Here's drone footage of an attack on a car in Afghanistan last month by a USAF A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. The terrorists in the car had just used a DShK 12.7mm. heavy machinegun to attack civilians in Kandahar province.
Note the four massive holes in the car left by the A-10's GAU-8 cannon. With precision shooting like that, I doubt whether the second firing pass was necessary! Kudos for good shooting to the pilot.
Peter
15 comments:
And yet there are people in charge out there who say the A-10 has no place in the modern battlefield.
Ha.
And those are some big darned holes.
No kill like over kill.
Who was the American officer who said, sometimes it is appropriate to swat a fly with a sledgehammer as a lesson to other flies?
If it's worth shooting, it's worth shooting again.
Insha'Allah
Always nice to see the always popular "Double Tap" put to good use.
The paperwork is the same whether you shoot one or several times. So pay the insurance on them.
Phil B
When it comes to multi-barrelled airborne cannon firing large-caliber depleted-uranium high-velocity slugs, it must be said, a thing worth doing is well worth over-doing...
What a terrible shame that the U.S.A.F. keeps trying to get rid of those planes -
There is no overkill. There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload'.
I have one of those 30mm rounds (inert) in my workshop courtesy
of Aerojet General after rebuilding one of their air compressors.
I have heard that just one of these puppies (if fired at a shallow
angle) can lift a 70-ton tank 1 foot off the ground. Just one
of them would have killed everyone in the vehicle!
Dang fighter pilot generals!
Having been in a place where/when some of these things were developed/tested, I may be able to add something to the discussion. A 30mm round is slightly less than 1.25 inches (okay, you probably all knew that). The two holes in the roof have to be at least 18". 254 - 1.09 (sq. in.) yields the amount of metal that is missing from the holes. The metal in the roof probably wasn't strong enough to cause HE rounds to detonate. However, at mach3, the rounds don't even have to explode; the kinetic energy will convert the remaining 242 in.^2 of metal into high-speed chunks and slivers spreading downward in a hemispherical pattern. Probably the only time they had any idea of what was killing them was the first few dirt strikes in front of the vehicle.
I have to send this to my son. He loved the Warthogs when he was in the first gulf war. He said they saved his squads'(101st Airborne, Air Assult) lives a dozen times.
You can see small fires in the rear windows after the first strike. Wonder what is burning to cause such small flames?
If the Air Farce doesn't want the A-10, give them to the Marines or the Army.
They would be happy to do their own close air support!
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