Vladimir Putin’s troops are fighting a god-awful, dismal war, and things are about to grow even more potentially disastrous. Yes, even more disastrous than Russian soldiers threatening to blow up their general, and even more cataclysmic than new recruits being told to bring a tampon supply to plug bullet holes. We’ve already heard that Ukraine’s show of force in cities has led to Russian troops abandoning tanks and heavy artillery, which has only been a further boon to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s army. Now, a senior U.S. military official has revealed some telling intel, which has been summed up on the U.S. Department of Defense website.
Since everything is running short in Russia (which apparently doesn’t even have paper these days), the report is an intriguing and frightening one. The U.S. military official (whose name has been redacted, possibly as a life-protecting measure) revealed how “new ammunition” will soon be a thing of the past for the Russian army, and Putin’s troops will be “forced” to use ammo that’s been preserved in “degraded conditions.” This will bring higher “failure rates” and “unpredictable performance,” and the briefing then goes into a rather remarkable discussion of how 40-year-old ammunition is very bad and could “explode in your face.” Yikes:
Q: All right, in layman’s language, does degraded mean dud rates? And you’re finding — the Ukrainians are finding a number of unexploded ordnances, i.e. degraded ordnance?
SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: That’s correct. That’s correct. So, in other words, you load the ammunition, and you cross your fingers and hope it’s going to fire. Or, when it lands that it’s going to explode.
Q: Or not — Okay, thank you. Or not explode in your face. Okay.
SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: Yes, exactly. All right, thank you.
Q: Thank you.
There’s been no word on whether Putin has heard about would even care to listen to coverage of this briefing. After all, he’s possibly/reportedly in the bunker as we speak. Yet it’s quite something that he’s been toasting with champagne while Russia cannot even replenish its new ammunition stocks.
(Via Defense.gov)