How Russian Grenade Launcher Doubles as Mini Artillery

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Using an auto grenade launcher as "a mortar" with a small cheap consumer drone as your own personal "artillery spotter" is a wild combo! What a game changer for the squad level

You forgot to mention very important thing. That russian one has indirect fire optics. So it was designed for indirect fire from beginning

As a former M203 grenade launcher shooter, I can tell you that even that piece of work can serve as mini-artillery. A better description might be mini-mortar, however. The M203 has a bore of 40mm, whereas the Russian AGS-17 is 30mm.

Drone + automatic grenade launcher looks like a very cheap an interesting combo.

I've seen lots of footage of how incredibly effective drone corrected AGS is. The MK19 can be used in a similar way

This is one of the weapons that makes me question how the military in zombie movies gets destroyed so easily.

How could you NOT like an automatic grenade launcher?

The US Army M101A1 howitzer(105mm) artillery piece developed in World War II is also in use in Ukraine. It has similarly been update for use in the current war with the addition of GPS and drone as a spotter. PS — It’s interesting to see how modern tech has made older gear good enough.

A pretty vicious weapon when under AI control in ARMA series.

By the way, a poll of WWII historians considered Kulik. who cancelled the project, to be the WORST general of WWII. He was in charge of Soviet artillery manufacturing and apparently hated all good ideas, like building fast-firing, high velocity guns for tanks. So he sabotaged their development as much as he could. Soviets had great tank designs but lacked good guns for them and it plagued Soviet military till the late stages of the war.

Commissar: Comrade Stalin...we have found genius who invent new thing that actually work! Stalin: So. He has chosen death.

killing the inventor of weapon that would have liquidated the germans in ww2 because of stalin being a power hungry maniac is quite a dark twist of fate

One of the advantages of having this system in the unit is that in can be employed in the platoon level without having to request permisson from upper echelon.

We had one brought back from Desert Storm sitting in a display case until 2000 when after it was examined closer was found to be still fully intact and operational :)

I had training to this weapon in Finland's army. I was left in impression its somewhat short range, due to low muzzle velocity, is a hindrance that exposes these crews to frontline fire. And ammo was quite sensitive. I'm happy we ain't using it anymore.

I think this is a sneak peek into the future of artilery; miniaturized to the point of becoming portable by one sordier, gaining incredible versatility on the battlefield.

Great vid as always, would just like to chime in I was trained as a gunner on our variant of the AGS. It is a specialized MOS in our military. (Been a while so don't @me if I get US military terminology wrong lol) We operated it in two-man teams, one person carried the launcher, while the other, called the Servicer/Server carried the legs (Stall?) and the ammo, 2X Cases) on a platoon level. The SOP was to deploy it, while an element from the platoon provided security. The Gunner operates the system, while the server maintains, brings ammunition and assists in directing the accuracy of fire/ almost like an artillery spotter, issued with a ractification sight. (Mind you our variant was significantly heavier, but from what I've heard the stand was a lot sturdier and didn't suffer the wobble that was common with Russian made ones). We've never really trained for "Human Wave" attacks. But instead, most of our training and firing was focused on support of maneuver elements within the platoon, suppression of positions or destruction of fortified position and light vehicles. Even during my time (I'm old we didn't have drones back then lol), the accuracy with which a trained operator can put one of these on you at 800+ meters is a humbling experience. A really understated weapon in Eastern European military doctrines. I'll just paraphrase the manual " Intended for destruction of covered and uncovered living force at distances up to 1700 m, and destruction of lightly armored combat means at distances up to 1000 m."

Great content as always! Minor point, "Molot" (the Russian word for "hammer") Machine Building plant is pretty well known with a long history. Among other things, they produce the RPK light machine guns which are heavily used throughout the world, including on both sides of the Ukraine conflict. They also produced a commercial version of the RPK called the Vepr (Boar), which was very popular in the United States in the 2010's.

They have used the soviet 2B9 belt fed 82mm fully automatic mortar for years as a standard tactic so using this as a lightweight version makes sense, It would be interesting to know if this and the 2b9 are used together very often