In a war like this with urban fighting, try to have the weapons that can best suppress the enemy. The automatic 40mm grenade launcher is ideal for a close ambush.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1dXAs2ybIU&t=14s

I was a US Marine platoon commander in Vietnam 1968-69. I lost a lot of good Marines that year.

Combat is chaos, carnage, and in many ways a lot of luck is involved in staying alive. My worst day in Vietnam is when the sun rose I had 35 Marines including myself. When the Sun set that day, only 4 of us were still alive and unwounded, and after evacuating the dead and wounded, the 4 of us had to make our own way 10 miles back to the battalion position which was in the middle of nowhere. The next day, I received 17 replacements. That night the battalion was mortared and all 17 replacement Marines were wounded and evacuated. Combat really sucks.

One of the best days was when my platoon came under heavy automatic fire from the North Vietnamese soldiers while we were crossing a wide dry rice paddy. We were in the middle with no cover. I made the decision that retreating would cause more casualties than immediately initiating a frontal attack with overwhelming suppressing fire. We crossed about 200 yards of completely open terrain before reaching the tree line where the enemy was. During this time I was running up and down the line of attack giving orders because my platoon only had one radio. Bullets travel faster than the speed of sound and so when they come close you will hear a loud "snap" like a small firecracker as the bullet passes the sound barrier. For a few moments, it was hand to hand fighting for some of my Marines. After is was over, I told the platoon sergeant to get a count of the casualties while I alerted the company commander that we would need medivac support. My own judgement was that we had at least 10-15 casualties, but we didn't have any. Zero. But we managed to kill 20 North Vietnamese soldiers with blood tails leading in their direction of retreat. That was proof for me that there are miracles in combat. I cannot explain who such heavy automatic fire from the enemy while we are completely exposed for 200 yards managed to miss everyone. I eventually served 3 years in combat, and that still seems impossible to me.

However, there are things you can do to mitigate some of the danger in combat and especially an ambush.

There ae several classic ambush plans and you need to be able to identify them because your reaction will be different for each

Always have counter-ambush plans that your men know and practice them so they become muscle memory reaction.

Get out of the kill zone a quickly as possible because the enemy already has the advantage of surprise and a plan.

If possible, always have a fire support plan of mortars or artillery. Give them your position and a direction / distance from your position to the enemy.

In a war like this with urban fighting, try to have the weapons that can best suppress the enemy. The automatic 40mm grenade launcher is ideal for a close ambush.

The BRDM-2 is armored against small arms fire and has a 14.5 mm heavy machine gun turret and a coaxial 7.62 machine gun. This should have allowed the crew to better defend. I'm kind of surprised that the BRDM-2's were not more effective against infantry with small arms unless they were hit with an anti-armor weapon, which didn't seem to be the case. Even if the main tires were shot out, the BRDM-2 has "belly wheels" that could be used to get out of the kill zone.

I can't criticize them just looking an a drone video. I been in 3 years of combat and I know that an ambush can cause confusion and unless you are a combat veteran, the right decisions are even harder to make.

If there hadn't been a guard rail between the Russians and the BRDM-2's, I would have turned and assaulted directly into the Russians. That may not make much sense to the average person, but an aggressive assault against your position with armor is a terrifying experience.

Both sides are claiming amazing gains. The Ukrainians are claiming 10,000 Russian casualties, over 200 Russian tanks, and something like 60 total aircraft shot down. I don't buy that at this point. The Russians claim those claims are exaggerated, but I don't buy their their point of view either.

The truth for me is that probably both sides are suffering major losses, but that the Russians have the ability to replace their tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, ammunition, etc. and the Ukrainians don't.

I would love for NATO to start providing the Ukrainians with the high-end tanks, Patriot missiles, F-35's etc. but it's not just a matter of providing high-end techologies, it's the problem of training the problem of training them to use it. An F-35 pilot goes through over a year of training before he/she is qualified to be an operational F-35 pilot. The systems are so complex and the ways to use the F-35 are so endless that it takes that long--and then it takes exercises to hone those skills.

NATO can only provide the technologies that Ukraine can already use.

My apologies for the long post, but I'm a 3 year combat veteran and nothing in war is black and white and no matter how trained your are, there is always the bullet with your name on it that doesn't care. I have no idea how I made it through 3 years of combat without a scratch. The hard truth is that I should have died many times, but for the grace of God, I didn't.

Again, my apologies for the long post. But if I were single and young today, I might be headed to Ukraine to fight because as corrupt as that country has been, they deserve to be independent and solve their own problems. It's not like the US doesn't have it's own corruptions and sometimes at the highest levels, but I'm willing to risk my life to defend my country however flawed it might be.