It Should Go Without Saying That A Golf Cart Isn't A Very Good Minesweeper
Russians fit mine plows to all-terrain vehicles
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.
The town of Mala Tokmachka anchors Ukrainian defenses along the gray zone in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Russian forces have been trying and failing to capture the village—for years.
But they’re not done trying. And now they’ve got a new vehicle to help them. An all-terrain vehicle—that is, a glorified four-wheeler—modified to clear buried mines. The mine-clearing ATV might not work very well, however.
On or just before Tuesday, the Russian 58th Combined Arms Army sent a large assault force toward Mala Tokmachka on 20 motorcycles and seven ATVs. Drones from the Ukrainian 118th Mechanized Brigade blasted the Russians, defeating the attack.
What’s most notable about the Tuesday assault is what the retreating Russians left behind: several ATVs with small metal plows fitted to their fronts and anti-drone radio jammers on their backs. The plow is an “improvised mine-sweeper modification,” according to analyst Moklasen.
The idea, it seems, is that the modified ATVs could lead an assault column, scraping away mines to protect the trailing ATVs and bikes.
It’s not a bad idea, in theory. Drones threaten Russian assault groups from above. Mines scattered by aerial drones, ground robots and human engineers threaten them from below.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
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