Ukraine is using Steam Decks to control machine gun turrets (vice.com) 84

2023-05-03 18:42:35

Thanks to a crowdfunding campaign dating back to 2014, soldiers in the Ukraine now use Steam Decks to remotely operate a high caliber machine gun turret. The weapon is called “Saber” and is unique to Ukraine. Motherboard Reports:Ukrainian news outlet TPO Media recently reported on the deployment of a new Saber model at its Facebook page . Photos and videos from the system show soldiers operating a Steam Deck connected to a large machine gun via a heavy cable. According to the TPO Media post, the Saber system allows soldiers to fight the enemy from a great distance and can handle a variety of calibers, from light machine guns that fire anti-tank rounds to an AK-47.

In the TPO footage, the Saber is firing what appears to be a PKT belt-fed machine gun. The PKT is a heavy barreled machine that does not have a stock and is typically mounted on vehicles such as armored personnel carriers. Uses a solenoid trigger.so it can be fired remotely, which is the wire that runs out the back of the gun and into the metal and wire complex on the side of the turret.

The Saber system was not always controlled with a Steam Deck […]. The first instances of the weapon appeared in 2014. The US and the rest of NATO are giving Ukraine lots of defense money now, but that was not the case when Russia first invaded in 2014. For fill their funding gaps, the Ukrainians ran a variety of crowdfunding campaigns. Over the years, Ukraine has used crowdfunding to pay for everything from drones to hospitals. One of the most popular websites is The People’s Project, and that’s where Saber was born. The People’s Project launched the crowdfunding campaign for Saber in 2015 and raised more than $12,000 for the project over the next two years. Their initial goal was to implement 10 of these systems.