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The second time he escaped from a Nazi work camp, the Russians captured my father. Dad escaped that hell too, but not before picking-up some of the local lingo. He taught me three Russian expressions: “f*ck your mother,” “give me your watch” and “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.” Not being a Russian soldier or an American politician, I’ve had no need of the last two. After watching the video above, I would certainly consider using the third if Russian special forces invited me for a little pistol training. In fact, I think I heard it in the middle of that yelling somewhere. Which reminds me of an old Russian expression: live by the macho, die by the macho. At least I think that’s what it means. [h/t PetitionForRedress]

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99 COMMENTS

  1. The instructor yells “shoot the ground!” In Russian immediately before this ND. I argue that the entire video is a string of negligent discharges.

    • Clearly there are two truly Russian battle principles being exercised. First, people are easily replaceable so throw as many at the problem as possible. Second, simunition is overrated.

      • Highly capable (note: not “cappable”) agents must be as hard to come by in Russia as America or anywhere else, for that matter.

        This trope/tripe about our former enemies valuing human life less than we do is jingoistic claptrap, and should be retired and given the burial it deserves.

        Russians have parents, wives, girlfriend and children, the same as we do.

  2. OK. I really try not to cuss. I’ve got a granddaughter at home who likes new words…
    Writing cuss words just looks crass.
    But,
    HOLY PHUK!
    I’m not sure I just saw what I saw.

  3. It is standard Russian (well, FSB Alpha and OMON) practice to shoot the ground when turning on a threat that needs convincing, like an unruly crowd or individual persons, while yelling. (Ah, that Holiday Inn was so comfortable.)

  4. Well, it’s hardcore. I’d expect as much from the FSB.

    That being a good thing is another matter.

  5. No way, no how! I doubt that those were real FSB agents at a real FSB training facility. Just my two cents.

  6. It is videos like these that make me wonder how we ever won any war against Russia. I consider myself fairly desensitized to loaded guns pointed at me, but I am pretty sure I would have pissed my pants after the second or third drill.

    • Other than 1918, when exactly have US troops engaged Russian troops? Hardly a theatre of decisive engagements.

      • Officially? Directly? Never. By proxy? Oh… lets see: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan… I’m sure I’m missing a few.

      • Yeah… I’m coming up blank on that, also. You’re referring to the “expeditionary force” in ’18, right? Some of those guys were captured, and the Russians never acknowledged they had any POWs.

        But a light-colored, short-sleeve shirt over a black tee? That’s a very special style, eh?

  8. Well, in the mean time, we are systematically downsizing our military, removing and/or restricting religion, and homosexuals, and transsexuals are given allowance as the entry standards are given a wide berth. As far as senior brass that doesn’t toe the line, they are offered early retirement, or an offer they can’t refuse.
    Should work out well. I’m sure ol’ Vlad is laughing out loud, as well as the Chinese, and more than a few of Muslim persuasion. At least a few ND’s keep you light on your feet, and rather nimble.

  9. It’s pretty extreme, but there are military units and law enforcement agencies in this country that conduct dynamic live fire training with people downrange as well… So it’s not particularly unbelievable.

    • Agree. For example it was Detachment 1 Berlin, a US SOF unit, that introduced the hostage rescue drill in which HRT elements break into a room and shoot the ‘enemy,’ these being seated among live SF soldiers. I’d name the guy who introduced the drill, but he’d have to kill me, or at least want to. I would like to think videos of that will not appear on OurTube. SAS borrowed the drill.

      Why do I get the feeling FSB Alpha is about to launch a book and movie?

  11. Well, in the meantime, we are systematically downsizing our military, removing and/or restricting religion, and homosexuals and trannies are given a wide berth as the entry standards are lowered. As for senior brass that don’t tow the line? Well,…..Early retirement, being relieved, or made an offer they can’t refuse to just get out.

    Should work out well. I’m sure ol’ Vlad is laughing, as well as the Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians, and more than a few of Muslim persuasion. At least some ND’s keep one light on your feet and fast. Expect the unexpected. One stays rather nimble that way.

    • Is there something genetic and/or inherent about gays and ‘trannies’, as you so eloquently put it, that make them less able to hold a gun or otherwise serve a role in the military? Or are you just horribly prejudiced?

      • I don’t think that’s the point at all. The point is about the dissonance and disruptive nature of placing them among American fighting men.

        You are going to tell me that women are as capable of waging war as men, I suppose? There HAS to be some realism injected into this debate, and you are NOT going to convince many open-minded people that a 90-pound woman is going to be able to run explosively and evasively with a pack on her back that weighs more than she does.

        Go ahead. Take a crack at it.

        • ‘God made men, Colt made them equal’. Are you going to argue that a force of 1000 200 pound men is somehow superior to 5000 (or even 2000) 100 pound women when there are modern rifles involved? Isn’t our ENTIRE argument for the validity of civilian ownership that a woman with a gun is now as strong as a man? Are you not arguing the exact opposite at that point?

          Now that I’ve burnt your straw man, how bout you talk about the original argument, which was homo and transexuals.

          • No straw was used, Vhyrus. A field pack is at least 100 pounds. Should it be divided up so that two female soldiers can carry it?

            Or maybe they could sweet-take a male soldier into carrying it for them?

        • My response was marked as spam, so I guess that means my pro gay and pro female ideas are not welcome here. I will certainly remember that.

          • Stop being so paranoid! All kinds of things get snagged by the Spam filter. I doubt seriously it has one thing to do with the thoughts you expressed.

            Were you suggest I had something to do with it? I don’t have any more authority here than you do. Ask around.

          • I didn’t suggest anything. I asked a question. Do you have a substance abuse problem?

      • I’ll say it, in two parts: Military life often requires living in very close quarters with very minimal facilities. To keep it simple, think pup tent, fox hole, and one lister-bag shower at most. Especially in combat, think infantry, the stress and nature of the ‘work’ incline people to become very physical. If you need proof you’ll find that a infantry in the field will have sex eargerly with the ugliest pro you ever saw. In short, nobody wants a stressed out gay person grabbing their crotch or otherwise getting personal.

        The other part is standards. For military A&D clerks it might not matter, but for jobs requiring a lot of muscle and resistance to pain standards very much matter. Lowering them is a bad thing.

        Put the first and second issues together and you have reason not to push men and women into the same combat unit. At the very least company by company the units should be one sex only. (Trannie Company ….Report!) I believe this. I truly can’t understand people who don’t, and I always find that such people either have no super primitive combat experience, or else are bucking for promotion and just saying what the guys promoting him demand…right up to the CIC. Other views on the two combined issues are welcome.

        • If your assessment is valid, then during the last 20 years under the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy there should have been LOADS of gay rape and/or harassment in the field. Since that is not the case, I assume then that even under extreme situations the in-the-closet soldiers were able to at least know not to take it out on a fellow comrade. Hell, there is quite a bit of gay rape in prison by otherwise straight men in conditions similar to front line combat, so there should be lots of instances of that happening as well if you’re right. Neither of those things are happening though. This argument is no different from the blood in the streets argument by anti’s against concealed carry. It doesn’t work for them and it doesn’t work for you in this case either.

        • No, Vhyrys, If my assessment is right, the ‘don’t ask, don’t’ tell policy suppressed expression of gay preference and desire enough to make the whole thing tolerable, and there were no female infantry platoon leaders in combat, so things worked. And if I am right, with the end of ‘DADT’ the discipline will fade and disruption of cohesion will increase, and with the push of female junior officers into Infantry Officer School, they’ll actually assign the women to non-combat infantry units, but count the infantry “experience” when evaluating the women’s careers.

          Let’s agree to discuss this in twenty years.

      • No Vhyrus, it’s not about whether a woman, a gay or a “tranny” can fight in combat; it’s the fact that people are even seriously promoting that very idea.

        There is only one purpose for a society; to provide a safe place for a family to raise healthy and well trained children on how to be mature and responsible adults; so that when they become adults, they do the same, and so on and so on.

        When a society; as a group, decides that is no longer the purpose, the society in the end, commits suicide. Which is where our culture is at that tipping point. The promotion of “alternative life styles” is the sign of a sick culture, because an “alternative life style” means something other than the traditional life style of a marriage of a man and a woman with the intent of having children.

        So now we are at the point that the marriage of a man and a woman is in the minority and if it wasn’t for immigration, we would not be having enough children being born to replace ourselves. Western Europe is at that point, as well as Russia, and Japan. they are at about 1.2 children per couple. when it needs to be at least 2 per couple; a collapse of their cultures is almost certain because there aren’t enough young people to support an aging majority.

        We are close behind. It was another reason for the collapse of the Roman Empire, at the end, they saw children as a burden, so infanticide was very common and they weren’t having enough children to replace themselves, sound familiar?

        Unless there is a spiritual awakening, we will go the same way as all empires, a collapse into self indulgent narcissistic self – destruction.

        • Nice straw man. 10 points. Now if you will please answer the actual question, which is: How does allowing someone who is not a heterosexual male to fight for our country somehow weaken that country?

        • I answered your question but, to be frank, you blew it off as no answer. Have you been in a forward unit for months and months? It really isn’t like rear-echelon or shipboard bunk-mates life at all. My arguments are not at all about gays, lesbians, trannies, or Bi’s in the military. It is certain military units and occupations.

          I do agree with ThomasR’s “not enough children” thesis, but think that results not from a lack of marriages, but lack of willingness to sacrifice career and above all disposable income that could provide security for the woman and status-signaling possessions….not to mention free time. If we don’t support parenting the way Sweden, for example, does, we will have nothing but children bred by the poor. That will have a long-term negative effect. The upper reaches of society probably would like a large and slightly dumber permanent underclass. This has happened many times in history. The brains and wealth concentrate, and have few children to keep the money concentrated. Then the whole game falls apart.

          • Is this a good place to point out that America’s birth rate (excluding immigrants who are… well, Catholic) is not even at replacement level? So your fear of society being overrun by the uneducated and the uneducable is a very real one.

        • To answer your question Vhyrus; Can a woman be an effective combat grunt carrying over a one hundred pound pack; fighting for days, weeks and months in the field; and perform to the equal of the other men in her platoon.?

          I read this on another web site and they made the observation that in college, university, pro sports and in the Olympics, that question has already been answered. Of course not, Women, as a group, cannot match the performance of men in an area that demands top physical strength.

          A woman in a combat field position would be a clear detriment to her platoon and it’s combat effectiveness.

          Now, could a gay man be an effective combat grunt; of course; the Greeks answered that question. Would having an openly gay man in a primarily heterosexual platoon help with unit cohesion? When that cohesion is what will allow those men to come back alive or in a body bag? Maybe there are combat vets that could answer that question. In the mean time; like what was already said, let’s see in twenty years.

  12. Extreme training, to say the least. I was amazed when I first saw this on TacTV. The guy stood there taking FMJ rounds directly to the chest, repeatedly, then put three well placed head shots into the target right next to the guy who had been shooting at him.

  13. Seen this a while ago on tactv and i remeber think how jacked up it was then. I get the point but I simply have no desire to be that much of a bad ass.

  15. I was down range when a newbie opened up 2 targets over. I patiently explained “no, no, no, you shouldn’t shoot when somebody is down range.” (Not my exact words, though.). If people of any nationality want to compete for the Darwin Award, who am I to judge?

    • I am guessing the exact language used was not only higher in both pitch and volume but considerably more colorful.

  17. To Vhyrus, not prejudiced at all, in the eyes of the world, which is not full of tolerant, and all embracing types, we as Americans, if you are one, are now perceived as weak and are given the middle finger from countries we could otherwise obliterate in about 3 hours. Now, not so much. We even won’t be serious and have Israel’s back.
    This new directive comes from the top, and is scoffed and denegrated in other cultures. It won’t work. Try to remember military strength of US forces during Jimmy Carter.

    • If I am a soldier and I am facing an army, I don’t really care if they are gay, straight, brown, purple, or orange, and I certainly don’t care how many penises each one has or had at one time. I do care how many of them there are. If I am shot by a homosexual or transexual (or woman), I am just as dead or wounded as if I were shot by a heterosexual male. If you are denying gays and trannies (and women), who are willing and able to fight, you are weakening our military, not strengthening it.

    • Try to remember military strength of US forces during Jimmy Carter.

      i can’t, because we didn’t have any strength. Iran and North Korea were kicking our ass. Back then, the weakness was at the top. Like now.

  20. Russians perfected the back flip throw a sharpened shovel into the target while Americans perfected the smart bomb air strike. Wonder which skill set does best in the real world?

      • If the folks in question have done something that causes me to divert valuable assets to handle I don’t want a building or anything for miles around left standing.

        If it’s worth blowing up, it’s worth blowing the phuck up.

    • We do have tactical neutron shells. Apparently League rules do not allow them. Yet. But they do leave buildings standing.

  21. This type of training is more common then we think, in a lot of the countries other than the US. Having trained with some spec ops operators from brazil, Costa Rica, and other places they all have similar drills, some are gut check drills, or confidence drills, they have there way of training and it has worked for them, what we may think is extreme, for them it’s just another day at the range.

        • According to Wikipedia, Costa Rica abolished her permanent standing army in 1948, the year I was born. 66 years ago. And still has not been invaded by anyone in all those years.

  22. I can see the value in intense training exercises such as this, particularly in ensuring that their men can stay calm and collected when they’re getting shot at. It’s stress inoculation to a very high degree. It’s a product of a training regimen based on expediency rather than liability. Real world SHTF situations won’t be neat and tidy rectangular range affairs, there is no 180 degree firing line in a chaotic and violent event. This is an attempt to deal with those realities through training.

    That said, I think the shooting into the ground bit is just plain stupid.

    • Russians train hard, not smart. They have been doing this type of stuff for years, but they still screw up what little operations they have. US SOF abandoned these idiot ideas years ago and train intelligently.

    • Shooting into the ground is considered more effective than yelling “look, I have a gun. It works.” It’s for intimidating people you would prefer not to kill, yes?

      • And what happens when you do it on the pavement? There are things called ricochets.

        Warning shots are a bad idea. If it becomes necessary to discharge your weapon you should discharge it into the person who made it necessary.

      • I’m just guessing here, but I think they probably select for at least enough intelligence not to shoot into pavement, steel plate, across ponds, and such. Is that a rash assumption?

  23. Got a little bit of an adrenaline rush from watching that. You couldn’t pay me enough to do those drills.

    • I’m old enough to remember when any job with Operator in the title just screamed ‘blue collar’ and the only part of the military that was cool was ‘fighter pilot.’ Guns were ‘used’ or ‘fired,’ not ‘run.’

      But hey, now I run several guns, have some cool kit, and checking out the chicks at the swim club is a green side op. Following up with a black side mission would be nice, but, well, I have a family.

  25. Yeah, Robert, I think “Yob tvoyu mat'” pretty much covers it…

    …Although post/Ukraine Anschluss, if FSB Spetznaz/OMON want to practice being bullet sponges, I’m OK with it.

    😛

  28. I knew it was a matter of time before this insanity got posted… There comes a time when training goes overboard and this is certainly it

    • Why don’t you write the Russian military about it? They’d welcome your input, I bet.

    • I could understand going through that crap if it was mandatory to get into Oligarch School.

  29. The whole reason they do this is to “get the new guy used to being shot at/ shot.” There really is no way to know how somebody will react under fire, until they actually are

  30. Suddenly, every stupid, unsafe thing FPS Russia has ever posted seems really lame by comparison.

  31. Getting shot wearing a vest, voluntarily, is not any more dangerous than jumping out of a plane. It really is all that overly extreme, it is just strange and counter to the typical “American way of thought” in regards to firearms.

  32. I am no mall ninja but I see no problem with this.

    Getting shot, so what? He is wearing a vest.

    shooting into the ground, effective way to disperse crowds without killing anyone.

    Seems dangerous but aren’t these jobs dangerous too?

    • Yeah, no big deal. Please post YouTube video of yourself being shot in the body armor at 4 paces.

      Waiting….

  34. I was always under the impression that body armor absorbed the blow but was seriously damaged in the process, meaning that three shots in the same area would mean the third one might get through.

  35. I could’t find the quote fast enough to keep looking. But I believe Jeff Cooper had a ratio in his mind where if a military didn’t have a certain percent of training deaths they weren’t training hard enough.

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