The Weirdest Weapons of the Ukraine Conflict

today on Grantham we're going to be talking about a very interesting topic the war in Ukraine has been going on for well over a year at this point and as terrible as conflict can be there is some very useful information to be gleaned now in today's video we're going to be going over the different types of arms that are being used in this conflict by both Russian and Ukrainian forces what's so interesting is that like many other conflicts every country that wants to either test weapon that has Surplus Weaponry or is looking to sell weaponrys of course getting their weapons into this conflict what's even more interesting is that this is the first time in a long time that we've had a near peer conflict what that means is two countries that are of roughly the same technological level the same level of training where they can essentially there's no overmatch so when you have a country like the United States going up against uh you know small militants and terrorist cells that's overmatched we have more capability we have planes they don't it's not a fair fight but when you have two forces that both have air forces both can counter their Air Forces you get into a very different type of combat and that is certainly what we're seeing in Ukraine right now where fighting has moved to the trenches much like World War one due to the fact that they cannot gain any superiority in the air or with the current technological dances that they have because they encounter them so today we're gonna be talking about which weapons are are excelling which ones are being used heavily and we're going to get into it as we always do [Music] but before we get into that we of course have to thank the sponsors of this channel the biggest sponsor of this channel is the Sonoran Desert Institute if you're looking to get your starting Gunsmithing they are the people to go to we cannot thank them enough uh they're absolutely we love them right Micah yeah we cuddle them we yeah that that definitely did happen of course we cannot forget who we're on our arms and they make Optics could potentially be used in this trenches and they probably have been and are at this very moment yes so primary arms awesome Optics great price we love to give them hell you guys have been overloading them with questions on Skittles so we're not going to do that to them anymore but we do love them they are absolutely awesome and of course we cannot forget uscca if you're looking to get concealed carry insurance they are the people to go to we love them they are also a big support of the channel and unlike the TV you're watching this on the camera we're filming this on AAC ammunitions made in the United States and we cannot thank them enough so we have a lot of different firearms that we're gonna be looking at today and we do have to give a big shout out to Rifle Dynamics out in Las Vegas they were awesome enough to bring these weapons out so we could look at some of the more rare weapons such as the ak-12 to ensure that we give you guys a really good informational video so we'll be having on a little bit later to talk about some of the more kind of obscure facts about these different types of weapons but without further Ado let's get into it thank you let's be starting with one of the more common weapons that you're seeing among Ukrainian soldiers and that is going to be the AK-74 for as many cool NATO weapons as you see out there ultimately it all comes back to the AK-74 which was designed and implemented in Russia and around the 1970s the AK-74 is a very reliable very easily recoiling weapon it's very soft to shoot it's very easy to maintain and it just has a tendency to run in adverse conditions the AK-74 is pretty legendary and it's for this reason that it continues to find much favor among their soldiers and it should be noted as well that as great as the NATO weapons are like the M4 and the mark 18 5.45 by 39 is an incredibly ubiquitous round out in that area Russia's been using it for a long time as our main service ammunition it's for that reason at the 74 continues to be used quite heavily now let's take a look at what the Russians are using because it's very similar in many ways so this looks really similar in fact most people really can't tell the difference but there are a few differences here this is an ak-74m it was the upgrade to the AK-74 this is the typical rifle in use by the Russian military now people are probably going to argue with me because the ak-12 is coming in by and far you mostly see the ak-74m so typically you will see an Optics rail on the side so they can attach any type of optic or you might even see some type of top cover rail now the 74m is a lighter package they did a lot of great things such as allowing for a foldable stock it makes for a much more compact package so that is the ak-74m again they are very similar weapons they fire the same round and that is the 5.45 by 39 adequately accurate rifle is that is that how we'd say Micah it's accurate enough okay okay let's try it right now ready so we have a Target at like 100 right there let's give it a shot [Music] Ohio guess that last shot was like 220. I can do it it's got It's got that dog in it however Russia has adopted a new rifle so let's take a quick look at that one foreign we did a review on this as did Brandon Herrera a while back I think oxide said it best as far as its adoption wasn't really necessary maybe not but it's like a wife asking for a new kitchen do you need a new kitchen not really but she's asking for it so you're gonna get it we'll talk about it a little bit but there have been some really good upgrade packages that have been designed for the AK platform the ak-12 doesn't really follow a lot of those design cues and kind of has done its own thing it's a good rifle it's just it's lacking in many areas and we have the ak-12 it is actively being fielded in the conflict so you can see here on the top we obviously do have an Optics rail that was sorely needed on the AK platform but it's not the best system for retaining zero with an optic and then on the hand guard it does have Picatinny however it's not a very solid lock up so it's not great for retaining zero on IR lasers or anything like that so the upgrades are there they just weren't implemented in the best possible way and we'll talk about that when we compare those two zeniko parts and that type of thing the sock is very m4-like however it does not fit M4 stocks it is its own design because because Russia is that a good way of saying it yeah but we have safe we have Otto we have two round burst and then we have semi at the very bottom there and much like many AKA upgrades that you've seen in the States you do have that little finger selector right here and the idea being that instead of having to reach a whole hand forward onto the front ledge you can now just sweep it with your finger in order to get onto that weapon you can also hear how slow the ak-12 is on its cyclic rate compared to the AK-74 much slower much more controllable it is a very comfortable weapon to fire just a few things that kind of irked me about it when we compare it to like the zenko parts so these are the three main rifles that we're seeing in the conflict the AK-74 on the Ukrainian side the ak-74m with Russia and of course the ak-12 that you're seeing with a lot of the more specialized soldiers these are the main rifles of the conflict simply due to parts and the amount of ammo that's available that being said you have a lot of arms in the conflict that are being seen in good numbers so let's go ahead and let's take a look at some of those more interesting rifles so right here we have the two the shorter classicoff variants this is the 104 and we have the 105. they're interesting in many ways but let's take a few shots with them show you how those are working [Music] now this particular guy obviously is not a 545 this is a 762 by 39. is firing the typical round that you're seeing from the akm those are seen in some numbers on both sides of the conflict these are just this is just a shortened variant there's not a whole lot to say about it other than you're going to see some amount of these right here we have the ak-105 the sessions use it it's a very interesting system for several reasons you've seen a lot of zeniko parts on the ak-105 so what I mean by zeniko Parts is xenico is a Russian company that makes this upgrade system for the AK and what's really interesting about it is one that the handguard does retain zero so you can run both lasers or anything that you need that needs to have some type of zero on it and then the Optics rail is mounted into the handguard which is a very solid lock up to ensure that your Optics are going to retain zero so when I was talking about the ak-12 maybe not following a lot of the design cues in many ways I look at the zeniko upgrades kind of like the block 2 M4 system where it was a really good upgrade package for the M4 and yet you see the military mostly going with the M4A1 pretty equivalent between the two the zetiko upgrades that you see on the ak-105 and on just AK Platforms in general is an incredible upgrade to the system that both reduces Parts wear increases accuracy of the weapon system it's just a very good upgrade and you just don't see as many of them most likely due to the fact that the zeniko parts are expensive and the company isn't just able to keep up with everything going on in the war we hit the creek off it's a very short AK we've done a video on it and you're seeing them a lot with rpk mags small gun a lot of Firepower you've seen these heavily used in urban areas very controllable I really do love the crank it's one of my favorite guns yours too Micah right next up we have the rpk the rpk is really interesting still firing a 545 in many ways it's kind of like a it's kind of like a saw but much more maneuverable can't fire as long it's a very interesting concept we don't really have a good analog of it in the United States except for the M27 which isn't really a great comparison but you can see how effective it is we have a Target about 150. you'll see how good the base of fire is [Music] doesn't move it's an incredibly effective weapon and again with the longer Barrel you do have an extended range so you truly are able to not just have a beating Zone which is where the rounds are landing but have good accurate fire out past 500 to about 600 where your beaten zone is getting more into that 700 meter area and what's cool about these rpk mags is that they fit in all AKs foreign there is no better machine gun in my mind it is just the best Peak Peak km the PKM is a very interesting weapon now right here you can see that we have a weapon that has been completely upgraded with xenico parts again zeniko kind of pushing the boundaries on the Russian weapon systems the PKM weighs like 16 pounds compared to its competitor the MP40 which weighs close to 21 22 so it's a very versatile very lightweight very accurate weapon pretty sure I can hit it at 540. you said I couldn't do you think I can I don't I think I can do it [Music] all right I mean 540 just kind of shooting at a hillside with the Red Dot and it was pretty easy to make an impact and those splashes from the uh from the 7.62 by 54R I mean it's got some power it's just a wonderful wonderful GPM G8 so right here we have a tiger which is about as close to a dragon off as you're going to get outside of Russia these are heavily used and they are phenomenal dmrs they're used in a sniper roll often and they are definitely capable of making those about 800 900 meter shots fairly accurately now we did have some issues with ours when we were trying to get some accuracy out of it but the problem in the United States is it's kind of hard to get good accurate ammo or 7.62 by 54R that is not a problem over near Russia and Ukraine so these weapons are used to great effect we're not going to go too much into this and it's kind of we kind of baby it a little bit it's a prized possession but we do have the SCD which is a very cool rifle that we of course have to talk about now before we get into the NATO weapons there are a lot of very odd weapons that have found their way to conflict and this is due to the fact that there were just a lot of them made there's a lot of ammo for them and oddly enough we have the sdg44 once again fighting the Russians I don't know life is a is a flat circle Micah you know it just everything in history just repeats itself over and over we're gonna go ahead oh she did she did not like that 44 if you're not familiar with this weapon it was one of the first what you'd call assault rifles it is a magazine fed and an intermediate caliber and had much more what we consider modern controls now these weapons just due to the fact that so many were captured at the end of World War II have found their way into every conflict and that does include Ukraine just insane like a weapon made in 1944 just still out there how uh German Space Magic this isn't I would say the most surprising gun out there the next one's definitely a little bit more surprising to me you think this is a good gun yes yes it's not a good gun I'd say it wasn't a good piece it's a garbage rod you tell me oh Lord [Laughter] pps-h-41 somehow just its will to live just outliving World War II the Korean War the Vietnam War every conflict known to mankind and once again we're in its shitty little head stop be nice to it in Ukraine how so the PPS h-41 is chambered in 7.62 by 25 which is actually a pretty spicy round if you're not familiar with it and it has an insane rate of fire it's just a bullet hose and a lot of these came with drum mags it just is a actually a fairly good close combat weapon the only problem being that you don't have any way to mount Optics because it was made in you know the 1940s but with a little bit of Ingenuity and JB Weld you're going to have yourself a wonderful CQB weapon and it was actually so fun to fire I think I need to do another magazine and YouTube yeah you should be seeing who has a better group yeah okay hey I have a question for you he's got a question if you don't win what what do I win I don't have a lot but you can you can take whatever man see tell me that's a piece of [ __ ] I love that actually yeah that is so control come take a look at that that is that is awesome I walked up as I like figured out the recoil and then it just for how fast it is you know you'd expect like more of a string can you imagine just some poor German in World War II like just trying to get like borsch and like Stone graduates or disc maybe like just found some chocolate and cigarettes some cocaine whatever it was no you win took me for a ride oh I get the LMT yeah congratulations my only 308. what's funny is uh your group went like this it's actually kind of cute it went like spiraled yeah yeah it's mostly because my trigger finger was moving so fast like that uh yeah yeah it's very fast semi-auto it's like the uh the smile from Moana I've been watching my my kids and watching the [ __ ] out of that show yeah I love Dwayne The Rock Johnson I know what's his real name Dwayne The Rock Johnson oh is it really yeah you ready yeah right here we have the Brent two now this is the 16 inch variant typically what you're seeing on the Ukrainian side is the 14 or the shorter variants the Brent 2 is a really really interesting rifle because originally we had the brand 805 which did so so from talking to the guys who are currently using them they're not a huge fan of them but the brand 2 you've seen use very heavily many people are calling the brand 2 kind of the the new AK of kind of the firearm world it's cheap to make it's incredibly accurate it's incredibly reliable and it's just a good system the triggers are good it just operates with most of the NATO technology that's already out there such as a snag and it's ready for Optics it can mount lasers it is just a good simple system the brand 2 has a charging handle can that can easily be switched to the right or left side in the field it's very easy to do it is an ar18 system which is extremely reliable I think it's really interesting that these rifles are being so heavily tested I would say in this conflict because it's an unproven rifle and I would see in many ways it's being vetted by this conflict itself so we have what I would consider an emerging really good weapon platform so there are of course a lot of the AKs and the lmgs and the gpmgs but what's slowly getting a lot of relevancy in this conflict are battle rifles and that's due to the fact of the distances that they're engaging each other at so one of the weapons that's been used quite a bit has been the SCAR H which has found new favor in this conflict so we'll take a few shots here and then we'll uh we'll talk a little bit about it foreign to talk to a lot of the men who are fighting for Ukraine and there is great favor with the scar age this is due to the amount of 308 that is currently being imported into the country much of a match grade and also due to the reliability of the SCAR H as well as the accuracy that this weapon system has now most of them are using the variant with a 16 inch barrel this is the 13 inch barrel a shorter model both are used but I thought it was pretty interesting that you're kind of seeing this Resurgence of the scourage because it was otherwise kind of a lackluster program that never really took off within the United States military but it's found a lot of favor due to the ballistics of the 308 it just as as the guy quoted me a straight quote big wet holes and of course a literal ton of m4a1s m4s and M16s are being imported into the country there are just a lot it's you guys know what it is you're very familiar with it and despite us being like it's lame we all know what it is the M4 is a devastatingly accurate reliable and compact weapon system foreign you know as much as you want to not like it because we we just we see it everywhere it is finding a lot of favor and especially the mark 18 which is a short barrel variant discussing m4s on this channel we've talked about Ad nauseam so we're not going to get into it let's talk about some of the other interesting weapons out there one of the most interesting weapons to be involved in the conflict I think is the belgian-made fnfnc donated by Belgium uh what's the moniker not just not just waffles right oh those are hella good actually those are super good yeah fnc is a very interesting weapon in fact one of my favorite I've I've tried for a long time to get one of these so I was very happy when I did it wasn't like the most successful rifle it was used in the military unlike the ar-18 but a lot of rifles took a lot of design cues from this specific weapon such as the ak-5 and the ak-5c both in use by Sweden so it is a very proven very reliable rifle but they never ended up seeing as much conflict to say at M4 so a whole mess of these just being donated to the Ukrainian conflict against Russia has you know resulted in these being used more so than ever before and it is a very good rifle foreign thing to note is it's really easy to switch from the normal to the adverse gas setting so we have this little fin right here so we're normal right here if you push it over it's going to allow more gas to get into the system in case it's getting dirty or you're in a tough environment and then it's just going to gas that rifle a little bit harder and then of course if for some reason you have them you can throw up this grenade site it does have a rifle mounted grenade that you use a blank to launch the grenade but those obviously aren't seen as much so we have the FN fnc talk is cheap animation is very expensive on a lot of these weapons so we're going to do something interesting Micah what are we doing you get to choose any weapon but you don't know what the drill is going to be in fact Blake's going to choose a drill with gunny juice I'm choosing the PPS h41 41 41 I choose the scg-44 dude oh it's like the Battle of the Bulge but instead it's the battle of the bulges Blake is about to tell us the drill however he is crippled by crippling social anxiety yeah okay from from the first position barricade yeah one on each Target just one one shot one how am I gonna do that one shot my problem how how am I gonna fight one shot literally not my problem one shot everybody knows the rules okay one shot per bing bing bing bing run to that barricade okay and then just dump on that first Target that guy right there yeah how many at least five oh would you win you're the one who chose the 41. go home dude are you ready yeah stand by that's ridiculous you got like 10 hits shoot are you ready yeah Jesus I believe foreign yeah right you got it next up we have the ak-12 same drill and then the crank are you ready yeah stand bye [Music] come on get a full auto God it's pretty good it's kind of hard to gauge where that's at with that little finger thing huh you know uh I'm so used to Optics that I went to go wrap it like an M4 and it blocked your yeah that's my thing so I had to like go back down and I couldn't control it as well shooter are you ready did you start safety on yeah up full auto full auto [Music] you miss every shot no way you missed every single shot shut up that's not possible I was aiming right at it so we have to give a big thank you to conflict Observer for a lot of the information a lot of the photos that we're using in today's video and then to the soldiers and to the volunteers from Ukraine who have been able to talk with us about things that are going on the weapons are using their experiences I think out of everything the most interesting thing to me is the Resurgence of the battle rifle most likely due to the proliferation of armor the Rangers that they're engaging each other but we still do see a lot of short-range weapons being used due to the intensity of trench fighting that is occurring it's a very interesting conflict as terrible as it is there is always something to learn try to glean the information that is necessary because it could be important that at some point in the future hopefully not but you never know guys get training train hang with your friends and train together know the capabilities of your rifles understand the capabilities of your equipment if at some point it becomes necessary that information needs to be used it's better to be how do they say Micah it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war is that the adage that's it guys thank you so much for watching we appreciate you guys so much

Channel: Garand Thumb

Views: 2,836,459

Keywords: ukraine, russia, ukraine weapons, ukraine military weapons, ukraine rifles, ukraine weird rifle, ukraine weird weapons, weird russian weapons, ukraine russia

Id: VIrXvwJZE7w

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Sun May 21 2023