Kitbag Conversations - Episode 31: Coral Sea Raiding Company (CSRC)

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Karl, an Australian sniper from 2RAR with multiple combat deployments comes on to talk about his business and page Coral Sea Raiding Company on Instagram, gear, snipers, and your wife's boyfriend's credit cards.

music I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it.

I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to of the game, I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game, I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game, I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game, I'm not a fan of the game. I'm not a fan of the game, I'm not a fan of the game. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, We're back to our function! Come on, cut it down, please!

You're a little steep, my friend, You're gonna pull up the beauty of it You're gonna pull up the beauty of it You're gonna pull up the luxury of your hands You're a traitors, traitors! A jump of a thousand miles fly And you're gonna pull up the crease of man Take a bullet to the cup of the action

You're a self-incurring cutie, you're awesome Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry That's good mate. I'm not sure if I'm in in Western Sydney or somewhere in New York. It sounds like straight out of time. Yeah, go ahead and introduce yourself, your career, whatever you want to talk about on your Instagram page as well. Sure, sure. Thanks for having me guys. I'm Carl. I run CSRC, Carl C. Co. Before that, I've been out of the military for about two years now,

but prior to that, I did about 16 years in listed in the Australian Army. I made, I think E6, Sergeant is equivalent, sorry, E6 is equivalent for you guys before I left. And a lot of that time was spent in and out of the other sniper community. So that's kind of where I leverage and try and aim, if we're talking like subject matter expertise, not that I consider myself an SME, but that's I suppose the bread and butter of the content and the experience that I leverage

that I try and push out on CSRC. Now, I know what, let me continue, sorry. Yeah, no. So, because I've struggled with trying to, for the longs of times, I did anyway, CSRC kind of defining it, and it was only when I was studying more recently at uni, and I kind of got some more fixed, I suppose, term in an old gene, how to classify class it. But yeah, if I had to summarize it now, like if people asked me, such as yourselves now in this context, it's tech ed for the most part. That's what I'm trying to do in terms of what value am I giving back to people? And I suppose in that way,

my key target audience or the people that I'm trying to most reach is specifically diggers, Australian service men and women, Australian soldiers for the most part. But with that being said, there's a lot of crossover with, as you guys have known, like US Marines, especially with things like Murf D, We have a lot of American military presence in Australia, as you guys would be aware. So I find that I've got a decent, I suppose, reach base, or a lot of these guys are interested as well in the kit that I'm putting out. So yeah, that's about it. That's the function of the page in terms of what I'm trying to get done.

I was a big fan about, what was it it a year and a half ago when you started doing the wreckage guys, you're like, what is this? What is this? You would come up with the, it was almost like a multiple choice. Like you got four options. Yeah, I'm in here. The quick fan of this. I'm done one of those. I'm proud to say I've been running those quizzes have gone every week. Every Friday I try and run run run one of those suckers. 20 questions, but you know, they're pretty much a staple of the page. I think it's what keeps a lot of people shooting in. And the inspiration for that was Kahoot, and if you guys have used or you've heard of that app, it's one of these dumb-like education apps you

can do little quizzes in it. It was something for a time in the military where we were using just for, we would call it GMK, select general military knowledge, so you know you quiz your guys and what's the effect of range of an AK and blah, blah, blah, all the other kit and all that sort of thing. So you can input whatever bank of questions you want. And it was always one of these things because you know, I'd have a team of,

at the time I was running for like my team of snipers, which was 12 guys, including me. It's like, okay, we're gonna do Kahoot, fucking make sure you put in your real name, don't put in some dumb nickname, because I need to grade the answers. And of course, within five seconds to do Kahoot. Fucking make sure you put in your real name. Don't put in some dumb nickname, because I need to grade the answers. And of course, within five seconds of starting Kahoot, there's like Donky Dick 69 and 10-a-torn A-done,

like you idiot stop using these fake names. But Kahoot was kind of the inspiration to, to that I leveraged, I suppose, in saying, how can we, how can I use this resource, but in something that's more accessible? And I think the hypothesis behind CSRC is that Diggas, soldiers in general probably spend more time on social media than they do reading technical documents and pamphlets and what do you guys call publications, right?

We're not flicking through these on their phones of their own time. And if they, if they could, well sorry, they can't really even for the, for the most part because a lot of it's not open source. So I guess the vision for it in the end was that if there's a digger or marine or a soldier or someone sitting on a toilet somewhere at work and he's doing a smelly poo, but he's doing a quiz at the same time or he's looking at a poster up on the back of the toilet door and he's learning a thing or two or even one, then that's kind of like mission success. Well, that's sort of one of two or even one, and that's kind of like mission success. Well, that's sort of one of the educational arms here,

of the goals of what I'm trying to achieve. That's a win. So that's kind of the way I'm looking at it. Hmm. Yeah, this is something that I've kind of mentioned on some of the podcast, but when it comes to training, especially like in militaries that don't have any military outside the United States that doesn't have a massive amount of funding.

It's very hard to even have the civilian side as well to get good training in because you can either do really dumb training that is hard, but it's not expensive, like going out into the woods and sucking for like 48 hours. It's good training, but it sucks. Or you can get creative and try to do fun training. And it takes a lot of creativity to make training fun, not expensive, and worthwhile. And that's kind of what you do with your page

is you make it so that you can take it like you said. You can take a dump and just scroll your page and learn a ton. Yeah, that's exactly the goal, mate. And if someone's doing exactly that, then yeah, that's a win and in and of itself. Because you capturing an audience like I'm doing instructional time, which it was another thing I spent quite a bit of in the military. So outside of the sniper's field, I was involved in the combat shooting program for a while as well. And they, to their credit, the Australian Army got a lot of external

advisors and subject matter guys in from the states, from all over, psychology guys and reality-based training guys, all sorts. So they had a pretty good amount of external experience. It was coming in and passing this on. So, part of that, you know, the hardest thing is to capture your audience and then retain it in the first place. Or capture it in the first place and then retain their attention for whatever block of instruction you try to do. But yeah, that's a beauty of this Instagram is they're always, they being diggers soldiers are always scrolling on it. I'm always scrolling on it. So if there's something positive that can come out of it, then yeah, so be it. Yeah, I'm seeing an Australian army. I know in the US Army and US military There's like like a red cell section, but it's usually like civilian contractors or something like that to like pre program pre-designated

I don't know Box like simulations of like a war game or something like that like oh, we have a War game coming on everyone gets in the jack watch floor everyone runs through the reps You have the guys in the field you floor. Everyone runs through the reps. You have the guys in the field. You got the guys with a BFT. Is there anything the equivalent of that and like the Australian army?

Or? So you're talking, it's like an organization that facilitates a war game. Yeah, yeah, specifically. And we have the closest thing I can think of would be CTC, but that's more, it's more practical exercises. So they'd be more similar to I think. What do you guys have that warfighter?

One of the best is where there's a dedicated op for unit and they excel at, so CTC is kind of similar to that. So there are a mix of a dedicated op for unit and they facilitate and run kind of up to, not just battle group, but like massive scale training as well. Link to that maybe we have a few like massively or criminally underutilized even there's we have the sim centers on every, every fucking base as one, but they barely get any use.

And that's the, what's the real version of armor called? It'll be a lot. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's a timer. VBS, like VBS one or VBS two, whatever it is. So yeah, they have this giant sim set of room thing with VBS, like 50 terminals that sits together and dust for the most part. So they probably could do something. I think similar to what you're getting at. But I wouldn't say we definitely have a dedicated unit or card draw people who are so there's not like a like a like a red cell in house and a white

cell and a green cell and a blue cell. Those guys are like kind of like orchestrating behind the lines, nothing like that. No, if there is, if this is something that's a thing, it's not something that I'm, I'm pre-re2 or perhaps not in this terminology. So yeah, I'm just going to answer no. Because it's not something. I was sure I would be honest. For it.

Because I mean, we got a lot of civilians that listen to this podcast. So I'm sure they're like, oh, you guys have armor? Like, yeah, we have, because I know what you're talking about. And I know everything that you. So these centers that Carl's talking about, they have armor there. They have these simulation ranges for us. I'm sure you guys have like the aug, but for us, it was like M16s and M4s hooked up to monitors, like laser ranges that were gas operated so that they give you recoil. And I mean, you could sit there for probably four

to five hours and just do a flat 25 meter range with your M4s and stuff like that. Nobody does that. They could run that... The root for like that. If you're like super shitty at shooting, you could go to the SIM range. Yeah, remade it there.

That's what we use it for is we we we sit there and we would rather have our guys clean and sweep the barracks then go to the like the VBS center. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, armor for a week. But the other thing on top of that of these centers and I don't know if they're the way that same thing for you guys is like they're ran by some dude who's just like, I've got five scenarios. These are the scenarios we can do. There's three bad guys in a house. I'll play one of them.

Like they're terrible, terrible. Like I've seen you do imagination. Oh yeah, like it and fun. Like it's literally a video game. Like you could sit there and like go through a whole op-op or process plan. And it's a freaking video game. Like you could sit there and like go through the whole op-op or process, plan, and it's a fricking video game. So you could have a private be a squad leader. And be like, I see, I don't suck at my job. You're just stupid, pride. Like, and do that. But we don't, we, and like you said, criminally underutilized. And so guys lacking the imagination when they have

the funding and they have the government entity to support all of this training, but it's just something used. I think in what you're afraid to we have two different simulation centers. We have one we call the Wets WTSS. I want to try it. So it's weapon training simulations. So that's where it's what you describe. You have the fake fake the real guns, but there's it up with gas and there's sound effects and that's like that's used quite a bit That's part of the um like certification shoot and I'm a fan of that technology because it's because of the accessibility alone It's right there on base. There's no life fire involved. It's quick in and out. So I think implementing that is good Yeah, that other sim center. It's like a how to describe it like it like a land cafe like it's it's a PC's and that's the one that That's that's the super duper it gets ignored gets left together dust and invariably like to plan it and run it if you don't have some

I don't know if you don't run it with a bit of iron fist within five seconds You've just got dudes like TK each other and then some dude spawned in a lab. It's like man, where'd you get that like? and you're like, man, where'd you get that? Like, you're amazing. Sorry, I was just, no. So I'm like, you're trying to be good at it. And then you resident like CSGO or your CS1.62 just obliterates everyone. It's like, my guys are actually good at gaming,

then come through, so it's funny like that. Yeah, super duper underused. But on that, on that. We've got a little long. Oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry, yo, it's gonna say excessive bill because that's sprung into my mind. Sorry, I'll get on tangency, boys.

Like if we were able to do it. No, you're fine. Ramblin just coming. I think that accessibility, when it comes to not just training in and of itself, but specifically the technology, that's super, I think, healthy for soldiers to have, because then they're more likely to use it. Because I remember when I was in,

before I was in Sniper's, I was in Deavis W. Bluttern, which is like our anti-armoured slash sustained fire machine gun platoon. We combined both kind of rolls into one platoon in Australia. And we had our, so at the time you wouldn't fire Javilan live very often, like it'd be lucky to get a live Javilan, but we had the Javilan simulator and that was just hooked up like in our offices there and it was a little blue gym mat on the floor and you sit there with your Javilan simulator

and just all day every day like shooting at scuds and the Jav simulator. And then one day I worked out that they are all the maps. They're just like a PNG graphic like on the computers. So the whole thing is that self-contained computer or everything and I worked out, I don't know why they would let this happen because I'm far from a Hackeroonie like tech savvy dude.

You can open these maps in like Microsoft Paint and then immediately start graffitiing all the real last scenario maps. So you know, I'd wait till another dude would let the room and then like, I'd open up Fort Benning Range 26 or whatever it's called, which is like, because it's photo realism maps. And I'd be holding a drone like a giant dick

and I'm riding like, ready is gay and just graffiti is you and you're gonna be like next to me, because he writing like, Brady's gay and just graffiti shooting the next two because he was like, what is this? What have you done to the Justin Trillow? Yeah, hours of fun because it was accessible. We could just go in there and take her away on that and shoot rockets all day long. We have like our land go in this or low altitude air defense

guys. They have like, I guess like, stinger, stinger of jaddle and all of the sudden ranges that are pretty cool because you can watch the Heal of Fly. Do you have to learn how to lead it and everything. Those are pretty fun. Yeah, that's awesome. In the head. What's the best sound?

I don't know how we never jumped aboard and adopted Stinger. That is a separate rant. Are you going to make me rant about air defense? That's a sad, you're in self-made. So all the exercises, all the training I did in Australia, I never once even saw air defense. I don't know what air defense looks like in person. It's actually really, 100%.

Dehans. So then I guess that will go to the next question I have, as you talk about air defense Obviously there's a ton of wars going on right now. You've got Israel Gaza. You've got Ukraine. You've got me and Marm Pick your poison Right, which one what bad yeah pick out of the hat and which one do you want to talk about first and like what you see I mean like we were talking about before we started recording, as you guys know, it's you pick your poison and then you're going to have you're going to upset someone right

when you're running any streamer account regardless of the of the domain. You're talking to the pros. Exactly. Alex Jones. You're talking to the guys who've been cut out of every single ocean community. Yeah, exactly. So mate, look, it's a challenge to try and discuss, I suppose, the nuances of kits and equipment and resources, which is what interests me. It's what I'm trying to focus on for the most part, like the politics and the reasons why. And honestly, I think I have that luxury because I don't consider myself an Aussing practitioner or a fucking news page either for that reason. Most of the time I'm posting stuff because it's just me running all this. That is interesting to me. I suppose sometimes that will

stray into the domain of maybe news or breaking news. But for the most part, focusing on quit, quit, rather, not quit, quit, equipment, technology, I try and stay clear of the murky side of the politics behind all these conflicts, because that's when you get the diagonal mag. You guys have seen it. The comments, the DMs, it's just nutty. It's a crazy place. No, you're good.

I mean, we jerk around a lot, but I think that Matt and I on some of the podcasts that we've done together and the Patreon episodes, we kind of try to take the funny hat off and put on our old Intel hats. The problem is, is that once you start talking about it, people get, you can't say anything that won't upset anybody. So my opinion is like, if you're gonna say something, just, just, yes, go ahead and say, yes, because I mean at the end of the day, at the end of the day, like, you know, okay,

for instance, Matt and I both come, we both started our career before we went and supported soft, we both had spent time in rotary wing aviation. So we both lose a brain cell every time either Russia or Ukraine like tilks their helicopter up and fires rockets. And everyone's like, no, it's accurate. I swear to God. I'm gonna have an aneurysm. How are they aiming at the clouds? Like even a big twist in a lay person intuitively me. I'm looking at that even like how they aiming this.

It's not even like they're using it properly. It's just like map of the earth, pop right above the tree line, launch a bunch of missiles, pop right back, RBE or RTB and you're just like, what was the point of that? It's funny you mentioned that because I was doing some, I don't like the term research because really what I'm doing is Googling shit, but anyway, I was doing some research on post I think I'm gonna drop, I'll release tomorrow on some Russian attack helicopters,

so I'll be to road or ruin, just K-A52. Am I 35 and am I 28? Because I notice when I run these quizzes, you know, trends emerge and people will confuse the kit and commonly mixed up stuff is like the am I 28 and the am I 35, whatever this sort of thing. So I was looking into this and the family is this interesting article that some of these, which I didn't realize until just yesterday, these ATGMs that the Russians are using now, they don't necessarily cross. I don't know if you guys were of this with your background,

but it was news to me. I found it interesting. They don't cross pollinate, I guess, between the platforms very well. So there's like, I think it was the, I'm not a tech M, that's my my's. Attack R, I think was one of them, and that was like native or optimized for K852.

And then there was VINCER, like VIK, HR was optimized for MI28. And they tried to cross level them, say they could use each other, and they were having all these weird glitches in like the fire control system and all this sort of stuff. Yeah. But yeah, I think these new, I'm not new, but they're getting the new, now ATGM long-range stuff.

And this was a blog on Twitter, dropped some knowledge on me as well, because I'll often get on, sorry, Twitter or a slash X. And if I want to get yelled at when I make a mistake on one of these posts, or one of these posters, I'll just like use Twitter as a test. I uploaded to that and I'll be like, hey anyone see anything wrong with that? Immediately get screamed at in the comments for like 10 threads. Okay, cool, appreciate it, I'll fix this.

I'm going to delete the post. Well, I've learned to be fair I'll put it up with this big draft thing on it and I'll put it up on X and I'm like hey I'm trying to develop this thing I want to make sure I'm getting it right anyone have any feedback and doing to be fair doing it that way people have been not dicks about it which is a treat and surprising for TweetUp, but yeah, that's so. Anyway, it was interesting thing I'd read about speaking of aviation and how the Russians are kind of adapting their, I guess,

ATGM use for more survivability. So they're firing these from like max distance. I think one of these things that are 14.5, or almost 15 kilometer range. So it's super duper getting back there on the trees and then like long bombing it. Well, I think it's everyone's just, I guess like, like 90s to suspect that the Russians are the exact same military. There were two years ago, like now they've certainly learned. Yeah. They haven't been in a war. And before that,

they weren't in a war since like what? Georgia and O.A. And that was six days like this. Their last big war was Vietnam. Afghanistan. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's just interesting. Oh yeah, yeah, just, yeah. But it's just like interesting to look at though. Just like advance and continue to improve on their own TTPs. And everyone's like, oh, Kiov in three days.

You're like, you're not even paying attention. Like, it makes me wonder what were they early adopters on as well. And I don't know if you guys discussed this with when you had AFV on, but even though, I think this was fucking, it was driving me crazy, but you know, it started the invasion when I'm, the coupe cages, like all the tapes,

the armor with the hair, it's like, and the dumb, again, the dumb train of thought at the time was, oh my God, the Russians are dumb, they think they're gonna stop Javilan missiles. And so, well, did they? Or did they know about the impending threat of drones and loitering munitions and suicide, like CUS, and they were ahead of the group?

You know what I mean? I'm not sure if you guys discussed that with AFV, but that's when you look back on it, it's like, oh, were they stupid? And they were just like, oh, this is gonna stop Jav's or were they actually ahead of the game? We, where did I stop it? And that one just like, oh, we this is going to stop jobs. It would actually headed the game. We did. But I think as you say that it's one of those things. Like, if I have to walk it back, right? Like, kind of look at the copage and see when it came around,

the loitering reneations was a big thing because if you, we had Rima on, and Rima has been all over Ukraine. She did like a bunch of logistics for the Ukrainians. And she came on and this blew my mind. She said the Russians have four drones for every square kilometer of the front and of a quadcopter. Yeah, a quadcopter. And they barely have one per company,

like one to two per company for the Ukrainian side. So long story short is like they've got like four to five times the amount of drones. So when we look at like the back track it, I don't think it really was, I think they were trying to play with the Javilan, like trying to test it, but I'm 90% sure that the minute a lawdaring munition was dropped on a tank,

because that's what Dave V said was like, he was like, these tank tactics are weird. He's like, they're coming out, they're firing a little bit, and then they're getting the hell out of dodge, and he was like, I think they're avoiding the drones. So I think it was kind of a mix of things. I think like, some guys over here were dealing with drones, and then some guys over here were dealing with javelins,

and then at one time, like, they're like,, hey let's just put up a cage and like hopefully it takes on both and so like the official answer I would have is like if you've ever been on the line or you've been around Joe's you know how it is it's like everyone's like I mean like Iraq and Afghanistan dudes were like we got to stop this IED thing. Like how do we do that? And like we're just attaching phone poles and shit to humvees and uparm or downarm or and then eventually became a SIGINT platform. And so it's long story short, Joe's will be Joe's and they'll take whatever they can

and attach it to their fucking tanks. And yeah. But like. Going back to the coat cages, if you went to the T72 Wikipedia or the T90 Wikipedia back today, it was parentheses code cage and everyone just falsified the entire page. So someone like Jake A. F.E. was like, I need to get a little brushed up and the max effective range is like you know zero. So I guess we'll do Ukraine first and you said you like doing kit and stuff like that. So we can do Ukraine and Russia, but like I've I've watched a couple things. Have you have you watched Deckie?

The Serbian sniper who was hired by the Donets peoples Republic to our console. I was on the TV. Okay, yeah, please. What was a decky decky? His name is decky. If you type in D E J K I, he's a Serbian sniper who was in the coast of a war. And he was hot. He was trained by a Belarusian Russian sniper camp for mercenaries. And then he shows up in the DNR.

And he just starts, I mean, they're shooting each other with like explosive bullets in the chess plates and stuff. And it's like the whole documentary is like that. It's from his point of view. But he even brings up things like, he'll be sitting there smoking a cigarette talking about how they're taking two kilometer plus shots in Ukraine. He's like, these, you know, these JTF dudes, they don't know what they're smoking a cigarette talking about how they're taking two kilometer plus shots in Ukraine. He's like, these, you know, these GTF dudes, they don't know what they're talking about.

This is a train. Like I can, so it's like, that's a big thing that I've noticed. I want to talk to you about that. But is there anything else you've noticed as far as like KET TTPs from both sides? Um, to be honest, I haven't been closely following the sniping side of Ukraine, Russia recently, but I certainly remember from the opening stages when I was keeping more of an eye on it. I think to start with, to my understanding, Ukraine had a reasonably sophisticated sniping program, even prior to the war.

To my knowledge, there was reasonable amounts of input from, I'd say, Western soft units, which ones in particular I'm not sure, probably doesn't matter. But I suppose, as far as they say, their sniping program was developed and somewhat westernized. In general, with the sniper world, and I think what, not just what makes it interesting, but it's what I enjoy about it a lot, compared to perhaps a lot of other disciplines that relate to weapons in the military. So I'm just talking basic, your infantry fleet or suite of guns. So, you know, in your infantry battalion, you have your machine gun guys and you have your mortar guys, you have your anti-tank guys, you have your snipers. Nothing evolves quicker than the realm of sniping in so far as the kit,

the guns and the equipment. And logically and obviously that's because there's a civilian market for it. There's no civilian market for tripods and machine guns. And you know, that's not evolving as quickly as snipers because, you know, it's like, well, maybe you guys have trips, tripods and machine guns. I don't know, but in Australia, you know, there's no like machine gun club on the weekend where you can get your mag 58 sandbag in and start doing 3.2, suppressing indirect file. Snipers, that's not the case. There's, especially in the state's PRS is huge. That's become more of a thing in Australia for quite some time now, but the so what of that

is the kits, the techniques, and everything associated with not even sniping, precision shooting, I'll say, shooting a bolt action or highly accurate gun at extreme distances, or even not extreme distances, but very accurately and quickly evolves faster than anything else. So, even myself, like when I took two years out of the game, and I left the unit when I was like, in a, what do you call it, what does it my battalion, so when I was in 2-A-R, and I left 2-A-R, and I do two years at school of infantryantry in a non-sniper-affiliated role. When I go back to stuff the two years, it's crazy how much better and knowledgeable in terms of kit in the tech.

The guys who were, my successes are then me just from being two years out of the game, and that would be true for anyone. So yeah, when I was seeing early days you crayon, especially you got really impressive kit, which was, I suppose, not surprising, given the money involved, but those could do your advice, like the Chetchen guys. Remember during the first couple of weeks in the photos of these guys, AI guns out the wazoo, so like British, it's one of the finest, I'm a sucker for AI, I love our Chris International. It's one of the finest bolt action rifles in the world. And yeah, not like the reject of in-bind cheap old variants of it either, like these

Chetjens Rock and AIA X's with really right stuff to trypods and hog saddles and thermal sites and this start and the other and Kestrel Vane, a weathervane hanging off the side like. Again sophisticated latest kit that any dude in US Marines, US Army, Australian sniper team would be stoked to have. So yeah, it's curious the amount of kit I suppose. Well, that's conversation itself. Those guys in their budgets and they can.

I was about to say what makes it, in my opinion, from what I've experienced overseas was the Chetions don't play. And these were under-equipped Taliban, like supporting, like Chetions supporting the Taliban. Like anytime the Chetions were around, the whole room just kinda like, it just, like you got green berets, you got rangers, you got seals, but been in the room with all of them.

The minute you say, yeah, there might be some Chetions here. The whole room just goes, ooh. Yeah, I'm sure. Like, we're gonna have to fight today and to hear that not only like, are they Chuncheon, but they're equipped. And so it's just, to hear you say that kind of makes me go, oh, fucking shit, we're gonna have to deal with that in like 10 years.

I mean, it was the same thing. So my Afghan rotation was in 2011. And on my trip, there was no, there was not even any talk of through any in circles of Chechens in the AO or whatever, but there were a few previous trips and you're right and they're kind of the, they were the boogie man of the campaign. Yeah, I suppose it's a way to put it up. Anyone like, I think the insurgents of Chechens was like, I gave all these guys the true believers they've come here just for a bit of the ultraviolence, they're not just, you know, dropping the rake for 10 bucks to go plant an ID, they're

doing it for the love of the game boys, you know, they're in it for the for the for the kicks. Yeah, yeah. No, they that was a that was what it was all. I was going to say, I don't know if Carl, you remember the post I made on Crowtone a good while ago where Cody and I sat down, I tried to link it up to landscape of if X Taliban guys were now on the ranks with the Cheshans because of that experience where the Cheshans were in the Taliban and cross-pollinating and there was horrific stories of child mutilation and what not going on in like Marioble world, the Cheshons were in Cody and I were like, I think there I think there's at least a couple televanely Azons who fought like

Marsha or something that know exactly how to do this. And then the entire community called this, you know, longkers or bananas. And then what was it? Was it Cody's nine months later? I almost say a year later, we were just like, oh, there they are. They were there. Oh really?

It was a sweet vindication. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. What was it? Notty dies light off. Not only that, like, it started coming out that Taliban commandos were in Wagner, like, not Taliban, but after commandos and Taliban commandos had joined Wagner because they're broken Afghanistan.

So I wasn't even thinking of like the, because we were just hearing like the TTPs of like what was happening. And I'm like, that sounds like the Taliban, like child needlation, you know, women, women, children, churches, the whole nine yards. I was like, that doesn't sound Russian. That, that sounds Taliban. And then it came out like not only do they have Taliban guys there,

but they had Afghan and Taliban commandos who were prior service serving with us in Wagner. And then they started showing up in Africa too. And we're like, what are we dealing with? They're international. But so what before we leave Ukraine, is there anything else that you've seen besides like snipers that you're seeing? Like, oh, that's a, somebody should look into that. When it comes to snipers and that conflict at the moment, the big deal is they have claimed to the current longest World Record kill, which is, um, I don't know. Yeah, I think it's totally plausible.

Totally plausible based on what's being presented. Am I saying that it's certain? No, but I'm at a post about this because every time there's a new world record kill claim, it doesn't matter if it's Ukraine, Burma, some Chechen, and Australian, whoever. It's always met with skepticism. I perhaps rightly so when in some cases,

because immediately the comments on on this it's straight away Just oh, yeah, just like ghost of Kiev. It's like same height Some you will hate what they call it. It's a view of the height height. I love skiing whatever the Yeah, it's me with skepticism, because the message here is, it's like, oh, all the Ukrainians love propaganda, the Russians love propaganda, so it's fake, it's bullshit. And I'm like, let's put that aside. Let's put aside who's doing the shooting

and just look at the facts. They've released a video, he is the distance, he is the calibar, he is the bullet, he is the shooters. And if you just, let's use some common sense and analyze all these things, remove from emotion and remove from like football side politics, like I like Russia, I like Ukraine, therefore it can't be true.

And it's totally plausible. It's totally plausible given the technology that they had in terms of the kit, the caliber of the bullet, the scope, the optics, the kit that's available in terms of getting the required elevations of mills on your gun, on your scope mounts, there's stuff like the tar rack systems now which instantly can double the amount of elevation you can get or the can to the young decline on your barrel, right? I'm sorry, the incline in barrels, I can shoot further. It's totally plausible, it's not that crazy. Plus, PS2, all that, they released a video of it. So all it's going to take is someone to geolocate the video to say hey yeah this is true or no this is bullshit claim so it's almost one of the things let's not get emotional and go nuts over it someone geolocate the footage

I don't possess the setty hand or the technology to do that myself I wish I could but someone will in time and then it'll be confirmed or not and it's no big deal because they released footage if there was no footage then it makes for a different conversation. But you know, they released a clip saying, here's this guy shooting these dudes up. I had to look it up just before because I forgot. 30, 38 hundred meters. So just show up for a cat.

Long way. But yeah, someone just geolacate the footage. It's not that complicated. Why are we having this? Who are we going to do? I mean, this speculation. Was it an Australian stator? That was the...

That was Canadian dude. Yeah. 3.4 or 3.2? Okay, I think was here. Shhh. Again, I'll put this post up about the Ukrainian shot. And there's straightaway like two or three people tagging him in the comments.

And I was like, well, I'm sure he's sick of being tagged today like Leave the poor guy alone. It's like what are you trying to do, Rubberty? And like, oh, remember that really cool record you had? It's just got beat bro. How do you have it bro? What do they think he's gonna want? And if you, random dude on the internet has tag team and you don't know him, I say he knows by now, you know, what is that? I'm like, a crutching up.

The war started, did he go to Ukraine? Because I remember seeing all these propaganda footage of like the world's deadly snake in barks. That's a different dude. That was a different dude. Yeah, so he was a bit of a, again, this is what I'm told. I don't like poo- poo pooing people's reputation directly because you know PSA and who the fuck knows but people who'd spoken not well or not highly of him but the reality was he was a Canadian sniper guy

he had been to I want to say serial or a rock and for always involved I'm not sure for us the correct word but was involved in some degree with the Pesh in some capacity. I don't know how much combat was involved or otherwise, and then yeah, was a volunteer fighter in Ukraine as well. That cut's name was like always alias, was Wally. I did a few posts on that dude earlier on a bit as well. But yeah, there was the previous guy with the record holder was a JTF2 shop, whereas he was all a conventional Canadian infantry guy. What do you want that guy to do?

Do you really tag the JTF2 guy and be like, now I gotta go back and try and beat him. Like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Like, get off. You gotta go beat him. You can't make this deal. Yeah, you can't want to watch anybody

at the gates and go, bro. Just. Yeah. Far out. We were talking about it the other day and they're like, do you think this is real? And what was the caliber he was using? I think it was like a Ukrainian.

It's a crazy chop shop. From what I can tell, I'd have to look it up, but I don't remember it. But I read somewhere, it's like a I think a necked down What would one of their native heavy calibers be 14.5 I want to say yeah, it's like a dish around that's yeah And some crazy home brood home pressed 40 point like that I might be 12.7 neck down But it's it's a custom purpose made precision round again. If it had been like, yeah, we're using ball, you know, 12.7 by 101, Dushka ammo, then

I would have been like, I don't know balls. But again, the equipment makes it in this context, in this case, I would say plausible. That combined with their experience, like you guys said, everyone's, these both sides are learning so much over the course of the last two years. I dare say both Russians and Ukrainians have been sending long, long sniper shots at each other for the last two years now over between K's routinely. So if there's anyone who's got most, I suppose real world practice and experience, yeah, it's the Russians and Ukrainians.

That long-range shooting at the moment. Yeah, I got it up. Yeah, I got it up. I got it up. Oh, nice look at this. I mean, honestly, it looks like a pipe gun that they've just detached the barrel to. Like, I mean, I'm not, I'm not shit, not I'm, you know, necessity is the mother of innovation. But we were talking about this thing and I looked at it and I was like, that dude took an anti-tank gun and lobbed rounds for two years and finally probably, he's probably a great sniper, but he hits up and he's like, you know, after two and a half

years of sniping, that thing, and you finally hit a dude at two and a half miles, you're like, hey, you know, I don't discount him because if anybody's ever worked with snipers or worked with scouts, you know, just how incredibly dangerous it is for them. So he was constantly putting himself in harm's way, constantly getting on the line, constantly taking shots. And after two years of war, he finally hit something at two and a half miles.

Amen. You know, he basically went to the casino in one big one time and everyone's like, ah, I don't believe you. Like, what the fuck? Like, it's so... Yeah and everyone's like, I don't believe you like I won't disagree with you. There's a healthy dose of luck and the events have to align on the right axis as you as you press the trigger I look at say that having engaged like over 2,000 meters It definitely even without this was a long time ago, now like the kit these

guys are using is much more advanced, but yeah, definitely wasn't clapping anyone first round at plus 2000. Yeah, but that's the thing, yeah, back to my early big sniping advances so quick, so so much and with so much tech that that's why I think it's totally plausible that if 10 years ago we were shooting people at 2.4 2.8 the amount that can change in 10 years for sniping precision guns to keep the training yeah absolutely doable. So go on from there onward I noticed you've started focusing on China on your page like you even told people like shut up I'm not doing Russia no more it's too

easy to spot them. Like, do you have anything about China, the Pacific or anything like that? You want to talk about it. And this is like, oh, Matt's feel the study. I don't know anything about China. Again, guys, I don't, I'm not even that I don't want to,

which is I don't consider myself well versed in the geopolitics situation between even Australia and China. Aside from the casual glance of what I'd be exposed to from pages like allcon and some of the other guys that cover it much better. But what I saw there with China and more specifically the PLA was again just a void of kit knowledge. Everyone's pretty good at identifying Russian kit.

And like you guys at your background, like, would know better than most how important it is for the average soldier. I'm not just like interspecialist, but the average soldier to be able to tell a PKM from an AKM. And even if you can do better than that, if you can tell an AKM from an AK-74 hell, even that's more valuable, right? And I noticed there was a massive void of information on Chinese kit, Chinese guns and kit. Now again, this is one of those things like me as an Australian. Do I want to war with China? Absolutely not.

That would be a fucking disaster for the entire world. But it's one of those things. I'm an Australian citizen and a former military Australian dude. And you know, my country has picked a side for all more intense and purposes.. Is that great clip? If you've seen the um it's a it's a skit show but they're talking about the China the Australian defense policy as it relates to it. No, it's okay. Have you seen this one? Yeah, where they're like so we're

bomb. Okay, so basically they're all like sitting around and they're like our defense spending is down and they're like why why's it down and it's like, well, because trade's kind of down. Who's basically, they're going back and forth about defense trade and geopolitics and it just ends with, so you want us to increase defense spending to protect our trade routes against our trade partner.

And they're like, all of it is like, they're trading with the Chinese that needs to defend themselves against the Chinese. It's all like, they're trading and defending from the Chinese. And they're like, fuck. And it's the military generals are being all quiet about it. They don't want to name names. We will raise tensions.

It's like, where wouldn't you want to raise tensions in this room? I'll just say a name and you nod, Chai-Doh. Yeah, in the other scenario, we're protecting China. What are we protecting against? I'll just say it, our trade routes. Is that correct? It's like, oh yeah, that's... So general, we're protecting our trade routes from China. Our trade routes with China, from China.

That about sucks it up. And they just look around the room like, what the fuck? Yes. But yeah, sorry, in short, waffling, rambling side tangent. Yeah, it's the kit. Even myself, I massively had a lack of understanding on Chinese kits across the spectrum, small arms, AFV, aviation, you name it,

and then I realized as well, of thinking back to my time in the military. Are you guys probably the same? There's little posters printed up everywhere. Yeah, yeah. On four kit, and you know, it's AK. You exactly in the back of the shitter doors and all that sort of thing.

And in my mind's eye, that was still AK47, BMP1. This kind of shit, like even when I left the military, is this really the fight that the Diggies should be preparing for these days? Is this the adversary and the equipment they're likely going to face? So yeah, kind of pivoting, I guess, to focusing on PLA kit was the goal of Lairon. It's been my, it's interesting researching slash. Going to, uh, are looking into all the key. Yeah, it is tougher than Russian. I want to focus on this heavily.

I'm just going to grab that coffee that I just made. It's just pretty good to you. Got it out. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I got this. Hang on. So the, the question I have for you to fill the void is I've noticed Australian Australian defense forces. They do the battle belt. They do the

You guys do the play carrier you guys do the battle belt, you know the British they do the They they're all belt kit and then obviously the United States we all have different ways of going about things in your opinion what is the future look like for Kit and what do you, what do you, what are you going to wear? If you're talking about individual load character, specifically, just like a shoot kit. Oh, yeah, I'll give you an example. So we've got one guy who talks about this in a variety of ways.

He talks about how the future is, because we all have optics, we all have guns. He's like, yeah, the future is a plate carrier. None of the fucking stuff on the plate carrier. He's like, you'll have a field look, a flick. And then you'll have probably your belt kit. And he's like, the reason being, he's like, you're gonna get shot in the chest a lot.

And you're gonna need to replace, you'll either need to take the plate out, you'll need to put a new plate in. He's like, either way, he's like, you're just gonna have a generic plate carrier and then you're just gonna have to wear the rest of your kit. And he was like, honestly, the best way to do it

is probably just to wear the British style. So it's like a fun conversation we have. Like what is it look like after seeing Ukraine and then also like Myanmar where the jungles are. He's like, you know, it's such a shit show in Myanmar and so hot that you can't even wear a plate carrier. Like you can't, it's so hot and so mountainous. And so he's like, yeah, he's like,

I think the British belt kit is gonna be the big one. And so in your professional opinion, yeah, after seeing kind of everything, where would you go with it? Yeah, sure. Yeah, big fan of, as a kit nerd myself, super dig this topic, and I'd say to that, we fusion, or we have a blend of both, I suppose American philosophy of kit and British philosophy of kit. So if you were to take your standard Australian section now,

you'd probably find the two gunners. So we still have a Minimifi 556, in some cases, 7.62, but the 556 one is the most common. The two gunners will probably 90% of the time be in belt kit still. We call it fat man's webbing, because it's from your silhouette at night when you have that big belt kit on,

you just look like an almost obese man because you shape like a triangle. So your gunners will have fat man's belt kit because that's the easiest way to carry 800 rounds of 5x6 and over the top of that usually then we call it T-Bus T-Body Armor system. It's pretty much a plate carrier with some molly. Pretty similar to what the Marines had maybe five years ago so I can't remember the name of it. But in carton profile and size. And I'll have that over the top of the fat man's

or the belt kit. But then other, sorry, my alarm was going off to join the kit bag podcast, which I've already joined. The other percent of guys will probably have, as you said, the little battle belts, it's like a low profile belt, and then a armor carry, which I'd say is kind of more US inspired, or it's just the way it's turned out. Not maybe not a Scyroling Spide Boini, anyone in particular. But with that being said, and we do our jungle training, at least when I last went there,

so our jungle training center is in Tully, North Queensland, which is the statistically the wetest place in Australia. It has a highest rainfall anywhere in the country all year round. Awesome place because it's just two weeks of quoting Platoon and Predator and just being autistic with your bros in the jungle and getting muddy in Leechey. It's gnarly, jungle warfare training, sucks. But it's to me the kind of epitome of crunch infantry stuff as well. Because it's made that know, that is, you're here at paraded among staff circles, but like, that is complex to write.

When you're in the jungle and you're dismounted, that is complex to write. What are your senses doing? Where how far can you actually see, he detect anything, fuck all. So it's so, just foundational skills. It's like he who has the best just dismounted combat excellence like will win the day Just simplified fucking take but are as I understand it

Sorry, I know worries. No worries Two RERs like the amphibious infantry unit with the the Australians rate. They're attached to the Canberra and I'd lean isn't yeah correct. So two RER forms the Amber and I'd lean. Yeah, correct. So two RR forms, I guess, changing and will change now because of the defense strategic review, DSR, which just came out, honestly, two, three months ago. I'm not all over it. So I'm not sure what that means for two RR, to be honest, but putting that aside, when

I left the military, two RR formed, what was the joint pre-leaning force, which APLF element. So they combined with some clearance divers, some EW guys, a few other augmented units and specialists would be effectively the pre-laning force for the, what they call it, GCE, ground combat elements, this is all open source stuff, which would then be formed by another unit. So another battalion would rotate through GCE responsibilities, so providing a company or two, I think it depended on what size amphibious group or unit they wanted to form, to which two hour hours was like the specialist pre-landing

force. So yeah, you're right, that's what two has been focusing on for the last far out going on 10 years now, 2013, when we started the amphibious kind of trial as a concept of workups. Yeah, so that's- So I can only imagine, because we have Murphy's, the Marines go down to like Darwin, there's a little base down there and everything. And the Marine Corps, the Jungle Warfare Training Center, is in Okinawa. So is there, I mean, I never saw a lot of Australians outside of like guys who wanted to go surfing when I was in Japan.

Do you know if there's, or have any idea if there's going to be like an inclination of like guys who wanted to go surfing when I was in Japan. Do you know if there's or have any idea If there's a feeling like an inclination of like do some integrated between like the amphibious guys in the Marines across the Pacific because the Marine Corsel thing is EABO counteract in the Chinese and the South China Sea taking islands could yeah, I've just something like that using like our Little aircraft carriers and I guess like your helicopter landing platforms. And it gets like an integrated front because... Yeah, I'd say there was a lot of joint and integrated work done training rather. Across a lot of those live-scale exercises you'd hear and see about, they rotate on a bi-annual basis over two years. So you've got your talisman saver, exercise hammer, rim packers, which obviously you guys host in Hawaii. And between those three, there's pretty much one of those every year, which sees a huge amount

of interoperability and joint training done. So I think one of the talisman sabers we did, we swapped kind of augmented one for one with the platoon of Marines. I think platoon of Marines became part of the JPLF and we went and joined whatever they were and we ended up on USS Ashland and then we shipped jump to one of these other, it was funny, one of these ships was so old and so decrepit and all the sailors like US Navy was the most depressed humans I'd ever seen

and it was just sad, sorry old ship. And then we went to the other one which was all new in flash and you know, looked like a, I don't know, something out of June like at Spikey Tower, I'm on a naval ship. Oh, yeah. At least it was in there. We're all happy and sure be.

It was sick. It was the Ashland and the Green Bay. It's great, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. But one of them was the Depresseau, a Spresseau, and the other one, everyone. It was like you and Futuristic and everyone's out there.

When it comes to your amphibious land and craft, because the Marines have like LCACs, and we put tanks and humvees and stuff like that out to them. And they are notoriously for breaking down 200 yards off of the ship and then they're just dead in the water. Is that a strategic problem for the Australians? Because I know the Marine Corps is just like, this is a huge problem. They're just... Yeah, it's definitely is at the moment because we don't have that capability at all. So that's one I guess big myth bust when people hear about 2-R-R is that, you know, they think we're training for

Oma Harbeach in the Pacific. I don't know. Wait, I'll, uh, Ikewa Jema, 2.0 in the Pacific in 2025, but 2-R-R does not do opposed landings. Everything, really? Every amphibious landing done by 2-R-R-R, and for the most part, the A-R-E-A-R, you isn't to uncontested landings so it's already been secured through shaping AFO have been in there doing their their thing behind the scenes the B-chair to secure so we don't have the way the US Marines do AAV like an offensive ability to lodge on a contestant beach there and that was never the purpose of of to our and ourE. It's this weird dumb thing because like, we have 2-hour has a small, what do you call, combatant rating craft, C-R-R-C's,

not C-S-S-U, confusing that fucking acronym. Sorry, Yaks, right? That's the reconnaissance man's primary craft for getting to shore sneaky, undetected in the dark. And that's like our primary asset and the guys are very well trained on that. The guys who focus on boats.

So what are you going to do? You're going to lead a beach and a rob a boat? You're gonna get shot and so well, we're not fuck We're not storming pillboxes on the beach. It's not not the point So yeah, it's a question. Yeah, we don't have that at the moment But I do believe the DSR has and I just sort of think on LinkedIn the other day some company in Western Australia won some tender to produce Supposed they're not AAV, so it's not an armored platform, it's like a new landing craft platform that is meant to operate with both the LHD ships and then the, I'm not sure what other ship, but by the look of it,

the kit we have, I don't think we're still gearing up to with the DSR, the kit they want to buy, I don't think we're still planning to develop contested landing ability, much the way the Marines are, because I think the Marines are getting a replacement vehicle for the AAVs, right? Those are notorious, like they actively sink in the motors, pump the water up, and they could ride to shore, but we had a big one go down a few years ago that killed 13. I saw that right off of camp pedals. I just went right to the drink,

it took a little while to find them. So we've been using those since the 1980s. So I mean, the Marine Corps is just always underfunded or something like that. And so I think to get around the Elkack issue, they got rid of tanks, artillery, everything like that. So it's a strictly light infantry force now. And I was just curious to see if there's like,

I guess like a hint of like integration at that work. So like, the training light infantry, Marines are light infantry now, like they're not going to fight in Fliuzia anymore, Marja, it's ever just working towards the same goal. And another question I have is this might be more like a maybe centric one is how the cast capabilities look when it's going to shoulder, because from what I've seen the LHDs just have kilos, not like enough 35 or any variant. Yeah, correct. Correct.

Yeah, you've nailed it mate. The CAS capability, as it was for whenever we were training, it was, you'd get it from ARHs, which was our, I'm not sure equivalent is the right word to Apache's, but because they're more a scap-reconocence. They still want to tack road or a wing, but they in Apache, they are not. But yeah, that was about as the extent of close escort as far as, as you know, that on the head, because yeah, the LHDs don't carry fixed wing.

I mean, just me thinking just on the spot, like it would just make more, I guess, sense for like the average listener or something like that, say like it would just make sense to just make like a like a joint operation. What if you just want fives gave abilities for it's like I guess like the Marines clear or come in with like cast or the Navy is their thing because there's only so many airfathers. The little tiny ones, the LHD so the ones that really do have a heavy lifting when it comes to a lens. to a race. I was about to say it doesn't, it doesn't sound as bad as it is in my opinion. If you've read Eugene's sledge his book with the old parade or any of the books about the Pacific. Yeah, yeah, helmet from, yeah, it's funny as he's talking, you can kind

of see it shaping, right? Cause like you're gonna obviously have the Marine Corps and the US Navy which are gonna breach, but the problem isn't, you know, you've got the breach, but then you have to maintain that momentum in the strategic atmosphere. And it's like, okay, well, we have an entire two RAR that once the Marine Corps has breached the beach head,

there's still an entire jungle that needs to be cleared. And it's like, the breach is one, that's gonna be a decimator. Whoever does it is not gonna have a good day. They're gonna lose guys, there's gonna be chaos, you're gonna have to round Marines up. There's no, there is not going to be, the Marine Corps breaches the beach head and then goes in, right?

There's gonna be 30% casualties, absolute chaos. Companies are gonna be mismatched, you know, like, D-Day, you know, dudes are gonna be like 50 kilometers off. And it's just gonna be chaos on the beach. But once that breach is established and we're like, hey, we've opened it, like there's a clear, definitive line right here that you can bring to RAR in. And then all of a sudden, you know,

boats would drunk Aussies show up and they just run into the jungle chasing the Chinese away. And that honestly is the scariest day for me. It's like, okay, you fought the Marines on the beachhead. Now you've got an entire regiment of Australians hunting you in the jungle. And I mean, that's a 48 hour operation in itself right there. And it's so, you know, you hear you guys kind of talk about it back and forth and it's like that sounds like the worst fucking island to be on it's like

Fight tooth and nail against the Marines and oh if you survive you have to fight the Australians who basically live in Southeast Asia Training because every every digger I know has spent you in the jungle with the Singapore army. They've done rotations up to Guinea. They've done all types of things in the jungle. In the army, we have jungle school, which is one month. And we're like, yeah, you did. Here's a tab, meanwhile. The Australian army is spending half a year in the jungle

and you're like, that sucks. I wouldn't say it's that much. I mean, there's definitely, I suppose, more opportunities, because of proximity to our neighbours than safer, perhaps the average US Army infantry unit. So, you guys will get some rotation time in Thailand, Malaysia, Malaysia is a common one. There's always an ongoing rotation presence in Malaysia and they get some good jungle training there. I never did it myself But yeah, just so even the jungle training school if you just rotated if you rotated your company through that thing once a year and Just watch the skill rise across not just jungle warfare

But every component of your your infantry or your soldiering training. It would be insane. I'd love to, I don't know, if a unit did that as an experiment, like took two companies over a five-year period, one of them attended Jungle Warfare rotation, and it's only like two weeks, or it's a two or three week, I think, rotation. That's just so well-honed, because it's been in a fax, since Vietnam, that it's everything,

and it is old school in a lot of ways, but it's one of those things that keeps you grounded. It's, they always old stuff that the Vietnam vets used to do. You know, they in a lot of ways, but it's one of those things that that keeps you grounded. It's all these old stuff that the Vietnam , đúng không? It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded. It's not a lot of things that keep you grounded see, it's a super, super fan of jungle training.

I guess you're in fivious landing craft. If there's been any beach studies with those like artificial islands that I'm up putting the South China Sea because the Chinese just build islands and put anti-air creases on there, they're like, you'll take it. Like what, I did it. What are you going to do? I'm not too sure if the Marine Corps is doing anything crazy like that because I mean site surveys are kind of hard when you're a coca-cation showing up in the Asian territory.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. Well, that's where all those clips you see, isn't it, where it's like, um, US aircraft, you must leave now, and it's like the, you, the plane, the P3 or on or whatever, it is like, uh, we are a lawful aircraft in international waters and we are here for nothing. It is, you know, I do. That's the, the end point of the, oh, here for nothing. It is, you know, I do. That's the main point of the odds. They're probably getting all the, full of seeking to, on a geospatial of a native rock.

I just feel like that, the break we're going to the prowlers, that we're supposed to be like that signal collect, like jamming to it. They're so sick. The prowlers and the growlers, we got rid of them and now the 35's supposed to be like this universal. It does everything, but it doesn't have any guns. You're like, oh, really sick. Yeah, it's been my lucky collection.

It's everything. What I'm not transmitting. Yeah, you're good. You're good. Okay. Sorry, my little green bar here on the rock wasn't going up. No, it'll, I'll jack it up. I'll, because we're approaching the one hour, I'll do, I'll bring you back to the

kit and then I'll ask you if you have it but So the kit and then we'll one final question for What do you guys got going on in the future or what do you have going on in the future for the page? But yeah, the the kit What's what's the future of kit look like in your opinion after sitting there for two years watching all these conflicts go down. Yeah, you raised a good point because there's definitely merits for belt kit and we do, we use a mix of both belt kit and your classic plate carrier or what is now, I guess, a classic plate carrier.

The thing is that when we do this jungle training, I think I started saying it before we got distracted because I'm easily distracted. We still do our jungle training at the time, at least when I did it in this kind of kit without plate carriers and with either, you guys are called a chest rig, I suppose we call it battle bra or the belt kits. For the exact same reasons you mentioned, when you're humping through the steaming tropical jungle

for, and even when you're doing a training, you're only out there for days at a time. But if you're doing this for days, weeks, months, in and out, because that's your life, because you're a Myanmar rebel, you're fighting as you're done. Then yeah, it's a classic, I guess, tale of mobility versus viability. Insofar as you know, how much heat casualties you're going to take as well, if you've got to run super over and covered with body armor and this sort of kit. I don't know. I think you'd probably, you'd look to be a mix of it and then depending on, as always, nature of threat,

the terrain, the likely anticipated mission set, all that sort of stuff. But I'd like to see a case or think there's a compelling argument for guys doing some mission sets without, say, body armor and without helmets. Or helmets like by night fear, night vision and that's what a kit but during the day it's nothing but an arm style. Let's see the belt kit or chest rig and floppy hat and you've got your green face on and it's like slow and steady through the jungle. For a connoisseur type kit I guess. Yeah, I can definitely see a compelling case where there is a place for nobody arm and kick, but I suppose that comes down to the, you know, what commander is going to accept that level of

risk when it comes to how your dude got, is now dead, he got shot in the chest. Why did you not just have them way, body armor? Oh, because it was hot. Yeah, it is the well-during to look at like the standard kit from War II, nothing Vietnam. I guess in like our situation, Vietnam, they just got like a flag maybe, and then Gulf War, where it's just like these guys have like, well, 45, 50 pounds in their back, and then a rag go three, these guys have 65 pounds in their back, and they're so expected to march, I don't know, 20 miles, you're like, those lighted features not so lighted anymore. So, nah, never open up. Absolutely.

So basically what you're saying, Carl, is I need a bunch of kit, and I'll have to go to my wife's boyfriend and get the credit card. And I need more kit, Carl said so now. Mike, he's not, he good at your job, at least look cool doing this. The car is having a battle, we can call these, and you can't be good at your job at least look cool doing this. It's the best thing I've ever done.

You can call these and you're done. 100% 100% Big fan of that. So, alright, but yeah, what else, what's the future now that you've got a degree in business and you have a business, what's the business going to do? So the moment's still focusing on the PLA side of the house or trying to focus on the China side of the house in terms of putting out some of the guides.

So every week for the, I perhaps the listeners who don't follow CSRC on Instagram, there's a quiz on Fridays which tests effectively the knowledge that's delivered through the week. And then every week I'll try and deliver some sort of information post relating to specifically kit and equipment. Again, I try and steer clear of geopolitical and and and reviews for the most part just because it's, A, it doesn't interest me as much and B, I'm not good at it. Kit is what I enjoy. So yeah, this week I'll do something

probably a bit different on Russia, but then outside of that, I'm also delving into YouTube because that's just something that's a way for the most part. I like the process of editing. I like the process of making silly little movies and having memes flash up on the screen and all this sort of thing and Me and not Zuma. I feel I'm trying to do a good job here of of the peel of to the You just say I did one like camouflage for your weapon. All come who's figured it out these I don't know just shoot him him at... Shoot him at... Yeah, it probably gives some pointers. Yeah, yeah, nice, nice.

But yeah, so from that YouTube is something I'm trying to put more energy into. It's just, it's one of those things, mate. I like, I love it, but I don't know if you guys done like video editing, but it burns your soul as much as you, as much as you enjoy it, but then the second you hit like publish and it's done, it's just the biggest dopamine. So yeah, more CSI YouTube coming out looking forward to making some, maybe not personalized

take, but stuff from my background linking some of my experience to, I guess, a lessons learned story as well, kind of our internet detective. And if you guys seen, see these videos, great channel. Great channel. Give him a follow on YouTube. That's sort of inspiration, kind of stuff. But yeah, so from that, the weekly information code posts shall continue until Moral Improves.

And I make posters as well, like A4, printable posters, which are free. So again, it's not like, I'm not making a dime, not making a nickel off them. That's because guys can print them for free, stick them on the back of the toilet doors, because as we talked about, like, I feel there's still units out there looking at BMP ones and AKMs when you've had a facelift. Yeah. QBZ, 191s and... Yeah, so... I don't know, if I mentioned this before, but when I was at third-grade count back in Japan,

they would put, it was like a wrecky guy, but it was like the different type of quadcopters that the Chinese use. And so how do I identify like a civilian one and a military one and the different characteristics and like a wrecky guy of like identifying like this one's from Amazon, this one is definitely state produced. And I thought it was pretty interesting

a way about going about things. Yeah, I'm not saying that but definitely sounds like something right on my alley. It's a good bit of kid. Something you'd be sure. Alright, man, that's it and let's get anything else. No, thanks for having me on a free shader. I could waffle all night if you bloody let me but yeah, happy to call you. Bye. Thanks for having me on a free shader. I could waffle all night if you bloody let me, but yeah, happy to call you Dave.