What modern infantrymen are equipped with and how they are protected. What are the main trends in the infantry?
Table of contents
- Equipment
- The medicine
- Protective equipment
- What is a modern infantryman today
Technology is technology, but it decides, as usual, in the endinfantry. Well, like “infantry”… Today, this word refers to a fighter who is a separate and independent combat unit. There is no need to talk strictly about the infantry - walking on foot today is not even bad manners, but something worse: there are a lot of different armored ground transport vehicles, and transport-attack helicopters.
The infantry also does not solve its tasks alone - reconnaissance drones and secure digital communications allow you to interact closely with any other types and branches of the troops (tanks, artillery, aviation).
Why foot soldiers are needed and will be needed even indistant future? Yes, because it is the most flexible and versatile instrument of war. Today, soldiers of advanced armies can have effective anti-tank weapons at the level of squads and platoons, and anti-aircraft weapons at the level of companies and battalions. After the artillery weakens the enemy, and the tanks break through his defenses, the infantry, like an antiseptic, cleans out the remnants of the enemy’s combat-ready weapons and consolidates success.
Norwegian elite motorized infantry battalion Telemark on exercises
In defense, the role of the infantry is even more important, becausethat it is like a gel capable of filling a landscape or building. It is much harder to spot, and its weapons are very dangerous for almost any vehicle today.
It's time to tell what an infantryman is today, and what this type of troops consists of.
Equipment
Unloading combined with armored plates - stores also serve as an additional element of protection
If past centuries the military uniform wassynonymous with uncomfortable clothing, today the opposite is true - military equipment fully meets the objectives of convenience and practicality. Ammunition, which includes various pouches for ammunition, tools and a first aid kit, is adjusted to the build of an ordinary soldier so that nothing interferes with movement, but at the same time everything is at hand.
Materials for uniforms and ammunition today toosubject of high technology. Even an elementary suit includes fabrics with fire-resistant properties, the smallest fragments can get stuck in them. Fabrics and cuts, depending on the region of destination, are designed for heat retention, increased ventilation, resistance to getting wet.
Image is nothing, tact is everything
Variations of ammunition are extremely diverse anddistributed across levels. For example, light assault backpacks and capacious raid backpacks. Assault units that fight in the city have to actively and maneuver a lot under enemy fire, so they need a lot of ammunition. But there are also multi-liter backpacks for long-range raids, since units will have to conduct combat operations already in isolation from supplies. This means that we need medicines, provisions, water and the same ammunition.
The medicine
First aid kit today is one of the most important elementsequipment. They come in different levels, and accordingly, the higher the level, the more elements it includes. And no, comrades, computer gamers, she does not return the wounded to the ranks. Moreover, the funds in it cannot, in general, provide treatment on their own.
The task is different - the wounded on the battlefield needsmeans to solve the underlying problems. Stopping bleeding, decontamination, injection from a painful shock - all this helps not to develop a minor injury into a moderate injury, and a moderate injury into a serious one, respectively. That is, the wounded are being prepared for evacuation to specialists in the infirmary and then to the hospital.
Interview of Razvedos with a “tactical medic”, if you want to study the topic in more detail
According to statistics, most of those killed in combat arenot the soldiers in which something flew in and they died instantly. Most often, these are the wounded who did not receive timely medical care. For example, pneumothorax - when a tiny fragment enters the chest and pierces the pleural tissue of the lungs, after which air enters there. Negative pressure in the lungs is what allows us to actually breathe. A rather tight, dense and elastic bandage, which closes the access of air to the lungs, and the person is saved. Otherwise, the person is guaranteed a corpse.
Marine Corps Advanced First Aid KitThe United States, according to the experience of battles, is divided into medical and traumatic. Medical training itself is the most important element in the training of everyone without exception (and not just one paramedic per battalion). Actions are worked out to automatism, muscle memory helps to do everything right under stress, haste and not the most convenient circumstances.
Already in the basic set is:
- Tourniquet - tourniquets have been replaced everywhere as a more modern effective means of stopping bleeding.
More about turnstiles
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Patches for penetrating wounds
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Bandage - a special bandage for burns, large wounds
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Nasopharyngeal breathing apparatus
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Bandages, antiseptics
The first-aid kit is not limited to this - medicines,antibiotics, antiviral drugs. And the means that allow the wounded not to lose consciousness or fall into delirium - this is much more difficult to save. And in the kit there are means for disinfecting water in the field, means against tetanus, corns and chafing.
Practicing first aid skills during exercises
Great attention to such details has led to the fact thatthat in local conflicts of recent decades, the ratio of wounded and killed has changed dramatically. If during the Second World War it was 1 to 3 or 4 killed, then during the years of the Vietnam War it was 1 to 6 (for the USA), and already the Afghan war 1 to 11 (for the USSR). The United States in recent conflicts has been brought to the level of 1 to 17. And yes, I mean any injuries - including light ones that do not give lifelong disability, you can not run to Wikipedia with a calculator for rebuttals.
Protective equipment
Metal has long ceased to be the main materialprotective equipment - today we are usually talking about kevlar (aramid fibers), ceramics (but not the one from which dishes are made) and thermoplastics. In general, we can say that Kevlar is gradually giving way to more advanced technologies that protect better and weigh less.
The Americans gutted the Kevlar helmet that saved the life of a fighter to study the behavior of fragments
Body armor is a flexible concept, according to the degreeprotection, they are divided into classes, and here each country has its own classifications, different even in NATO countries. Modern Russian GOST is divided into 6 levels, other countries may have 4 levels, but include sublevels, for example, protection class III or IIIA. In the basic classes, bulletproof vests, as a rule, hold pistol ammunition, and such modifications are intended mainly for police officers.
At the highest levels, body armor is able to holdspecial armor-piercing or increased penetration bullets of rifle calibers with a muzzle energy of 3500 J (for comparison, a modern pistol has a power of about 600 J, and an AK-74 of about 1300 J). This is already a special equipment for assault operations. Typically infantry wears one of the medium variants.
In addition, a standard body armor can be expanded with additional elements - a bullet-resistant collar (gorget), shoulder pads, groin protection and side plates for the vest.
Modern weapons and equipment are based onthe principle of modularity, and here, too, without it, nowhere. You collect a set depending on the tasks (if, of course, there is such an opportunity), and the intended format of the battle.
Extended armor set for Ratnik
Helmet (or casque, which is the same thing, just a wordFrench origin) from head protection has turned into a combat complex, which, in addition to its direct functions, is needed for mounting additional equipment - mounting night vision devices or thermal imagers, communication headsets and active noise reduction, as well as flashlights and cameras.
Therefore, design, weight distribution andfastening of under-the-body devices - everything is aimed at the convenience of long-term wearing, so that nothing is too tight, outweighed and does not lead to injuries.
Today, FAST helmets are gaining more and more fashion.(Future Assault Shell Technology) with characteristic cutouts in the ear area for headsets. Kevlar began to be replaced with high molecular weight thermoplastic polyethylene, resistant even to 7.62x39 AKM ammunition. Weight, depending on the module and the degree of protection, varies from 315 to 1034 grams.
FAST helmet
Initially, FAST was a helmet for special forces, but the characteristic design is increasingly gaining popularity in general-purpose helmets, gradually becoming a classic and found in general army units.
What does this mean?The fact that there has been a tendency to increase the infantryman as a class - from cannon fodder to a professional soldier. Well, the boundaries of infantry and special forces are gradually blurred. But not in the profile and tasks (they are still different), but in attention to the preparation and quality of equipment.
As a result, the infantrymen of the mechanized unit and the fighters of the special unit no longer differ much in appearance.
Modern protective equipment dramatically increasesopportunities not only to survive, but also to survive and maintain combat readiness. Shrapnel and fragmentation ammunition can no longer mow down manpower in batches, which, in turn, increases the value of infantry on the battlefield.
Well, why not a cyborg?
And today they are actively developingmultispectral camouflage for infantrymen. With it, camouflage will become more effective not only visually (now they are fighting at greater and greater distances due to widely available optics and collimator sights), but also protection from detection in the infrared range (in simple terms - in a thermal imager).
What is a modern infantryman today
Russian kit Ratnik-2
This is, first of all, a trained soldier,trained to fight in rough terrain and urban environments. Equipment due to modularity allows you to reconfigure ammunition for different tasks. The primary task is to maintain the combat effectiveness and survivability of personnel on the battlefield for as long as possible.
The French in their FELIN complex, the cost varies within 35,000 euros per set (the French do not know how to cheap and do not like)
The flip side of this is the cost.equipping one infantryman - together with weapons, today it varies between $ 16,000 - $ 25,000 for the US Army (not counting various special ones, where it can be more expensive than $ 50,000). Therefore, to dress anyone from the street in such a body kit is more expensive for yourself, careful selection, strong preparation, and constant maintenance of shape are necessary.
The cost of the most modern andthe widespread Russian kit "Warrior-2" is today about 220 - 230,000 rubles (about $ 3,000 at the exchange rate until 02/24/2022). The only pity is that, despite a number of breakthrough technologies, domestic equipment is gradually starting to lag behind advanced analogues. But we will tell you how this will be solved in the following articles - if, of course, this topic is of interest to you.