Posted on 07/28/2023 8:21:01 PM PDT by McGruff
Ukrainian artillery crews have been firing rockets made in North Korea against Russian positions, turning Pyongyang’s munitions against the invasion forces of its ally President Vladimir Putin.
The North Korean arms, whose use by Ukraine has not been previously reported, were shown to the Financial Times by troops operating Soviet-era Grad multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) near the devastated city of Bakhmut.
The origins of Ukraine’s armoury highlight how Europe’s biggest land conflict since the second world war has become a mixed-up cauldron for generations of the world’s military equipment, ranging from ageing Soviet kit to modern precision weapons.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Ruslan, a Ukrainian artillery commander, said the North Korean munitions were not favoured by his troops because of their relatively high dud rate, with many known to misfire or fail to explode. Most were manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s, according to their markings.
One Ukrainian Grad unit member warned the FT not to get too close to the rocket launcher when the crew fired the North Korean munitions because “they are very unreliable and do crazy things sometimes”.
Nice to see our money is going to buy missiles made by Communist North Korea. Maybe China’s were too expensive.
Where are they getting NK munitions from? Paywall, so can’t read for myself.
They’ve been using old Maxim guns, too. More reliable by far than the duddy NK rockets. Those Maxim guns may be antiques, but they are still effective and kill you just as dead as a fancy modern weapon.
This problem is not new, the resorting to using obsolete and outdated munitions due to critical shortages of fighting materials and operational requirements.
It was one of the major factors in the terrible fire aboard the USS Forrestal in 1967. We were under such heavy operational tempos at that point in the war that we ran critically low on bombs for carrier aircraft to drop.
As an interim measure, to maintain pressure on the enemy and support our troops, they had to bring out bombs from Yokosuka that had been stored there since the Korean War, exposed to the elements, and they lacked the streamlined shapes, but more importantly, did not possess the same insulating material on the outside of the bombs as the modern ones did (degrading the ability to prevent the munition cooking off in a shipboard fire) but, being exposed to the elements for so long, were actually demonstrating visually the decomposition of the explosives in the bomb which made them dangerous to even handle, susceptible to detonation from a shock such as being dropped during loading or during a cat shot.
They took these same elderly bombs (which I no doubt saw through barbed wire topped chain link fencing as a kid riding my bike in remote parts of that large naval base) and loaded them onto ammunition ships which took them out to the Gulf of Tonkin.
When the Captain was informed of the condition of the weapons he was receiving via underway ammunition replenishment, he tried to have them returned. The Captain of the ammunition ship apparently said there was no choice, and if he wanted to abandon his missions in Vietnam, he could take that up with higher authorities, and...he balked at that and accepted the dangerous munitions.
In the end, that played a major part in the conflagration that followed.
Ukrainian soldiers were observed using North Korean rockets that they said were seized by a “friendly” country before being delivered to Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
What is your source claiming the United States is buying North Korean rockets?
Wow. That’s quite a story. Thank you for sharing it with us.
You left off a sentence.
“(Reuters) - Ukrainian soldiers were observed using North Korean rockets that they said were seized by a “friendly” country before being delivered to Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
Ukraine’s defence ministry suggested the arms were captured from the Russians, the newspaper said.”
I became interested in this, since I not only served under McCain (who is often accused of causing the fire on the Forrestal) who was my commanding officer in a training squadron for a few months I ended up in the same squadron he served in when the accident occurred...so there was still institutional memory of this!
My, that is something! So, how was McCain back then? I detested the way he never saw a war he didn’t like, but maybe he was okay back in the day?
Im sure he meant our MONEY being sent to Ukraine is used by the Ukrainians to buy the NK rockets.....Not the USA buying them and shipping them to Ukraine. Although we are doing that with SK shells.
What would be the source for that?
I was just answering Freeper Robert DeLong’s question.
Not leaving off a sentence.
The reports said these are really old, 1980-1990.
Do you think they even still work?
Now we are subsidizing the North Korean military so some of our corrupt politicians can get payoffs.
I served under McCain for several months (I think three) in a training squadron before I was deemed competent for assignment to a fleet squadron.
I was plane captain for McCain on a couple of instances, and he barely said anything or even made much eye contact, as I recall. I remember thinking there was something not right about him, but...he was a Commander, and had been a famous POW. I knew who he was, growing up as a navy brat when McCain was captured, but many of the guys in the squadron did not know until someone told them he had been a POW.
The one incident that stuck out for me was when I had to go up to the squadron offices for some reason, which were on the upper floor of this huge, cavernous hanger that the training squadron (VA-174) occupied at Cecil Field, in Florida.
When I entered the long hallway in the upper floor, it was kind of dimly lit, but I could see someone far off standing at a scuttlebutt (water fountain) in the middle of the corridor.
As I approached, I realized the person was just standing there, not moving, with his finger on the water button as it spouted water. This was no big deal, because many people including myself often let the water run for some time waiting for it to get colder.
But when I got up to him, realized it was McCain, and saw that he still wasn’t moving, it became very odd for me. I was just a sailor, wondering if I should say hello, or whatever, and...he did not appear to even notice I was there. Even as I passed, he just stared fixedly down at the stream of water, and did not even move.
It disturbed me a bit. In retrospect, at that time, he was only two years out of the Hanoi Hilton, and I remember thinking that he still must not be free of it.
The intervening years were difficult for me regarding McCain. I grew up in a military family, and I held the torch for all of our POWs, including McCain, and gave him default respect for years due to all the factors above. I wore POW wrist bracelets (I had one for Denton that eventually corroded and fell off my wrist) and was at Andrews AFB to welcome them home when the first flight of them ended up there, so I have early roots in the POW awareness as a kid. When I joined the USN and was a trainee in his training squadron (VA-174 Hellrazors) some of the other guys didn’t know much about him, but I sure did...and about his father and grandfather.
I refused to criticize him for years, and am grateful to a Freeper who gently discussed it with me via Freepmail (not in a thread) and helped me see that McCain was not worthy of any kind of respect or support from me as a conservative. He could have flamed me to pieces in many threads about this, but not only did he not do so...he was reasonable and persuasive without being caustic and abusive.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. I am stubborn about tradition, respect, chain of command, etc., and if that person had fired a few broadsides into me as others had, I would never have seen the light of day.
I still will not criticize his performance as a POW (even though I have reviewed and believe the evidence from other POW’s that confirms some of those negative accounts) because...I just wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was to go through that. We all know everyone (nearly everyone) talks under torture as Admiral Stockdale said (one of my signature heroes in life
All that said, I developed an extremely negative view of McCain as a politician and husband.
I am fine with the most vitriolic characterizations of his actions in those aspects as a politician and a husband, but when it comes to his role in the Forrestal fire, I condemn in the strongest terms attempts to pin the USS Forrestal disaster on him.
I have always felt it makes people on this forum look foolish, and it diluted and watered down the things that McCain SHOULD have been pilloried for.
And it disrespects the men who were injured and died that day in 1967 because it sacrifices the truth in an attempt to use the event as a political pawn.
I am wondering if they were captured from the Russians or left over from the Soviet days and were brought into play as some sort of dig at the Russian visit to North Korea this week by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
So, that's how out country makes the claim that Russia is receiving arms from NK.
And these missiles are being used right after Russia visits NK.
Talk about suspicious timing.
That's an awful pot of coincidences playing out so closely together.
What might make more sense, is SK somehow got hold of NK missiles and supplied them to Ukraine.
Thanks MarMema for answering my question. 🙂 👍
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