Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Combat Arms Channel" channel.

  1. 17:50 There's no such thing as "too snowy" or "too rainy" in Finnish Defence Forces. Even conscripts go outdoors by the plan regardless of the amount of snow or low temperature. When I did my mandatory service, I was a bit unlucky to had to do the timed reviewed tests (including tearing down and rebuilding the service weapon blindfolded) outdoors in the snow while it was –30 °C. The only hard part was the teardown and rebuilding the weapon because that thing is really cold to hold with bare hands in such a low temperaturs and you cannot do some parts of the task with mittens on. The problem with training with live ammunition with live guns is that the regular staff (non-conscripts personnel) gets extra payment for such training and it gets really expensive really fast if the exercise requires lots of personnel for extended periods. I think the regular staff may have extra for too cold, too wet, too dirty, working around usual business hours, having to sleep in the woods, etc. Combine multiple of those and it gets really expensive per hour. For conscripts, it's another Tuesday.
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  2. 24:40 The thing he's using in his hands is called "jäänaskali". It's a special safety device designed to help climbing out from the water back to ice. It's basically like two sheath knifes attached with a string but the blade is more like a spike. The idea is to keep it hanging from your neck while walking on frozen lakes so you can easily reach it if you fall through the ice. You can get one from most Finnish supermarkets and the cost is between 5–10 EUR (that's meant for anybody walking on the frozen lake, not a military device).
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  3. 14:45 I think he is talking slightly faster than a typical Finn but the difference is maybe 10–20%. The think you have to understand about Finnish is that intonation and rythm goes by syllable which may make it sound like he's talking really fast. One Finnish word has around 3 syllables. The military personnel in this video was mostly speaking slower than a typical Finn to make sure that the words are easy to understand even if there were background noise.
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  4. For those who don't know Pasi is officially known as Patria Pasi, a six wheel APC with 10 mm armor which weights 13.5 tons and has length around 7.5 meters. Losing that would indeed require some skills.
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  5. 20:35 The coordinates include height (from sea level in meters) as the third number. I guess it's meant for artillery use.
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  6.  @bige1106  Finnish military (including conscripts) has good gear for the winter so it really isn't an issue. The gear doesn't look fancy but it works when used as told. The official gear is not sold to civilians but you can get very close replicas here: https://www.varusteleka.com/en/category/finnish-m04-and-m05-camo/1839 The instructions for proper clothing for any temperature in range -30 °C to +30 °C (-22 °F to 86 °F) can be found here: https://www.varusteleka.com/en/group/sarma-tst-clothing-system/2175 (click "Read the full story" or scroll to the bottom of the page).
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  7. The use of explosives was thanks to the Finnish Defence Forces officially taking part with the filming.
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  8.  @bige1106  I'm not their customer but I know they're pretty well known here in Finland. I have to warn that shipping anything worldwide from Finland is often highly expensive.
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  9. 5:20 The seating is designed to be floating so that if the 6x6 vehicle runs on a mine, the shock that hits to body of the vehicle doesn't hit the troops. If used correctly, then the boots of the soldiers are not touching the floor of the vehicle!
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  10. I don't know about the quality of subtitles in this movie but the song around 32:30 (in this video) is about people that have already died and how people still living are going to forget and have to continue with their lives.
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  11. I checked out options for the courses organized by MPK and every course was totally free, even the ones that lasted multiple days and the courses included food, accommodation, insurance and clothing during the course. I guess Finnish Defence Forces pays the bills. There seemed to 30 EUR fine if you sign up for a course but newer show up in reality. As a software engineer, MPK seems to organize cyber attack courses, too. There's a 3 day course in Helsinki in October 2023 where the reservists play blue team (cyber defence) and red team is trying to attack the services in the network. The course description doesn't explain who the red team players are. The course/game uses "live ammunition", that is, attackers can use any real world exploits they are aware of, but the game happens in a computer network that is not connected to actual internet. I live in Central Finland so I would have to travel a bit to be able to attend that course, though. All the computers and services in the network run unspecified Linux distributions. Update: I found some courses where you learn to shoot with various guns without having to own a gun yourself. Those seemed to have course cost in range 10–30 EUR. That's pretty cheap considering the bullets alone cost way more.
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  12.  @enjoi301  DVD release has English subtitles but the version in Netflix only has subtitles in Finnish and Swedish at least here in Finland.
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  13. I don't agree. I think that the miniseries doesn't have anything that the movie didn't already portray. The miniseries is just longer cut version. It has all the same scenes but extra context both before and after the action included in the movie. If you like the movie and just want a longer version, sure, the miniseries is the way to go.
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  14. I think "varusmiespalvelu" should be translated as "did conscript in the Finnish military" and the meaning of "served in the Finnish military" actually means "palveli kantahenkilökunnassa" or served as paid soldier in the Finnish military.
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  15. 19:50 NLAW in action. These have been demonstrated many times in Ukraine since Taistelukenttä 2020 was released.
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  16. Finns expect truth, never apologize how you truly feel. If you feel it's crap, you can totally grade it as 💩/5.
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  17. Norway is the only country in the world with lots of natural resources (especially oil) without heavy corruption. Look up the "Norges Bank Investment Management: The fund" some time. It's the real time counter for the wealth of the government operated funds. The publicly stated objective of that fund is to collect so much money that the budget of the whole country can be operated on interest alone indefinitely. They are not yet there but they are definitely the only country in the world that may succeed in the plan.
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  18. As a Finn, I agree. However, you should re-adjust the helmet to snuggly fit on top of the beanie. The guy in the video clearly skipped the re-adjustment part.
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  19. I'd recommend reacting to year 2023 video by Polenar Tactical, too. That's 50 minutes worth of awesome editing and you get much better idea about the tasks they need to do. (The title of the video is "Finnish Brutality - best shooting competition in the world".)
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  20. Group punishment based on mistake or wrongdoing of a single person is no longer allowed in Finnish military. Punishment must only affect those that have actually done something wrong.
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  21. It's a shame you didn't get any candy called "Hopeatoffee". If you want to learn to love Salmiakki, that's a good way to start.
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  22. And in actual war, reservists would voluntarily trim the beard to allow the gas mask to be air tight.
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  23. This kind of sand is very common in Finland and that's why Finnish Defence Forces have their custom made RK-62 and RK-95 rifles. Basically a top quality AK-47 design which works in snow and sand and still shoots accurately.
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  24. Salmiakki is literally ammonium chloride, that is, salt that's just different from natrium chloride. The amount of ammonium chloride in different salmiakki candy variates very much. I personally prefer salmiakki mixed with pepper but many people think that's too strong for their taste.
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  25. 23:50 I'm pretty sure Finnish Defence Forces have complete plans for re-taking any major targets such as airfields and electricity plants. That said, Finnish Defence Forces would use road bases for fighter jets instead of regular airfields most of the time. See https://youtu.be/m1piR6LPJ6I for an example.
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  26. Moose is very common wild animal in Finland. Reindeers mostly live only from Arctic Circle towards the North. Finland tries to keep the moose population numbered around 65000. Without hunting, the population size would rapidly go over 100 thousand.
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  27. I agree. The important think about pronouncing Finnish is that there are no silent letters and everything is pronounced as separate syllables. For example, zero is "nolla" which is hyphenated as "nol-la" and the first syllable ends with an L-sound and and next starts with another L-sound. If you pronounce it as "no-la", that is, first syllable ending in O-sound instead of L-sound, it will sound weird or it may turn into wrong word. And unlike English, the double L letter doesn't modify any of the vowels in the word. The hardest parts of Finnish pronounciation for native English speaker will be diphtongs and the letter R. Neither happen in English in practice. For the diphtongs, the harderst word might be "hääyöaie" (hyphenated as "hää-yö-ai-e") – just remember that every letter is voiced!
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  28. Year 2023 showreel is even better than this one!
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  29. To get honest opinion from children, you should have asked them to choose only one product that they could then have more in the end.
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  30. 20:10 it seems that Finnish expression "parvi" has been translated as "flight" in the subtitles. As far as I know, the Finnish Air Forces' jargon "parvi" means a group of 4 fighter jets. MATRIX and CAT in this video were simply call signs for those two groups, MAXRIX-1 being the leader of group called MATRIX.
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  31. When I did my conscript in 1998 I received factory new sleeping bag which is rated for full winter conditions. The repay value was so low that you could never get such a sleeping back as civilian for the same money so I'm not totally surprised that some of those were "lost".
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  32. That's just about getting your priorities right.
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  33. The word "sain" means I got it. Finnish has word inflection which allows compressing multiple things into a single word. If they had said "saan" it would mean I'll get it, "sait" would mean You got it and "saat" would mean You'll got it. If you ask ChatGPT 'How many different inflection forms can a Finnish verb have? For example, word "istua"?' it will emit 100–150 forms for a single word and then adds "This is not even counting colloquial contractions or inflection under poetic license."
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  34. Here's a short video about conscripts in training for the artillery. The people wearing the orange vests are the teachers, rest is conscripts (mandatory for all men): https://youtu.be/pEs82uBYTJQ
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  35. And here's an example of accuracy of the conscripts using multiple attack methods to the same target: https://youtu.be/en21sFypy2c (Exception, the F-18 pilots are professional military personnel.)
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  36. Maybe consider reacting to Finnish Defence Forces ad for the COMCAM training (only 6–10 best candidates per year are accepted for this special training): Combat Camera Showreel 2023 – Finnish Defence Forces https://youtu.be/5psqCJv2fTM?si=IaaNEObMBHUbTsC9
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