The UK is among a number of countries with military special forces operating inside Ukraine, according to one of dozens of documents leaked online.
It confirms what has been the subject of quiet speculation for over a year.
The leaked files, some marked “top secret”, paint a detailed picture of the war in Ukraine, including sensitive details of Ukraine’s preparations for a spring counter-offensive.
The US government says it is investigating the source of the leak.
According to the document, dated 23 March, the UK has the largest contingent of special forces in Ukraine (50), followed by fellow Nato states Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14) and the Netherlands (1).
The document does not say where the forces are located or what they are doing.
The numbers of personnel may be small, and will doubtless fluctuate. But special forces are by their very nature highly effective. Their presence in Ukraine is likely to be seized upon by Moscow, which has in recent months argued that it is not just confronting Ukraine, but Nato as well.
In line with its standard policy on such matters, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has not commented, but in a tweet on Tuesday said the leak of alleged classified information had demonstrated what it called a “serious level of inaccuracy”.
“Readers should be cautious about taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread misinformation,” it said.
It did not elaborate or suggest which specific documents it was referring to. However, Pentagon officials are quoted as saying the documents are real.
One document, which detailed the number of casualties suffered in Ukraine on both sides, did appear to have been doctored.
UK special forces are made up of several elite military units with distinct areas of expertise, and are regarded to be among the most capable in the world.
The British government has a policy of not commenting on its special forces, in contrast to other countries including the US.
The UK has been vociferous in its support of Ukraine, and is the second largest donor after the US of military aid to Kyiv.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation and he was determined to find the source of the leak.
“We will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it,” he said.
Federal brought out a line of ammunition aimed squarely at levergun users, it’s called HammerDown. They actually produce HammerDown Rifle and Handgun lines, and the bullets used are of the bonded variety which is a welcome upgrade from the standard cup and core offerings. This welcome change should offer deep penetration, ample expansion, and eliminate core separations from occurring. The rifle line is available in 30-30, 45-70, 35 rem., and 444 Marlin, the handgun line has 327 Federal Mag., 357 Mag., 44 Mag., and 45 Colt.
My first game with the HammerDown line was this Minnesota doe taken at 70 yards cleanly with a single 270gr. bullet.
I will be reviewing the 44Mag. and 45-70 rounds. I will test the 44 Mag. in both handguns and a rifle and see how well it does in both as well as compare external ballistics. The 45-70 will be run through my Marlin 1895, 18” barreled semi-custom gun. The 44 Mag will be shot in my Marlin 1894, a 4 5/8” Ruger Super Blackhawk and Ruger Super Blackhawk Hunter. For the 1895, other than the barrel being shortened by a gunsmith, it is a completely stock gun. So all three guns are unmodified as far as accuracy enhancements.
Designed specifically for lever action guns the HammerDown line pairs premium bullets with accurate and dependable factory ammunition.
The 44 Mag. ammo uses a 270gr. bullet at a listed 1715fps, the 45-70, uses a 300gr. bullet at a listed 1850fps. Those two performance parameters are awfully close to each other, and although the 44 is listed as being in the handgun line, its velocity is obviously from a longer barrel as it coincides with velocity from my 20” barreled Marlin at 1712fps. The velocity listed for the 45-70 is 1850fps, and from my 18” barreled gun averages 1775fps. It could be that my rifle is a tad slow or that the listed velocity is from a 22” barrel. However, considering the speed of the 44 magnum to the rifle, the two are very close in comparison.
The rounds of the HammerDown line are meant to be used from handguns and lever guns or similar-style guns. They are what would be called today, short-range rounds and luckily most users of these types of guns and rounds are pragmatic and realize that they are best when used at distances less than 200 yards.
The shorter-barreled Ruger Super Blackhawk carries well in a belt holster and still provides good accuracy.
My guns are set up for use under those conditions, 200 yards would be a long shot. The 270gr. bullet from my handgun accounted for a large Minnesota doe at 70yds. She covered 60-75 yards in her final dash for cover and left an adequate blood trail for most of the way. The bullet exited after impact and provided about 18”-20” of penetration, it also left a 3/4” to 1” inch exit wound. Velocity from the 7.5” revolver averaged 1350fps, and given the 2.5” high impact at 50 yards provides a very useable trajectory for hunting purposes.
The shorter barreled Ruger provided 1270fps with the load and gave 2” accuracy at 50 yards at 1.5” high. The Marlin 1895 is outfitted with a Burris FastFire reflex sight and is sighted to place its rounds just over the top of the dot at 50 yards, this works out to just over a 100-yard zero. The initial shooting of the ammunition provided some quite acceptable accuracy, with the rifle producing just over an inch group at 100 yards for the first three rounds fired from it. The handguns produced the same 2-inch groups at 50 yards with their first rounds.
44 magnum targets, Marlin target on left fired from 100 yds. and Ruger Super Blackhawk Hunter target on right fired at 50 yds. showing initial rounds through guns prior to sight corrections. The lone single on the handgun was a called flyer.
The 45-70 ammunition also produced very acceptable accuracy with its first rounds fired, two rounds fired produced about an inch coupling at 100 yards but a bit higher than I prefer. So a couple of clicks down and three more rounds produced a 1.75” group.
The zero I prefer to run on my 45-70 consists of 2.5” high at 50yds, 3” high at 100yds, and zero at 150yds, should a shot at 200 yards be needed simply aiming at the top of the back compensates for the 9” drop on whitetails and just below the top of the back works for the bigger stuff. This makes for easy remembering while in the field and 2.5” to 3” of height equates to nothing really when aiming at deer, hogs, bear, or elk.
Accuracy from the 45-70 load was excellent, the two shots with the 12 o’clock mark were initial shots made prior to a sight adjustment.
The function of both 44 and 45-70 through the lever guns hasn’t met any issue, which is what I expected. In the past, some have reported issues of sporadic feeding problems with other manufacturers ammunition using bullets of wider meplat in their Marlins. I did not have any, but the HammerDown ammunition is developed to function through a lever action. The flat nose profile of the HammerDown 270gr. bullet is wider than many factory-loaded jacketed bullets, with my caliper it measured out at .290, in comparison, Winchester Silvertip measured .225, Hornady XTP measured .275, and Sierra measured .250, I found only one load that exceeded it and it measured .295. The two loadings utilized nickel-plated cases, making identification of ammunition easier when mixed amongst normal brass casings, and when looking for spent cases in the grass.
The larger flat nose of the HammerDown 44 is evident here, some larger meplat rounds can cause functioning issues in guns. There was no issue with the HammerDown loads tested.
The 45-70 bullet is called a soft point, although it resembles a cupped point, not a soft point and not a hollow point, but a blend of the two. Regardless of what it’s called, it performs like what you would expect from a bonded bullet, with no core separation and excellent expansion. My experience with a different 300gr. bullet in the 45-70 started out with less than stellar performance, and consequently, I’ve steered away from using them.
The bullets used were designed for much older 45-70 loadings, ones meant for trapdoors and weak actions. Luckily these days we have loadings designed for what is currently 45-70 ballistics from modern strong actions. The other 300gr. bullet provided limited penetration when pushed at 1800-2000fps so I decided to go to a tougher bullet, one also made by an ATK company, the Speer 350gr. SP. This HammerDown 45-70 ammunition would be the first time I’ve shot anything less than that 350gr. bullet since I switched.
A Traditional Hollow point on left and Traditional Soft point on the right, the HammerDown bullet is center.
In looking at the jacket thickness of the sectioned bullets, it is obvious that the 45-70 bullet is considerably thicker than the 44 bullet. Considering that both are moving at about the same speed from the rifles, makes me think the 45-70 bullet should be a great penetrator, which is what I look for from a large caliber projectile. Some expansion is good, but too much hampers penetration. The penetration provided by the 44 bullet when fired from the handgun at 1315fps, was excellent on the big doe. The question is how will it do with an extra 400fps when fired from the rifle and on a bigger tougher animal?
Jacket thickness is an obvious difference between the two bullets, 45-70 on left, 44 on right.
The search for a bigger and tougher target began in south Texas, looking for a big pig. The first game to fall to my 45-70 was an eighty-poundish feral hog sow. She and her herd were rooting up an area around a small pond or tank as we call them in Texas. It was just past 6 pm and the rules on this ranch stated no shots allowed after the legal shooting light, so even though feral hogs can legally be shot at night, not so on this ranch. Luckily, we found the herd in time and spotted them with the setting sun behind us, because we were 150 yards from them when we spotted them.
I crept forward another 50 yards and took a knee, got a solid hold on the sow, and sent a 300gr. HammerDown at her. Since I didn’t want to go looking for her, I aimed for a high shoulder impact. The bullet landed true to the sights and she rolled over in the classic stiff-legged immobility posture so often seen with a severed spine shot. Even though her chest was only about 12” wide, bullet expansion was evident from the exit wound through the offside shoulder. Due to her size, she was a perfect candidate for donation to a family in need of protein.
Given the size and only 12-inch thick chest cross-section, the bullet is expanding very well as seen from this exit hole.
Our next target was a tad bigger and much smellier. As males get bigger and start roaming they become solitary and get a smell that is pungent and unique. Typically if a large pig is found by itself it will be a male and bigger than the ones found in a herd. On the south Texas ranches that I frequent, a big male will be 200+ pounds and occasionally you’ll find a 275 to 285-pounder, though those are truly big pigs for the region. Every once in a while one bigger than that will turn up, but our natural vegetation doesn’t really support great big pigs.
Considering the HammerDown line is designed for medium game, this guy was a good candidate for judging terminal performance on larger tougher game.
The ranch has some big old live oak trees and grassy plains, the pigs like to root around looking for acorns, but tear up the grassy plains where the cattle graze. This causes big and sometimes deep holes that cattle can stumble in and break a leg, can’t have that!!
The one that I found weighed right at 198 pounds on the hoof, but he was thick enough to catch and stop the 300gr. bullet. I purposely waited for him to turn to quarter so I could run the bullet through as much pig as possible. The bullet caught him at 115 yards and landed behind his last rib and traveled through the vitals, broke 2 ribs on the offside, as well as the shoulder, and lodged just under the skin. Total penetration was about 24 to 26 inches, he made it about 75 yards before expiring. I find this normal for a hard-hit pig that isn’t spined or brained.
The 45-70 300gr. bullet performed like a quality premium bullet should.
Had I not been intentionally trying to stop the bullet, I would have spined it or taken it broadside to ensure an exit. Running 75 yards into thick brush without an exit to provide an almost immediate blood trail can lead to a lost animal. Knowing I had nothing but grassy plains and could keep my target in view while it ran allowed me to not be concerned about finding it.
The 44mag. 270gr. bullet expanded quite well and provided very good penetration considering its extra speed from the rifle.
After finding the pig I decided to test the 44mag 270gr. HammerDown bullet on it from the Marlin. Since the rifle produced an additional 400fps with the load, I was curious how the additional speed would affect penetration. Shooting the pig broadside through the shoulder from 60 yards allowed almost complete penetration. The bullet went through one shoulder and its shield, broke 2 ribs going in and two ribs coming out, it penetrated the scapula and lodged in the shield of the offside skin. Considering the additional velocity the rifle provided this is excellent performance and I’d speculate that from a handgun the bullet would completely penetrate on a broadside shot.
As is normal for my reviews, here is my biggest, most, and least list. The biggest surprise was the similarity in velocities from the 44mag and 45-70 when fired from similar rifles, both bullets perform extremely well.
The biggest disappointment is actually a case of our current merchandising conditions rather than an actual product issue, that is product availability. It’s a shame because this product is a great performer and should be well-received by the shooting public.
The least liked feature is one I’ve mentioned before on other manufacturers’ products and it’s their product packaging. This applies mostly to the handgun cartridges because sighting in and verifying trajectory at 25, 50, and 75 or even 100 yards eats up most of your ammunition.
The most liked feature is the bonding process that is used on the bullets,….it works. I inadvertently tested it in the extreme. When I used the big pig carcass to stop bullets for picture purposes I accidentally ran two of them into each other. Yet both bullets never lost or shed jackets or even slightly separated core from their jackets. A true test of the bullet’s ability to retain integrity and penetrate well.
You can consider these two calibers totally acceptable for use on medium game, whether from rifles or handguns.
Federal lists these two loads as being designed for medium game. I would say they are well-designed for all game up to 300 pounds, although after using them I would not hesitate to use them on say cow elk or red stag. Something a little heavier but still thin-skinned and light-boned. Accuracy has proven to be excellent, and performance is stellar, if you own a 45-70 or 44 magnum and need ammunition for hunting game, look no further than Federal HammerDown.
It is simply breathtaking how easy it is to start one of these when you wield the right tools.
I once burned down a substantial fraction of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, while running an aerial gunnery range. It turns out that 7.62x51mm tracer rounds and dry grass make for a fulminant combination. The zillion or so acres I incinerated were, miraculously, all constrained to the firing ranges. Aside from some seriously pissed off rodents, there seemed to be little lasting harm done.
As an Army Aviator myself I just cannot imagine getting shot at in something like this. The OH-13 always looks like it is trying to crash.
Providing effective defensive ordnance for the Army’s rotary-wing aircraft is a quandary as old as helicopters. The first dedicated helicopter gunships were actually adapted from OH-13s. The OH-13 is the bubble-canopied helicopter used in the TV series MASH. Slow, rickety, and fragile, the OH-13 nonetheless served as a starting point.
This Marine UH-1Y Venom helicopter sports an M-134 minigun on the left and an M-3 .50-caliber machine gun on the right. I’ll never understand why the Marines do what they do…
From our perspective this deep into the Information Age, it can be tough to visualize what it must have been like back in the early 1960s when the US Army was first figuring this stuff out. Nowadays helicopter gunships, assault aircraft, and heavy-lift platforms all working in synchronized harmony to accomplish complex missions day or night are simply background clutter. However, it was a rough road getting here.
The Howze Board
This is a 1950’s-vintage Air Force B-47 Stratojet. These things cost a fortune.
Human beings are tribal. In few places is this more obvious than in the military. In the early 1960’s the US Army was still a bit butt-hurt over the way the Army Air Corps had morphed into the Air Force, itself obviously its own free-standing military service. Warplanes are expensive, and a mere thirteen years earlier the National Security Act of 1947 had taken all that cash away from Army Generals and given it to the newly-minted Wing Nuts. Recent technological advancements in the world of combat helicopters demanded a significant rethink of the way Uncle Sam’s professional killers did business. Somebody needed to adjudicate who was going to own these sparkly new machines.
LTG Howze was the Army’s chief aviator.
Helicopters had just found their legs during the war in Korea. For expeditious resupply and Casevac (casualty evacuation) purposes, nothing beat the helicopter. Despite their relative crudity, these machines could get into some of the most inhospitable places to drop bullets off and pick the wounded up. Once somebody thought to strap a machine gun to these aircraft the Air Force started to get nervous. Air Force Generals were not interested in giving up their hard-won little fiefdoms. Somebody needed to figure all this out. That somebody was LTG Hamilton Howze.
Trading these things in for tanks was a convulsive transformation for the US Army.
In 1962 LTG Howze was given the mandate by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to conduct a comprehensive review of helicopter combat applications “in an atmosphere divorced from traditional viewpoints and past policies.” It is rare that a General Officer is given the mandate to really think outside the box. LTG Howze ran with it.
This ugly beast is a CV-2 de Havilland Caribou. The Army gave all theirs to the Air Force back in the 1960s.
With the war in Vietnam looming on the horizon, the Air Force tried to impose weight and armament restrictions on the sorts of fixed-wing assets the Army might employ. All involved eventually realized this was stupid. Cargo aircraft like the CV-2 Caribou ultimately went to the Air Force, while the OV-1 Mohawk reconnaissance plane stayed with the Army. Participants later stated, “The Caribou and the Mohawk were the two major symbols of Army-Air Force disagreement and more time was devoted to these systems than to the entire mobility concept itself.”
Figuring out how to do this safely, effectively, and well was a Gordian chore.
After a great deal of thought the final version made it back to McNamara. Rumor has it the finished document was some two inches thick. The concluding statement read, “Adoption of the Army of the airmobile concept-however imperfectly it may be described and justified in this report-is necessary and desirable. In some respects, the transition is inevitable, just as was that from animal mobility to motor.”
Apocalypse Now was a simply epic war movie.
Film Appearances
The end result yielded, among a great many other things, the concept of the Air Cavalry Combat Brigade. If you don’t know what that is then kick back in front of the movie Apocalypse Now with special attention to the sequence where LTC Kilgore seizes the beach so he and Lance can surf. On second thought, if you spend time at GunsAmerica.com and haven’t seen Apocalypse Now at least three times I sure wouldn’t admit that to anybody. Most of us can quote the whole thing.
It’s tough to imagine anyone other than Robert Duvall playing LTC Kilgore.
As an aside, Robert Duvall’s LTC Kilgore (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning…”) was originally supposed to be Gene Hackman. Sam Bottoms, who played the surfer Lance, developed a hookworm infection while filming in the Philippines that severely damaged his liver. Martin Sheen, who played CPT Willard, suffered a heart attack during filming that almost killed him. Steve McQueen was originally supposed to play CPT Willard, but the King of Cool didn’t feel like leaving the country at the time. It must be nice to be King…
Tactical Details
The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) figured out combat helicopter operations as they went along.
In short order, the 1st Cavalry Division was romping and stomping all over Vietnam sowing chaos. Over time the basic concepts of slicks (UH-1 transport helicopters carrying Infantry troops) escorted by dedicated helicopter gunships (most typically Cobras or Mike-model armed Hueys) evolved into the doctrine of vertical envelopment that inspired the modern airmobile tactics of today. Protecting those transport aircraft fat with troops while they tore about flying nap of the earth became the highest priority.
It took some serious stones to fly these lumbering cargo planes into combat.
This wasn’t much like the Air Transport Command C-47s that flew during World War 2. Haters at the time claimed that ATC stood for “Allergic to Combat.” Hardly. Those guys flew big, fat cargo planes that dropped paratroopers over hostile terrain in the dead of night amidst deadly flak and enemy fighters. By contrast, however, assault helicopters consistently flew down in the trees where the Wild Things Roamed. Their primary concern was Bad Guys with rifles. Several things were attempted to mitigate that threat.
Bungee cords were used to help take some of the weight off the gunner.
The most obvious solution was simply door guns. This began as standard ground versions of the M-60 General Purpose belt-fed machinegun suspended in the side doors of UH-1 Huey helicopters with bungee cords. This worked OK, but accuracy suffered and it was shockingly easy to shoot up your own rotor system in the heat of battle. That evolved into the M-60D, a pintle-mounted version of the M-60 equipped with spade grips and a ring sight. These mounts had built-in stops to keep you from ventilating your own airplane. These were the guns I used to nearly burn Fort Sill to the ground. Take it from me, they really sucked.
This is a D-model M-60. Note the spade grips, ring sight, and lack of a forearm.
Our D-model M-60’s were meticulously maintained and greased to perfection. They were kept spotlessly clean and operated from the antiseptic world of helicopters in flight, yet they still choked all the freaking time. If I recall correctly, I had twenty-four of these guns and maybe five of them actually ran reliably. They did not inspire confidence.
The TF 160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment employs quite a few M-134D miniguns. They are fearsome weapons, but they are also dependent upon electrical power to operate.
The Task Force 160 used M-134 miniguns at the time, and there’s no denying the cool factor there. These electrically-powered six-barreled Gatling guns ran through ammo like Congress burns money and were quite reliable. However, when the aircraft’s power went down the guns did, too. This became an issue during the Battle of Takur Gar in 2002 as part of Operation Anaconda.
A Task Force MH-47G Chinook was shot down near the Shahi Kot Valley in Paktia Province, Afghanistan. US Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and sundry other high-speed special ops guys fought a vicious battle around the downed aircraft. USAF Combat Controller John Chapman earned a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions on that forlorn mountaintop. Amidst it all, however, the Chinook’s miniguns were unusable once aircraft power was lost.
There is a surprising amount of Physics in aerial gunnery.
Helicopter door guns are, by their nature, area weapons systems. Bullets behave differently depending upon which side of the aircraft they are fired from while in forward flight. The airflow over each spinning round transforms each individual projectile into its own little flying machine. Rounds fired on the right tend to fly upward such that the gunner must aim underneath a target to connect. Rounds fired on the left tend to plunge unduly such that extra elevation is required. This is due to a remarkable spot of Physics called the Magnus Effect. Regardless, it is really tough to be precise when firing belt-fed machine guns out of a moving helicopter.
The XM-215
Chaos on this scale can be terribly difficult to control effectively.
As the Army was learning how to fight helicopters in Vietnam it became obvious that assault aircraft were most vulnerable as they were coming in to land or leaving a hot LZ. Under those circumstances, VC and NVA forces would engage these aircraft at close range with small arms, exacting a shocking toll. Door guns helped to a degree, but the nose of the aircraft was consistently vulnerable. Some crazy people back in November of 1968 dreamt up the XM-215 as a possible solution.
The XM-215 shown here on the nose of a UH-1 Huey helicopter was akin to a flying Claymore directional mine.
This thing was called the Multiple Barrel Gun or the Suppressive Fire Weapon System for Helicopters. In an acronym-obsessed organization that became either the MBG or the SFWSH. No matter what you call it, the XM-215 was pretty radical.
Each of these modules carried 306 rounds of .22 LR rimfire ammunition.
The XM-215 looked like a honeycomb mounted under the chin on a UH-1 helicopter facing forward. This honeycomb consisted of four modules containing 1,224 individual 2-inch .22LR barrels oriented in a fan shape. A control module in the cockpit allowed the crew to select a variety of firing states from ripple fire to one massive volley. At its maximum rate, the XM-215 could be emptied in ten seconds, theoretically sleeting the area in front of the aircraft with an impenetrable cloud of tiny little 40-grain bullets.
Each tube was only two inches long. As half of that was taken up by the cartridge, the remaining barrel length was pretty piddly.
While that is an intriguing idea, it simply didn’t work. Barrel length was inadequate to produce much muzzle velocity, so the little bullets tended to be swept downward by rotor wash and rendered ineffective at all but the most intimate ranges. The system was also fairly cumbersome and had to be reloaded one barrel at a time. I can only imagine how tedious that might be.
The science of aerial gunnery continues to evolve. This young stud is perched behind an M-240 belt-fed machine gun.
After a few prototypes and a boatload of .22 rimfire rounds expended the XM-215 went the way of the dodo. Nowadays superior battlefield intelligence, thermal and night vision systems, and helicopter gunship support combined with crews who can fly their machines at speed while down in the grass all tend to make air assault operations survivable, even in a contested environment.
For a time back in the 1960’s, however, some really smart guys tried to figure out a way to improvise a Claymore mine of sorts on the nose of a Huey helicopter. The XM-215 that resulted qualifies as one of the weirdest weapons of the modern age.
