Posted on 04/12/2025 8:33:38 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Drones swarmed the museum-grade GAZ-69 trucks. All along the front line, vehicle losses are spurring a swift de-mechanization of the Russian army.
A few weeks after first appearing in significant numbers along the front line in Ukraine, Russian GAZ-69 trucks—museum pieces from the 1950s—seem to have participated in their first direct assault on Ukrainian positions.
“We are an inch away from the GAZ-69 sturm,” open-source intelligence analyst Moklasen predicted on April 1, using slang for “attack.” They were right.
The Thursday assault outside Bilohorivka, at the juncture of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts in eastern Ukraine, ended badly for at least one of the 3,500-pound, four-wheel-drive GAZ-69s, which rolled off the assembly line at the Molotov plant in Moscow some time between 1952 and 1972.
The trucks are totally unarmored except for the anti-drone cages some Russian troops weld onto them.
The GAZ-69 was struck by a first-person-view drone from the Ukrainian Abwehr Gruppe drone team, part of the 81st Air Mobile Brigade. The rest of the civilian-style vehicles in the platoon-sized column—potentially including additional GAZ-69s—also came under attack.
“No one arrived, no one reached” Ukrainian positions, the Abwehr Gruppe reported.
The best-protected Russian assault groups struggle to cross the mine-seeded, artillery-pocked, drone-patrolled front line of Russia’s 38-month-long wider war on Ukraine. Lightly protected assault groups in civilian trucks, all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles tend to fare even worse.
But more and more Russian regiments are riding in civilian vehicles as Russia’s losses of purpose-made combat vehicles exceed 20,000 and factories struggle to build new vehicles fast enough.
And that helps to explain why the numerically superior Russian force in eastern Ukraine, which may number more than half a million, has been struggling to gain ground.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
UKRAINE’S GONNA WIN!!!! :)
Geez you’re a buffoon
😂
Part of the wwii lend lease?
Toughest trucks on the planet.
They are crude as hell but them things will outlast any of the worthless shit we provide our military.
FWD has been closed for a long time in Clintonville Wis and they were the only ones who could build anything comparable.
Even Oshkosh coukdnt hold a candle to FWD.
Abwehr gruppe?
Nazi much?
CC
They got about 80 T-34's back from Laos.
They got about 80 T-34's back from Laos.
I tried to find a way to add cute little heart emoticons in. Can't do it....
Russie won’t risk the expensive models. They want to sell those.
Thinking about how bad ass one of those would look with a metal flake candyapple red paint job, some yellow flames outlined in black streaking back from the hood, chrome grill, side pipes, Crager SS wheels, and a Ford 427 under hood with a blower, cranking out 400 HP… maybe some nitrous injection too…
But right now… looking THAT way… no, not so much…
Looks like what they drive in Cuba
They probably wish they had those to drive in Cuba...
I always feel better after reading your attempts to ignore and mask what’s actually going on.
Built after the war. The Soviets relied on lots of everyone else’s trucks in the war.
“Russian force in eastern Ukraine, which may number more than half a million, has been struggling to gain ground”
Sure, Jan
Ukraine is so full of BS. They mix an ounce of truth in a ton of lies.
Anyone interested in this conflict can see Ukraine is struggling on all fronts, short of soldiers, losing multiple villages a day. Biden’s aid package is in full swing thru June or July, but Russian destruction of the AFU has increased beyond Biden Admin worst case.
Yesterday the optic drone manufacturing facility in Ukraine was destroyed. Before yesterday, Ukraine produced 1m drones against Russian 5m drones a year. That loss came as Ukraine struggled to catch back up to Russia in deployed drone tech.
Grant Ukraine can kill vehicles, but the truth is that these vehicles are discarded went troops disembark and they are left at the deployment points. None of the equipment left sitting survives. Both sides deployed troops and left vehicles for destruction.
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