Infantry fire in Ukraine: shooting blind at an enemy you can't see

Blind infantry fire: 99.99% of bullets never see the enemy

A platoon fires bursts at an enemy it cannot see and, when the exchange intensifies, falls back in a straight line without ceasing fire. The scene, filmed on the Ukrainian front, reopens the eternal debate: are those men fighting or wasting ammunition? The uncomfortable answer is that it is almost always the former. In light infantry, fire is almost always peine blind, even though war films have taught just the opposite.

What the video shows: reconnaissance, a tank and breaking contact

Context changes the reading. The soldiers were conducting reconnaissance, searching for an enemy trench system. When they tried to assault a position, they ran into a defense far tougher than expected: there was a tank. From then on, what is seen is not improvisation but a scripted maneuver: some fire to suppress the enemy response while another comrade shifts position. The purpose of suppressive fire is not to hit anything, but to keep the one moving from taking a bullet in the back.

The criticism always lands on the same point: if no one sees the enemy, what are they shooting at? At the likely position, the one inferred from noise and trajectories. That is the mechanics of reconnaissance by fire: whoever shoots a lot is not trying to hit the target, but to force the adversary to take cover and make him move.

Why 99.99% of ammunition misses

The figure circulating in the debate is almost a joke: in every war, virtually all light infantry ammunition is spent without ever having seen the enemy. The exact number —99.9999999999999999%— is an exaggeration, but it points to something real: infantry does not fight silhouettes at forty meters, but bushes, shadows and noise.

From this two opposing schools emerge. One holds that shooting without a sure target is noise and nerves, and that it gives away your position more than it protects it; that well-aimed fire, the kind that lands close, is the only fire that truly terrifies. The other replies that in a break contact, the goal is not to kill but to get out, and that whoever fires toward the enemy is buying seconds for their unit.

Why do they retreat in a straight line and not toward the flank?

It is the most repeated objection. If you retreat straight back toward where there is nothing left, you become a target moving away in file. Why not break to one side? Flanking sounds good on paper, but it requires knowing what is on the flanks. And here no one knows: there could be two men or two entire companies.

When the enemy is 150 or 200 meters away, any lateral movement crosses uncovered ground. The leapfrog withdrawal —some fire, others run, then they swap— is the least bad way to break away from fire that is pinning you down. The theory of flanking is learned in manuals; the geometry of terrain, through scares.

Thermal imaging, drones and the myth of combat in plain sight

The great modern equalizer appears: the thermal camera. Armies need ranges beyond 300 meters, and a military thermal sight (lighter, tougher and with better battery life than a civilian one) costs between 1,000 and 4,600 dollars per unit. Multiply that by a mass mobilization and you understand why not everyone carries one.

Infrared emitters add another layer of confusion: some believe they are invisible, and they are not entirely, because they can be detected through another IR receiver, even a lower-powered one. The terrain becomes a board where some see and others are seen. But the eye that, according to forum users who trinc these fronts, truly shows the enemy horizontally is not human: it is the drone.

From alleged staging to hoaxes

Like every war video, this one has generated its crop of legends. Versions circulate claiming it was filmed in a laboratory, that the soldiers are holographic recreations or even rubber dummies, and some find suspicious the dust kicked up at the feet of those retreating. None of those claims is backed by any evidence, and all are repeated without verification.

The underlying question also hangs in the air: who is fighting. Some maintain that the current war is a matter of private military companies and foreign militias on both sides, rather than national armies. It is a thesis that is repeated a lot and proven little.

The comparison with Syria and Afghanistan

Anyone who has trinc the wars in Syria or Afghanistan recognizes the pattern: suppressive fire, positions at medium distance and, when things go wrong, the radio to call for support. On those fronts, the side with air superiority resolved the exchange with an air pass or an artillery barrage on the area. In Ukraine that capability is more evenly distributed between the two sides, and that difference explains why they advance in one stretch and fall back in the next.

In the end, the scene remains where it started: some see a textbook maneuver and others see four men wasting ammunition into the air. No one has yet managed to decide which of the two it is. And the video, meanwhile, keeps racking up views as if it were a video game trailer.