According to the Russian Satellite News Agency on March 3, in the past week, Ukrainian troops have launched artillery bombardment on the Luhansk region, using mortars, 122 and 152 mm caliber artillery to fire more than 280 shells at four settlements in the Luhansk region. Many military experts believe that the ragged Ukrainian army still has the ability to attack, which is surprising. If Ukraine does not stop in time, then the Russian army and pro-Russian militia will definitely launch a strong counterattack.
6 civil war in Ukraine lasted for 6 years, causing significant losses and trauma to Ukraine's economy, politics, military and people's lives. Now Ukraine has become the poorest country in Europe, and its national economy has plummeted. The army was also in ruins and could not guarantee the weapons and equipment needed for normal combat. During the Donbas conflict, the Ukrainian army was wiped out by the Russian army and pro-Russian militia, and more than 6,000 tanks, armored vehicles and self-propelled artillery were lost. Later, under the blind command of US military advisers, two of Ukraine's most elite armies were divided and surrounded and finally all were wiped out. Since then, the Ukrainian Army has been unable to launch a large-scale attack and has to face off against the militias in the two eastern states for a long time.
Ukrainian army is currently in extreme difficulty. For example, the U.S.-made javelin anti-tank missile is the Ukrainian army's most deadly weapon and has high hopes for it by the Ukrainian army. The javelin missile uses infrared thermal imaging image-guided anti-tantalum missile, locked before and after shooting, and has an effective hit rate of 94% on the battlefield, which can be said to be a 100% shot. In the early days, the United States put forward harsh conditions for the use of javelin missiles by the Ukrainian army. Without the approval of the US government, the Ukrainian army could not put javelin missiles into actual combat, and now it has finally been relaxed. However, Ukrainian soldiers were unable to use expensive javelin anti-tank missiles worth $100,000 during the exercises, and could only use wood models instead.
Although there has not been a large-scale war in recent times, the civil war and military conflicts that occurred in Eastern Ukraine have never stopped. Unlike low-level conflicts like Syria, although the two sides fighting in eastern Ukraine have basically not deployed air forces, both sides have more tanks and heavy artillery. Many soldiers and equipment from local armed forces in the eastern Ukraine are active service by the Russian army. The Ukrainian government troops entering the battlefield are also the most elite troops. They are actually engaged in a modern mechanized war. During the six-year battle, the Ukrainian government forces suffered heavy losses and had lost a large number of armored vehicles and artillery. The huge losses on the front line also made Ukrainian arsenals, tank manufacturers, and artillery factories busy repairing the weapons and equipment that were damaged. They were really not enough, and even those sealed old antique weapons were dug out and repaired and sent to the battlefield.
A few days ago, a set of photos released by the Ukrainian army showed that the Ukrainian army was fiddling with several Maxim heavy machine guns, as if the scene of World War II was reappearing. This machine gun has a water-cooled water injection port as big as a bowl. This design is the symbol of the M1940 machine gun, a product after the Soviet Union and Finnish war, improved after learning from the Finnish army, in order to facilitate the injection of ice and snow in the cold areas.
As a hundred years ago, the Russian army introduced a large number of Maxim heavy machine guns from Germany. Maxim has been imitated since 1905, with the model M1905. The gun is almost exactly the same as the original German Maxim machine gun, even the water-cooled sleeves welded with copper plates. During World War I, due to the tight source of copper materials, the cold sleeve made of copper water was changed to steel. By 1910, the Russians developed an improved M1910 heavy machine gun, and the cooling water barrels were all made of steel. In order to prevent the freezing of cooling water after the freezing of the cooling water in winter, the surface of the water-cooled sleeve had longitudinal grooves that were anti-swelling and contracting. The gun was widely equipped with the Tsarist Russian army during World War I.
In cold areas, using Maxim heavy machine guns in winter is a big problem, because it is ice and snowy, and cooling water is difficult to find. However, ice and snow are everywhere, but the ice and snow need to be heated and melted, and then poured into the cooling water cover of the heavy machine gun. The water injection ports of early Soviet-made Maxim machine guns were very small, and they were at the front of the water-cooled sleeve, making it inconvenient to fight in winter.
The Soviet Union continued to produce a large number of M1910 heavy machine guns, and there were various improved versions. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union produced an improved M1910 type - the M1930 heavy machine gun based on the German Maxim machine gun. Features are the same grooved water-cooled sleeve as the British Wicks machine gun, the removal of smoke degassers with complex manufacturing processes, installation of Shakolov wheeled gun frames, and large shields.
Maxim heavy machine gun is very troublesome to use in the cold zone. Maxim heavy machine gun is an automatic principle of the short-bar rear seat. If you don’t add antifreeze, you can’t even load it. The cooling water needs to be added with antifreeze, usually alcohol, otherwise the barrel will be frozen. However, adding alcohol will cause another kind of trouble. Alcohol is a delicious high-end vodka for Russian soldiers. It can drink happily, but who cares whether the machine gun can fire.
Su-Finnish War broke out in 1939. The Soviet Red Army found on the battlefield that the water-cooling cover of the Maxim heavy machine gun produced in Finland had a water injection port as big as a bowl. It could directly stuff ice cubes into it, which was very convenient to replenish the cooling water. So when the Soviet Union improved the production of the M1940 Maxim heavy machine gun in 1940, it learned from the Finns' good experience and also installed a huge large water injector on the water-cooled sleeve, which could be directly stuffed into ice and snow.
This was discovered in 2015 on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Equipped with the latest diffraction holographic sight, it is really a new flower. Some netizens joked: "This Maxim heavy machine gun that uses the latest CPU technology, is automatic hand-held, stepless speed regulation, has multi-stage semiconductor refrigeration, intelligent temperature monitoring, and winter antifreeze."
The Ukrainian government is deeply concerned about the tragic situation of the army and is preparing to take several measures to enhance its military strength, including increasing the number of troops to 250,000, purchasing a series of weapons such as fighter jets and anti-tank missiles from the United States, adjusting the command and control structure of the troops, re-arming the army's weapons, and increasing reserve funds to support the construction of the armed forces. Not long ago, Russian media compared the power comparison between the Russian and Ukrainian troops in Crimea and the Sea of Azov. It was found that even if the Russian army did not dispatch the powerful army troops deployed on the East Ukraine border, relying on the army, navy and air force forces in the Crimea area, they could defeat the Ukrainian army overnight and conquer the entire territory of Ukraine.
