A Maxim machine gun in position close to Kharkiv, Ukraine. Mykhaylo Palinchak
- Ukraine has utilised a WWI-era machine gun on the front line to mow down the enemy.
- “It only operates when there is a massive attack going on,” a Ukrainian soldier told BBC News.
- The brutal fighting in Ukraine, filled with trenches and heavy casualties, has usually been compared to WWI.
Ukrainian forces have utilised Maxim machine guns, a weapon ordinarily linked with Planet War I, to mow down frontal assaults by Russian troops in the battle for Bakhmut.
“It only operates when there is a massive attack going on,” a Ukrainian soldier identified as Borys, 48, not also extended ago told BBC News of the Maxim gun. “Then it absolutely operates.”
“We use it each single week,” Borys added.
Ukrainian forces have situated the Maxim M1910 — was quite initially introduced in 1910 (the initial version of the gun emerged in the 1880s) and employed by the Imperial Russian Army all through Planet War I — valuable in the fight against the Russians. Ukraine’s troops have modified the guns with modern day day add-ons such as optics and suppressors, according to reporting from Job and Objective.
Hiram Maxim, a vital inventor of transportable machine guns in the 19th Century, utilised the recoil force of a bullet to eject its cartridge and feed the subsequent round in from an ammunition belt.
The fighting in Ukraine has repeatedly garnered parallels to Planet War I, with every single sides locked in a brutal war of attrition featuring trenches, relentless artillery barrages, and heavy casualties. In this atmosphere, even some of the weapons of that era have come in handy as Ukrainian troops face human wave attacks on the front line — procedures well known to Planet War I.
Ukraine has also apparently utilized a sort of Planet War I-era sniper decoy, employing dummies meant to fool enemy snipers.
But even even though the fight in Ukraine could have similarities to Planet War I, the modern day day weaponry and surveillance also prevalent on the battlefield — particularly drones — have produced it all the additional deadly by offering troops handful of areas to hide.
The Ukraine war has mainly create into “Planet War I with 21st century ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance],” Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Investigation, told Insider in January.
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