Is this real or all staged? These soldiers seem to be bunching up a lot (and wasting a lot of ammo). YouTube - Battle scenes from second chechen company
The first part of the video looks staged...i mean, look at the guy with the MG, standing up and hip firing it for like 1 minute. The 2nd half looks like it is taken from a Russian News Channel (look at the top left).
If it's not staged, then those are some bad soldiers. Some really bad moves over there. One of the first things I learned was never to move in a combat area without being prepared to shoot. And soldiers carrying their weapons on one hand as they push forward is not such a great idea. Plus, who are they shooting against? And at 1:40 you see a large group of troops crossing an open are without any kind of cover. That's an accident waiting to happen. Oh and then they all gang up on some nearby trees. A 40mm rifle grenade would be enough to send them packing. Anyway, probably just a propaganda video. Cheers...
I think so too. They are behaving more like an armed gang than soldiers. That section machinegunner is just standing out there in the open, firing full Rambo style as the rest of the unit runs past him, bunching up. And how about that wave of guys running and shooting? There's almost no distance between each man..it's grand opportunity for an enemy machine gun.
I was hoping that someone experienced would talk about the correct way or point out whether or not it is real. It is pretty strange that they would fire a RPG for staged video, though.
Not really. RPGs are cheaper than dirt. It wouldn't cost much especially if it fires hand-crafted rockets (which are also quite easy to make). Courtesy of Russian weapons doctrine Cheers...
Not claiming to be experienced but watch the footage from Iraq and Afghanistan, bunching up is something that always happens in combat, it isn't ideal but it is human nature. It is also often the only way of getting troops across a space fast. RPG's are cheap, they may well be used to stage things, frankly the soldiers seem fairly realistic in terms of what they are doing (even the rambo thing, there is brilliant footage of a British guardsman in Iraq who stood up and fired his GPMG from the hip to give his comrades time to get away before running after them, these things do in fact happen). To be honest, the most problematic thing to me is the fact that the reporter seems to be casually strolling around in the first half. Either they were shooting at someone who couldn't shoot back (not impossible considering we are talking about Chechnya) or he is the bravest reporter in the world. So yeah, it may well be footage of Russian conscripts or other fairly average soldiers, it may well be combat, I'm just not sure whether the reporter knows quite how dangerous a situation he is in if it is.
