Originally Posted by
rattman
If its a rifle for training, I have used rubber rifles, hi viz yellow and red, with the same weight and a dynamics for training rather than a working rifle. But if thats what he taking to front he sorta screwed, probably be able to yoink a better one off a body in no time
Where I am I was trained with the real ones, signed one upon arrival to the forces. Never heard of dummy personal weapons though. To my understanding the Russians are providing the weapons on day 1 and sending the troops to training with their personal weapons. If they only have two weeks of training they wouldn't have enough dummies nor time to practice with them. Reason is very smple: The Russian conscript system is used to push 120000 rather poorly trained (by western standards) conscripts through the system annually, now they are intendng to push 300k - 1M mobilized men through the system in mere weeks...
they've obviously opened the cold war era wartime stocks for this. Meaning old and obsolete everything that no one has taken care of, including the doctrine.