Text taken from the Telegram channel of bucks_traveler
[ColonelCassad] "We need to drag the three-hundredth
wounded squadmate
, and the whole path was covered with explosive shit last night, we don't know what to do ("© Extremely prepared evacuation group.)
In 2026, when mining with the help of UAVs and artillery systems is carried out to a depth of tens and hundreds (!) of kilometers, everyone must be a little bit of a sapper. And if you, like me, are a fan of collecting all sorts of explosive and not so explosive shit lying on the ground and wandering where you shouldn't wander, Cat and Probe are your best friends.
Cat
The purpose of this hook is to pull all sorts of explosives from their place and tear off tripwire target sensors (tripwires) from cover. For example, if there is an unattended first aid kit/dry rations/drone lying on the road, before grabbing them with your greedy hands, first pull the cat, the change sensor located in the object The position or change in the magnetic field will most likely initiate the charge.
Always include a sturdy carabiner with your crampon so you can quickly assemble and disassemble the hook without tying or untying the paracord.
Roll up 20-25 meters of paracord as follows:
first, roll up 8-12 meters of it in a quick-access section, then roll up the rest in a separate spool. This is done so you don't have to fiddle with the full length of rope and can unwind as much as you need at once. A probe is a metal, plastic, or fiberglass rod that a sensible-looking sapper uses to poke snow or other coverings into the ground, under which a mine can be hidden.
Our wise Soviet ancestors trained their soldiers to use a cleaning rod on their machine guns. And if I had an AK-74, I probably wouldn't carry an extra probe; for the occasional mission involving exploring potentially mined areas, the cleaning rod is more than enough. But alas, the main assault rifle now is the AK-12.
In which the geniuses at Kalashnikov's design studio decided that a cleaning rod that could be quickly removed with one hand was too simple and convenient, so in the "improved" version, to remove the cleaning rod, you need to:
1) pull the tool case out of the pistol grip,
2) find the punch in it,
3) use the punch to press the spring retaining the pin into the fore-end,
4) knock out the pin,
5) slide forward and remove the fore-end,
6) pull the three component sections of the cleaning rod out of the fore-end,
7) screw them together, optionally screwing the case onto them,
8) once finished, reassemble in reverse order.
It truly takes genius to create a Great Weapon, but no less talent (even if alternative) is required to "improve" a well-functioning engineering solution, making it simultaneously expensive, inconvenient, and useless. The moral of the story: rig your own probe. And we've strayed a bit from the main topic. How do the probe and cat work in practice?
A US Army NCO told me in the early 1990s, low tech can/will defeat high tech everytime...
The objective is to navigate/make a trail through a grassy area to a point of interest.
First, the grappling hook goes from cover. We cast and pull it back several times, making sure there are no tripwires/cheesecakes/helpers.
Then, we move to the probe—at an angle of no more than 40 degrees, piercing the ground every 5-7 centimeters. If we detect an object resembling a mine, we carefully remove its camouflage, identify it, and mark it with a stake (a twig with a piece of cloth attached). Then, we either move the trail or detonate the mine with a charge.
In short, learn and practice sapper training, or your comrades will have to practice takmed.