indicate something hit Admiral Essen along its port superstructure, but it’s unclear it was a Long Neptune. It’s possible the damage was inflicted by a slower, lighter Fire Point one-way attack drone, instead.

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by DAVID AXE

Ukrainian leaders surely watches with extreme worry as, in months of on-again, off-again fighting with Iran, U.S. and allied forces wantonly fired off thousands of their best Patriot air defense missiles. The Patriot is one of a small number of missile systems that can shoot down enemy ballistic missiles such as Russia’s Iskander. The ground-launched Iskander travels 700 km with a 500-kg warhead at seven times the speed of sound.

Russia has been lobbing scores of the 3.8-ton Iskanders at Ukrainian cities, ports and power plants every month. Production of the $3-million missiles has surged to more than 700 per year. And while Ukraine has as many as 10 donated Patriot batteries, it has so few missiles that air defenders can do little more than watch as Iskanders barrel in. “This is a really heartbreaking sight,” a Ukrainian Patriot crewman named Dmytro told CNN.

The U.S. stockpile of the missiles, which can cost as much as $3.9 million per round, was just 2,330 before the war on Iran began in February. By the time Washington and Tehran announced a brief ceasefire in April, the Americans had fired as many as 1,430 of their Patriots. More than half, according to a tally by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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by MATTHEW MOSS

In early 1942, Disney produced an instructional film for the Canadian army. Its subject—how to properly deploy the Boys Anti-Tank Rifle.

This was perhaps unsettling, but hardly unusual. Throughout World War II, Disney created instructional and propaganda films for the U.S. and allied governments.

The Boys film begins with a classic Disney-style animated short in which Hitler and his tanks attack a sleepy village, only to be repulsed by a squad of camouflaged soldiers and their armor-piercing Boys Rifles.

Introduced in 1937, the Boys was widely issued to British and Commonwealth forces during the first two years of the war. The Boys fired a .55-caliber round that was slightly larger than the classic .50-caliber round. It featured a top-mounted, five-round magazine.

In the late 1930s, the Boys might have been an effective tank-killer. The .55-caliber round could penetrate most light and medium tank armor out to 300 yards. But as Axis armor improved, the Boys grew obsolete.

Production ended in 1942, but Allied armies continued to use the Boys for tasks other than killing main battle tanks. Shooting up light tanks or other vehicles, for instance.

In any event, the 1942 film shows trainees how to load, aim and fire the rifle—and how to target a tank’s weaknesses. There’s a cutaway animation of the rifle’s internal workings and a separate sequence on how to clean and care for the weapon.

The slightly more effective PIAT replaced the Boys starting in 1942. The PIAT, however, did not get the Disney treatment.

This story originally appeared at Historical Firearms.

This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

by DAVID AXE

Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are the last two big cities in the Donbas that Russia does not hold, and taking them has been the main Russian objective in eastern Ukraine since 2022. Ukraine is now moving forces north from the southeast to defend them.

The 46th Air Mobile Brigade began that move in July. The first outside confirmation came this week.

Shifting north to plug a gap between two Ukrainian corps, the brigade could protect adjacent units as they retreat a short distance from what’s left of Chasiv Yar—a battleground since the spring of 2024—and straighten the Ukrainian line where the 11th and 19th Corps meet. Both corps now sit under Biletskyi’s new force grouping, according to Unit Observer—a command relationship no Ukrainian outlet has reported and which open sources cannot independently confirm.

Zooming out, the reshuffle around Kostiantynivka runs alongside a wider effort to redistribute Ukrainian troops along the 1,200-km gray zone threading through southern, eastern, and northern Ukraine. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi took over as commander-in-chief on July 22, arriving with a mandate to unwind the Soviet-inherited command model Ukraine has fought this war with, and a reputation for favoring decentralized command. The 46th began moving before he did, in early July, according to Unit Observer, so this redeployment is not his. But the 33rd Assault Regiment was partially reassigned to Biletskyi’s corps after the handover.

The best-case scenario is that the redeployment helps stabilize the front 16 km south of Kramatorsk, delaying the Russian siege of that city and Sloviansk to the north. In the worst case, the 46th Air Mobile Brigade and its thousands of troops are too few and too late to make much of a difference as the Center Group of Forces and its tens of thousands of troops grind through Ukrainian defenses on their slow march toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The 46th Air Mobile Brigade spent years fighting in southeastern Ukraine. But it’s arguably no longer needed along the southern end of the gray zone after a Ukrainian counteroffensive that kicked off in February halted and then rolled back Russian forces, stabilizing what was once Ukraine’s most vulnerable flank.

Free to fight elsewhere, the brigade began its move north toward Kostiantynivka and Chasiv Yar two months ago. The move happened almost entirely in secret. “Strict OPSEC measures have become the standard for the Ukrainian armed forces in 2026,” mapper Unit Observer noted, “with units delaying posts up to several months to avoid giving away their relocation along the front line.”

That discipline is now visible across the whole Ukrainian effort. The southeastern counteroffensive that freed up this brigade ran for six months with very few videos and small teams. Ukraine’s Swedish radar planes flew combat sorties for half a year before the defense ministry said so. A brigade crossing the front unremarked for two months is the same practice, applied to ground forces.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.

In a widely anticipated move in November 2025, the U.S. Navy cancelled its long-delayed Constellation-class frigate after just two hulls had been paid for. To replace the other 18 planned Constellations, the Navy announced it would acquire a new frigate design based on the U.S. Coast Guard’s Legend-class cutter.

The cancellation came 20 months after a survey of U.S. shipbuilding programs found that the lead Constellation, still under construction by Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, was overweight by 700 tons owing to design changes—and was also running three years behind schedule. Constellation wasn’t expected to deliver to the fleet until 2029.

The Constellation’s demise raised an urgent question: what would replace it? The Navy’s requirement for small surface combatants endures, even as the Constellation followed the equally troubled Littoral Combat Ship program into virtual oblivion.

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This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

by DAVID AXE

The Ukrainian air force’s Swedish-made Saab ASC 89…

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This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

by DAVID AXE

Russia is launching more of its best jet-propelled attack drones and miniature cruise missiles at Ukrainian ports, cities, warehouses and power plants. The speedy Geran-3, Geran-4, and Geran-5 drones and Banderol missiles can zoom right past Ukraine’s ground-based guns and slower interceptor drones, so the Ukrainian air force is deploying more supersonic fighters to chase down the Russian munitions.

But there’s a problem. The Ukrainian jets are running short of the missiles that work best against them.

A deepening shortage of infrared-guided AIM-9 missiles and radar-guided AIM-120 missiles for the Ukrainian air force’s ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters has been reported elsewhere. Less well known is what has been happening to the Soviet-era missiles carried by Ukraine’s older Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters.

The F-16 is probably the most numerous Ukrainian fighter type, with around 50 in service. But the MiG-29 is a close second. Despite steep losses of MiG-29s in the 55 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, Ukrainian aviation brigades may still fly dozens of the classic Soviet-made fighters. MiG-29s are daily sights in the sky over the port of Odesa in southern Ukraine as the twin-engine fighters chase down Russian missiles and drones.

The MiG-29 can carry the full array of Soviet-style air-to-air missiles in the Ukrainian inventory including the infrared-guided R-60 and R-73 and the radar-guided R-27. But the missile of choice for intercepting the 500 km/hr Gerans and 700 km/hr Banderols is the more modern R-73. The $300,000 heat-seeking missile is maneuverable and accurate at the close ranges that are typical of fighter-on-drone engagements.

Ukraine went to war in 2022 with substantial stocks of R-73s and surely received additional copies from allies. While Ukrainian industry built some components for the 1980s-vintage missiles, they were and still are assembled in Russia—so the supply is finite. And the rate of expenditure rose sharply as Ukraine pushed the R-73 onto ground-based launchers and even some robot boats.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.

This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

by DAVID AXE

Ukraine has lost a quarter of its German-designed Leopard 1A5 tanks. But it could get many more of the nimble, 40-ton tanks. And some could have brand-new turrets that make them lighter, faster, farther-shooting, and more survivable.

In 2023, a German-Danish-Dutch consortium pledged 170 Leopard 1A5s to Ukraine. The 1980s-vintage tanks have come from German, Danish, and Belgian surplus stocks.

Refurbished in Germany by tank-maker Rheinmetall and fitted with add-on anti-drone armor in Ukraine, the first 135 or so Leopard 1A5s now equip at least five units: the 44th Mechanized Brigade, 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade, the 425th Assault Regiment, the 142nd Mechanized Brigade, and the 13th National Guard Brigade.

Losses have been heavy. The Russians have struck no fewer than 37 of the four-person tanks, destroying at least 30 of them. The 44th Mechanized Brigade, which is fighting a defensive action south of the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, has been hit the hardest. The brigade has written off around half of its original allotment of 31 or so Leopard 1A5s.

Another 35 Leopard 1A5s from the 2023 pledge should eventually reach Ukrainian units, potentially making good those losses.

But Kyiv is diverting some of those initial 170 Leopard 1A5s to a pair of conversion programs that are reinforcing Ukraine’s air defense while also re-equipping the ground forces with a new generation of tank.

The first conversion program, overseen by Rheinmetall, plucks the old turrets with their 105-millimeter cannons off some Leopard 1A5s and drops in a new turret with a faster-firing 35-millimeter anti-aircraft gun. Effectively a next-generation Gepard, the resulting Skyranger 35 is a mobile, armored drone-killer that can post up between Russian drone launch sites and Ukrainian cities in order to down incoming Geran drones before they can strike.

Its revolver cannon fires 1,000 rounds a minute out to 4 km, using airburst ammunition that scatters tungsten pellets in the path of an incoming drone. An unnamed EU country is paying for the systems out of proceeds from frozen Russian assets, and Rheinmetall builds them at its subsidiary in Rome. Germany’s own army has ordered 19 and is discussing hundreds more; Ukraine’s arrived first.

The first imagery of a Skyranger 35 in Ukrainian service circulated online this week, with the 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.

by DAVID AXE

U.S. Pres. Donald Trump has demanded the U.S. Navy redesign its aircraft carriers to look more like carrier from World War II. If the fleet actually does what Trump has ordered, the impact on the carrier force’s readiness and combat power could be catastrophic.

Trump is reportedly a big fan of the Victory at Sea documentary that originally aired in the 1950s and depicted the naval campaigns of World War II. That fandom became a fixation—and a force-planning imperative—once Trump became president in 2017.

In his first term, the president repeatedly criticized the Navy’s latest Ford-class carriers for their electromagnetic catapults, which are demonstrably more efficient than old steam catapults but which Trump, who has no military or engineering experience, has declared “not good.”

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by DAVID AXE

The first public imagery of a Ukrainian Leopard 1A5 tank converted into a Skyranger air defense vehicle is a reminder that the Ukrainian armed forces are on track to operate an array of vehicles using the reliable chassis of the classic 1980s tank.

Perhaps most notably, Kyiv has ordered 30 new C3105 tank turrets from John Cockerill Defense in Belgium. With those 30 turrets and one additional C3105 Kyiv acquired for testing last year, the Ukrainians should—some time in 2027—get a battalion set of new medium tanks combining a cutting-edge turret with a tried-and-true chassis.

Cockerill confirmed the C3105 order at the Eurosatory trade show in Paris in June. The order came 13 months after Brussels pledged an initial C3105 to Kyiv as part of a $1-billion aid package that also included medical equipment, portable drone-detection equipment, night-vision goggles, 16,000 guns and counterdrone systems

The C3105 is a plug-and-play turret combining a 105-millimeter main gun with a machine gun, day and night sensors and smoke grenades and other defenses, all in a two-person aluminum turret with an autoloader for the main gun. This upgrade could give Ukrainian Leopard 1A5s a critical advantage against Russian drone swarms.

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This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

by DAVID AXE

In August, Russian gains ticked upward in key sectors along the 1,200-km front line of Russia’s 55-month wider war on Ukraine.

The coming winter could slow Russian advances as the trees lose their leaves and infantry infiltrators have nothing to conceal them from overhead drones. But for the next month or two, the trees will still have their leaves, and the infiltrators will still have their cover.

And that means, as fall wears into winter, Ukraine may lose yet more ground in the north and especially in Donbas region in the east, where Russia enjoys a substantial manpower and firepower advantage. “Russian forces still hold the operational initiative and are slowly capturing ... Donetsk Oblast as well as border zones in Sumy and Kharkiv Oblasts,” mapper Thorkill warned.

The Russian gains belie a greater truth, however. In the middle of the fifth year of wider war, the situation on the ground only changes along the margins even as thousands die.

According to Thorkill’s tally, the Russians occupied just under 220 square km of Ukrainian soil in August. That’s 25% more territory than they captured in July. “The situation has deteriorated sharply in the Donbas in August,” mapper Clément Molin explained.

To be fair, the Russians are advancing much more slowly than they did a year ago. “Compared to August 2025, Russian gains are down by nearly half,” Molin noted. That’s cold comfort to Ukrainian civilians and defenders in the areas where the Russians are still gaining ground, however. And the sheer proximity of the most aggressive Russian formations to the most vulnerable Ukrainian settlements means it might not take much more effort on the part of the Russians to turn these settlements into battlegrounds.

The Russians’ main effort is still directed at the last big free cities in Donetsk. Inching forward at great cost from several directions, Russian forces are slowly closing a pincer around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and the tens of thousands of civilians who still live in the adjacent cities.

Thorkill’s map places the forwardmost Russian forces in Mykolaivka, just 4 km east of Sloviansk. This is the middle joint of the Russian pincer. The pincer’s southern claw is a zone of disputed control stretching along the road between the ruins of the city of Kostiantynivka and the battleground town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka.

If the Russians can march through Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, they can lay siege to the town of Druzhkivka, a few kilometers to the northwest. If they can capture Druzhkivka, they can turn north and assault Kramatorsk, a mere 6 km away.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.

The U.S. Navy is buying missiles as fast as the U.S. defense industry can build them. The sailing branch requested $23 billion for missiles and other munitions as part of its 2027 budget submission. That’s up from just $8 billion in 2026.

The big spend should deliver thousands of Standard and Patriot surface-to-air missiles and Tomahawk and Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile–Extended Range cruise missiles to the fleet.

There’s a reason for the urgency. America’s on-again, off-again war with Iran has cut deeply into U.S. munitions stocks, imperiling the Pentagon’s ability to deter or defeat a serious foe such as China. “We don’t have enough munitions to sustain a long-term fight,” warned Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ appropriations committee.

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This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

by DAVID AXE

A rare armored vehicle has made a surprise appearance in the Ukrainian order of battle. A recent official photo depicts a three-person, 49-ton T-64BM alongside tankers from the Ukrainian army’s 57th Motorized Brigade. The brigade holds the line in northern Ukraine around 30 km northwest of Kharkiv.

What’s unusual is that the 57th Motorized Brigade was known to operate the lighter T-64BV tank, the standard tank in Ukrainian service. Moreover, the Ukrainian army doesn’t have many T-64BMs. There were around 80 in the Ukrainian inventory on the eve of the wider Russian invasion in February 2022, and at the time all but a handful belonged to the 1st Tank Brigade and the 12th Independent Tank Battalion.

Both units had a single T-64BM battalion with around 31 tanks.

In 54 months of hard fighting, the 12th Independent Tank Battalion and 1st Tank Brigade—the latter now reorganized into the less tank-heavy 1st Heavy Mechanized Brigade—has lost around a quarter of their T-64BMs. Even if the units cannibalized a few T-64BMs from training grounds, today they’d both struggle to field a full battalion of T-64BMs.

Given the thin supply, where did the 57th Motorized Brigade’s T-64BMs come from? It’s a question that vexes French historian Stevius. And it may point to a growing shortage of the best tanks in the Ukrainian armed forces as losses deepen and years of combat take their toll on vehicles’ material condition. “The use of a few specimens from training units to fill the gaps ... would tend to show that the Ukrainians have practically exhausted their stock of tanks that they can bring back to operational condition,” Stevius noted.

Overall, the Ukrainians have lost no fewer than 1,400 tanks, according to a tally by the Oryx open-source intelligence collective. That’s more tanks the the Ukrainian armed forces had in their inventory in 2022. The Ukrainians have largely made good their losses by restoring old stored T-64s and T-72s while also accepting donations of hundreds of surplus tanks from foreign allies.

But even with the restored and donated tanks, there’s still a shortfall. It’s fortunate, then, that tanks are growing less important by the day as tiny drones—which are lethal to tanks—fill the sky over the 1,200-km disputed gray zone in Ukraine.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.

by MATTHEW MOSS

At the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, both the Republicans and Loyalists were desperate for any weapons they could lay their hands on.

These weapons ranged from smuggled AR-18s—infamously nicknamed Widowmakers—to crude but ingenious improvised weapons such as the submachine gun pictured above.

These improvised weapons took the STEN as their basis. They were simple but deadly, open-bolt submachine guns that any semi-skilled armorer could make quickly with only basic tooling.

The weapon pictured above was made by a Loyalist paramilitary force in Northern Ireland—perhaps the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defense Association.

Chambered in 9x19-millimeter, it bears a passing resemblance to the Sterling L2 submachine gun that British troops stationed in Northern Ireland routinely carried. The improvised submachine gun features a simple, square, tube-steel receiver—reportedly fashioned from metal table legs—and feeds from a horizontal magazine. Other examples used metal piping and had round receivers.

The magazine housing is designed to fit a standard Sterling magazine but uses the STEN’s simpler magazine release. The weapon features a blowback action and has a square bolt to match its box section receiver.

It includes crudely drilled serrations in the barrel shroud and does not have sights. The pistol grip is rudimentary and the trigger appears to be made from a piece of metal rod that the armorer simply bent into shape.

Interestingly, the example pictured above has a number of features not common to all of the homemade submachine guns. Not only is its barrel crudely rifled, but it also includes a safety-selector just above the trigger.

Parts for this homemade submachine gun were made in the machine shops of the famous Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. These secretly-produced guns became known as Shipyard Specials. They often dispensed with sights and stocks and their barrels were usually unrifled.

The smoothbore barrels, while inaccurate, were more than adequate for close-quarter gunfights and had the added “benefit” of causing the projectiles to tumble, resulting in horrific wounds.

The homemade submachine gun featured here was confiscated in Ulster by security forces in 1974 and is now part of the Royal Armories’ collection.

This story originally appeared at Historical Firearms.

by SEBASTIEN ROBLIN

In April 1951 the African-American soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 999th Armored Field Artillery charged their ungainly self-propelled howitzers past a hundred Chinese infantry waiting in ambush.

Thanks to the interviews of Army historian Edward Williamson, we can share their story.

Dating back to the 19th century, the U.S. military had a policy of placing African-American soldiers in segregated units led by mostly white officers, a reflection of the racist social order of those times. Most these black units were given supporting roles away from the front, as white commanders doubted their fighting ability.

Exceptions to this policy grew over time, such as the 54th Massachusetts in the Civil War, and the Harlem Hellfighters in World War I. By World War II, there were black artillery, tank, anti-aircraft and anti-tank units in the Army, and black fighter squadrons in the Army Air Force.

When the Army suffered manpower shortages during the Battle of the Bulge, it began temporarily admitting black soldiers into white frontline formations.

The 999th Field Artillery was a black unit equipped with enormous eight-inch towed howitzers specialized in demolishing heavily fortified targets with 200-pound shells.

Landing in France a month after D-Day, the unit performed with such distinction that it received commendations from both French and American commanders and was accorded the right to include the arms of the French city of Colmar, which the 999th had helped to liberate, into its insignia.

The unit’s motto was “Never Die.”

In 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9881, mandating that all branches of the U.S. military desegregate. The military was to abolish racial distinctions, even if they persisted in civilian society. But integration was slow to begin—all-black units remained in the Army’s order of battle until 1954.

The all-black 24th Infantry Regiment was one of the first American units to deploy to South Korea in 1950 as part of the United Nations’ response to a devastating North Korean invasion. Unfortunately, it was made a scapegoat for the calamitous U.S. retreat at the beginning of the war.

The 999th therefore remained a predominately black unit with some white officers at the beginning of the Korean War—though it would integrate more and more white soldiers over time.

In Korea, the unit was re-designated an armored field artillery battalion, equipped with M41 Howitzer Motor Carriages, also known as Gorillas. These were basically Chaffee light tanks with the turrets replaced by heavy 155-millimeter howitzers.

The crew of five operated the howitzer from an open-top compartment at the back of the vehicle, lobbing 95-pound shells at targets more than 14 kilometers away. Only lightly armored to protect against small arms, and lacking defensive weapons, the M41s were intended to shoot from the rear, out of sight of the enemy.

The mechanization of warfare in World War II resulted in armored artillery that could move and deploy for battle a lot faster than could towed guns that took hours to set up. Mobile, armored vehicles also had a better chance of evading enemy counter-battery fire, and surviving any unplanned firefights.

Some self-propelled artillery, such as the ubiquitous M7 Priest, were flexible enough to serve as thin-skinned tanks in a pinch, but the M41 still required time to deploy before firing and was intended to stay well away from direct combat.

The Battle of Imjin River

Starting in October 1950, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army launched a massive counter offensive to prevent the conquest of North Korea by U.N. forces.

The 999th was immediately in the thick of the fighting during the freezing Korean winter, supporting the Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment as it covered U.S. forces desperately falling back to avoid encirclement in the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

The South Korean capital, Seoul, was recaptured for a second time by U.N. forces in March 1951 and a new defensive line was established along the Imjin River, including the elite 1st Republic of Korea Division.

The American 999th Field Artillery was attached to provide fire support for the Korean infantrymen—just at the moment that the Chinese army launched its spring opffensive in a new attempt to seize Seoul.

On the afternoon of April 22, Warrant Officer David Reed and three fellow soldiers departed from B Battery’s bivouac in the village of Taech’on and climbed up Hill 128, which afforded a good view of the Imjin River. He was joined by a squad of South Korean soldiers. His job was to keep the river under observation, and call down artillery fire from the big guns of the 999th in the event of an attack.

At 8:00 that evening, a heavy artillery bombardment began. Nearly 200 shells rained down to Reed’s east. Then near midnight, two enemy machine guns began spitting fire from across the river. Reed called B Battery and requested a single spotting round using a glowing white phosphorous shell.

“On the way,” the operator said. A white phosphorous round dropped about 400 yards short of the target. “Add 400, fire for effect,” Reed commanded. “Battery gave me six rounds, one volley, all at one time,” Reed told Williamson. “It was a target hit, and the shells fell squarely on top of the machine gun.”

Enemy infantry, however, were already sweeping across the river, and by 1:30 Reed was told he should abandon his position. The next bombardment was targeted on top of his position.

Instead, Reed dispatched the South Korean detachment to drive off attackers on the western flank while friendly shells rained on the eastern slope.

A corporal named McCall potted away with his carbine. Enemy rifles and “four or five” machine guns were soon rattling away at Hill 128.

Reed finally fell back at 2:30 in the morning and set up a new observation post at the 1st Korean Division’s main defensive line. A mass of Chinese infantry assaulted at dawn. As sniper fire ricocheted around his jeep, Reed tried calling down another bombardment—but was told that B Battery was on the move and unable to provide fire support.

Battery B is forgotten

The six M41 howitzers of the 999th’s B Battery had been firing continuously from the start of the Chinese attack when it commander, Capt. James Welden, received orders to fall back to a new position at 2:00 in the morning.

The unit continued firing as it stowed its gear into M41s, trucks, jeeps and M39 armored utility vehicles. The M39s were tracked Hellcat anti-tank vehicles that had had their turrets removed in order to serve as utility transports, retaining .50-caliber machine guns on pintle mounts.

B Battery redeployed to the village of Kumgong-Ni by 8:00 in the morning and fired volleys of air-burst shells for the rest of the day as the Chinese attack drove back the South Korean defenders.

By evening, the guns were lobbing direct fire at enemy machine guns and infantry visible on hills just 4,000 yards away—and successfully cleared an escape route for the trucks of the South Korean 17th Field Artillery Battalion as it retreated through a mountain pass.

Alarming reports multiplied that night. Another observation post was overrun. The communication wires stopped working. A repair team sent to investigate discovered they had been crushed by retreating friendly tanks, which were seen streaming away from the front line.

“I don’t like it,” a private named Lewis remarked. “They’re leaving us stranded.”

By midnight, headquarters told Reed and his men that there should be a battalion of South Korean infantry 1,000 yards to their west. A lieutenant named Buonocore reconnoitered 2,000 yards in that direction, finding only a single South Korean soldier … and enemy infantry approaching in the distance.

Battalion ordered B Battery to pull back again to the village of Pobwon-Ni just as a volley of enemy mortar shells landed around the battery. The artillerymen quickly set off down the road. Passing the position of Battery A of the 999th, they approached Pobwon-Ni but could see the flashes from a firefight ongoing in the village.

Welden ordered the convoy to stop and checked in with battalion headquarters—which insisted it was actually a skirmish happening further down the road. Bursts of automatic fire from a village to their west began arcing towards them, pattering short of their position.

Weary of the danger ahead, Welden had two M39s, armed with .50-caliber machine guns, to lead column. He climbed into the lead vehicle. Then the drivers hit their accelerators … and rode straight into Hell.

All at once, green tracers raked the convoy from six machine guns and the small arms of more than a hundred Chinese infantry hiding in rice patties on either side of the road. Mortar shells began exploding down the line of vehicles.

Welden ordered the column to stop and dismount to repel the attack. B Battery blazed back with .50-caliber machine guns and carbines, some of them modified to use .30-caliber machine gun belts.

The second M39 in the column exploded, blocking the vehicles behind it. Sgt. Eldrich Henley jumped out into a nearby ditch and was hit by submachine gun fire in the legs. Sgt. Bell, commander of one of the M41s, was shot and his vehicle careered into an M39 from behind. The rest of the crew dismounted and clambered on board a nearby M39—but not before Pvt. Maurice Henry was killed trying to pull Bell’s body out of the hatch.

Though the heavy howitzers mounted on the M41s were among the deadliest weapons on the Korean battlefield, they could not be fired without minutes of set-up — and they lacked defensive weapons of their own. They were useless in a close firefight.

Incendiary grenades sailed through air, setting another M39 and a maintenance jeep alight. Some of members of the column crawled away toward the positions of Battery A. But Welden decided B Battery should mount back up and charge through the ambush.

B Battery charges through

“We received orders to mount on vehicles, that we were going through the ambush,” reported Cpl. Oscar Spraglin, a gunner.

“This Korean truck blew up in front of us,” Spraglin continued. “A mortar hit it. To avoid running into the Korean truck, we went into the rice field. While going through the rice field, Chinese were jumping up. The driver ran over about four Chinese. We were somewhat crowded on the vehicles. Bullets were hitting close.”

An ammunition trailer exploded “like Harlem, New York.” A mortar shell flipped a jeep over into a ditch. Pvt. Anthony Jackson abandoned his own jeep as it came under fire, and barely escaped by grabbing on to the legs of a crewman on a passing M41. Another M39 was knocked out, so a sergeant named Scow drove his vehicle up to rescue the crew.

“My M39 ran up in back of the knocked-out one and switched to the right,” Scow said. “In it one was man wounded. Three others, not. The knocked-out M39 blocked the bullets … I grabbed him [a wounded man] by the seat of his pants put him up on the right front of the M39. Then the three other men crawled up themselves.

Inside the compartment it was now full, so I started for the back. I went to step up on the trailer tongue to get on the back of the M39 and looked on the other side of the road, seeing two enemy close enough to get up on the trailer tongue. I got off and hit the ground down on my stomach right in the gully. I lit those two up.

The driver took off. Myself, I got up beside the ammunition trailer in a crouch. I stayed alongside the ammunition trailer until I could run up to the coupling and lie across the tongue. That is where I rode until the first position we went in.

As fighting died down at roadblock, Sgt. Henry Laws, a mechanic, dragged a wounded soldier missing half his foot into an abandoned M41 with the help of a South Korean soldier and they drove off toward Battery A’s position.

The four remaining M41s of Battery B reassembled at the headquarters of the 999th. Welden organized a roll-call and then got back in touch with battalion to arrange a new assembly point.

South Korean troops succeeded in securing Pobwon-Ni and drove out the Chinese ambush force, capturing some, while the remainder withdrew carrying their dead. At 6:00 in the morning, Welden returned to the site of the ambush with some M39s and towed away any vehicles in recoverable condition.

The column had lost two M39s and five trucks and jeeps. Another six vehicles were damaged but usable. Seven soldiers had been killed by grenades and small arms fire and another 31 were wounded. The captain estimated they had inflicted 100 casualties on the ambushers.

Morale was low after the incident. Support staff—cooks and ammo carriers—had to replace many of the gunners in the battery. The men of B Battery had not slept for 72 hours.

But B Battery’s guns remained at full strength and were able to resume providing artillery support for the remainder of the battle, helping the Korean troops to withstand the Chinese assault.

U.N. forces ultimately held the line in the Battle of Imjin River—the line that roughly defines the border of the two Koreas today.

Without the armored hulls and tracked mobility of their M41s, the artillerymen of the 999th might have fared considerably worse in the ambush. But the exposed open tops of the vehicles and their deficit in defensive weapons, were vulnerabilities that resulted in many casualties.

Based on its experience in the Korean War, the Army would eventually decide to replace almost all of its towed artillery units with self-propelled howitzers, culminating in the M109, which situated the cannon in a fully enclosed turret. Introduced in 1963, it remains in service today in heavily upgraded form.

Not all Army M41s escaped unscathed. At least two M41s from another unit were captured by the Chinese and used in battle. Reports of heavy Chinese self-propelled guns at the battle of Maryang San correspond to their description. Of the three remaining M41s, one of them can be found today at the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution in Beijing.

The 999th went on to serve in many of the major battles of the Korean War, including at Pork Chop Hill, working with French, Turkish, Philippine and South Korean units until the end of the war. The unit endured a disastrous friendly fire bombing that killed a dozen personnel.

The 999th began to integrate more white soldiers starting in 1951. In an interview, Charles Day of the 999th recalled that he was “probably the second white man in A-battery.”

“I said, ‘My Lord, what have I got into?’” Day told Williamson. “But after I learned some of their key words, everything smoothed out. But it was rough there for two or three months.”

Samuel King, a black veteran of the 999th, recalled that when the first white soldier, Lucas, joined their unit, black soldiers would borrow his girlfriend’s picture. “So Lucas looked at us and it might have been because he was the only white in the outfit with 20-some other guys—black—so maybe he didn’t say anything. You know, so then the others started coming in and Lucas was kind of old hat.”

When African-American soldiers returned from Korea, they found a country which had yet to make significant progress toward racial equality. Having experienced combat, worked alongside soldiers of other countries and, in Korea, worked in racially integrated units, black veterans would go on to play a major role in the civil rights movement that would transform the United States.