they sure do look like G.I. Joe toys though

In fairness to Russia, Ukrainian and Chechen farmers are the only people the Russian military bothers to murder these days. At least their government is spending money on stuff their soldiers will actually get good use out of, instead of blowing it on useless frivolities, like anti-tank weapons or next-gen stealth fighters.

Hopefully they will make a cluster bomb version of this. They always do, but maybe sooner rather than later this time, boys? You've got two countries to not-invade and not-recolonize, so chop chop!

Really? I didn't know that holding an AR15 and wearing an american bulletproof vest made you immune to giant fireball explosions.

The More You Know..

SolRo: wearing "a bulletproof vest" does not make you a hard target. All foot mobiles can be considered soft targets; when considering whether a weapon system is to be used against hard or soft targets, what you're basically asking is whether you're attacking something tank-sized and bigger, or something smaller than that.

The poor range is also an important consideration. As BVS points out, these are neither beefy assault vehicles nor long-range artillery pieces. They'd be dead meat in a fight with the most rudimentary of anti-tank defenses; even a dismounted infantry platoon would pose an immediate threat! That's a major problem, and very strong evidence in BVS's favor that the Russians primarily intend to use these things against defenseless villages (after first making 100% sure that said villages are "harbouring insurgents", of course).

I don't know why you'd be upset about this. I'd think you'd be happy that Mother Russia is finally able to defend itself against the grave threat of tiny rural villages.

I so wish it was as humane and accurate as American cluster bombing and phosphorous attacks on Iraqi cities...and remember kids, if you level half an insurgent city with precision guided 1000lb bombs, it's not a war crime.

Hey SolRo, who's the largest producer and most ardent political supporter of cluster munitions on the planet?

I've asked you this before, but you keep dodging the issue. Perhaps Russia Today never told you the answer? (hint: it's Russia)

Also, if you really want to try make this about Russia vs America, instead of, you know, what it actually is (Russia vs Ukraine, Russia vs Chechnya, Russia vs the EU, Russia vs the free Baltic states, Russia vs China, Russia vs other Russians etc etc), then it's necessary to point out that US cluster bombs are a lot more reliable than Russia's stone-age murder-tools, and result in significantly lower numbers of UXOs (UXOs being the sole reason why cluster bombs are considered to be "bad" in the first place). The Russians could learn a thing or two from the Good Guys about how to humanely eliminate targets.

Probably not, though that's a valid piece of psychological warfare. The Germans put sirens on the Stuka dive bombers to scream loudly as they dove in. Total morale-killer.

Yea I had a toy Stuka growing up, I knew that from that toy and my granddad who was in the war. History Channel taught me about the Katyushas.