To survive and prevail, they rely on diverse gear and an array of weapons. The rise of drone threats has returned a surprisingly effective tool to the battlefield — the smoothbore shotgun — once mainly the province of civilian hunters and only occasionally used by professionals.
Yet a special-purpose battalion wouldn’t deserve the name if its legionnaires dismissed the popular 12‑gauge as useful only in narrow roles. Boleslavovich, a soldier and instructor with the 3rd International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine, explains and demonstrates how different shotgun types and systems are employed in modern combat.
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Smoothbore weapons can’t match rifled arms for range, but their sheer stopping power and ability to fire varied loads make them indispensable for counter‑drone work, trench clearing, and close‑quarters engagements.
Drawing on both military and civilian experience, the legionnaire can spend hours discussing optimal powder loads, ammunition types, barrel lengths, the use of chokes (cylinder, full, or half), and the strengths and weaknesses of various smoothbore shotgun systems depending on the mission. This expertise helps his comrades quickly get comfortable with the shotgun, even if they have previously relied solely on standard military rifled firearms.
The unit fields a semi‑automatic “Safari” shotgun built in a bullpup layout. Because volunteers support the unit and Ukrainian servicemen who can legally buy weapons often purchase shotguns at their own expense, the legion uses a mix of semi‑automatic and pump‑action guns with varying barrel lengths. Each must be not only devastating but also exceptionally fast and accurate in its owner’s hands — with the speed and agility of an FPV drone, a missed shot can make the shooter the immediate target. After classroom instruction, the team practices on moving targets, engaging flying targets launched at different angles to simulate real-world dynamics.
For the experiment, we fired three rounds at a paper target from 30 metres — two with #3 shot and one with a 36‑gram slug. The rounds punched cleanly through the bushes and struck the target. The paper was riddled with shot holes, and the slug tore the target apart, ripping out a few‑centimetre chunk of the tree it was pinned to.
“A bullpup‑style weapon isn’t particularly convenient or ergonomic for engaging aerial targets,” Boleslavovich explains. “Classic‑layout shotguns are better suited to that role — they allow the shooter to mount the gun properly and intuitively track a fast, high‑flying target, which matters a lot under stress. By contrast, for clearing trenches, rooms, or thick vegetation the bullpup layout makes perfect sense, and the results speak for themselves. When shells are loaded with 9‑mm buckshot, a short burst at close range will clear a sector. Even if an enemy is hard to see and light rifle bullets are ricocheting off branches, twelve 9‑mm pellets per shotgun shell, given the natural spread, will almost certainly find their mark and get the job done.”
After demonstrating 12‑gauge rounds on a static target, we move on to moving targets. Boleslavovich and his comrades show that, regardless of a shotgun’s operating system or layout, in the right hands it becomes a fast, lethally precise tool. For the instructor, the make of the gun or the type of target is irrelevant. After rattling off a series of broken clay pigeons, he nails a water bottle — tossed up by a brother-in-arms as a dare and moving with very different dynamics — on his first shot from an “awkward” pump‑action bullpup, proving that for a soldier of the 3rd International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine, nothing is impossible with a weapon in his hands.
To learn more about the International Legions for the Defence of Ukraine or to join one, visit the official website.
You can also support the 3rd International Legion’s UAV unit by helping repair reusable reconnaissance drones — and get a chance to attend shooting lessons with the legion’s instructors. Just join the fundraiser here.
Text: Volodymyr Patola
Photos, videos:
Oleksandr Los, Dmytro Tolkachov, Yevhen Malienko, Volodymyr Patola
Editing: Oleksandr Los
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