Artillery from the receiving end

[Mord]

Interesting little vid I thought you guys might like...don't see this much. Note: the pucker factor is set on 11. I think the camera was unmanned but it gives you a tiny iota of what it must feel like to have death peeing down your neck.

IN COM-MMMMING!!!!

Mord.

P.S. Don't know if this has been posted before, so apologies ahead of time, if it's a repeat.

[purpheart23]

It's beautiful isn't it. *sniff* *sniff*

[Mord]

First shot, dead on...incredible. Life expectancy 30 seconds.

Mord.

[purpheart23]

that's how we do Mord, when the rockets are being fired it triggers a certain chain of events starting with the radar turds, working it's way to the FDC pukes and then down to the gun bunnies. Depends on the skill of the crews as to how fast you get rounds on target, but you see they break the video and i'm sure that's because it is a fairly substantial wait, a minute or two before the counterbattery starts impacting. But the point of this video i'm sure is to showcase the lethality of counterbattery fire if the enemy is stupid enough to stick around. Good vid.

Edit: Too bad we didn't get em.

[hcrof]

Just to be clear on what is happening, The first blasts in the top left hand side of the screen where rockets being fired by insurgents and the reply was 155mm guns right?

[purpheart23]

Just to be clear on what is happening, The first blasts in the top left hand side of the screen where rockets being fired by insurgents and the reply was 155mm guns right?

that's correct

[theFightingSeabee]

Here a slightly more dramatic video of a counter attack on the taliban. If you can get past the demonic chanting, it gets more intense as it goes on. A lot of near hits, but looks like we just couldn't find the target.

Lucky bastards.

[akd]

Put this together for in-game. Tell me if you think it works in play.

FileFront

[Dave H]

Don't be hypnotized by big explosions. The Darwin effect works extremely fast on insurgent forces - only the most brain-dead and/or suicidal would be caught anywhere near those rockets being fired. If anybody's there at all it's most likely the same poor uneducated teenaged boys who would be joining street gangs in the US. The real insurgents can be miles away while the US Army shoots off a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of 155mm shells to stir up some dust and possibly kill a few juvenile delinquents.

It's probably not even accomplishing that much. I think by now insurgents all over the world have a pretty accurate idea of the reaction time of American counterbattery fire. How far could a healthy 18 year old run in the minute or two after firing the last rocket before the first round falls, especially when he knows what's about to happen? When you know the super expensive, super accurate American artillery won't be scattering all over the countryside I imagine reaching a safe distance wouldn't be too difficult. Add a bicycle or motorbike and his margin of safety is multipied.

This is a video of the US Army trying to swat flies with a sledgehammer. That's probably why it was made in the first place.

[theFightingSeabee]

Here a slightly more dramatic video of a counter attack on the taliban. If you can get past the demonic chanting, it gets more intense as it goes on. A lot of near hits, but looks like we just couldn't find the target.

Lucky bastards.

Wow, I totally meant to post this link with this...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7ef_1225140389

Here's a great shot of a linear fire mission.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=869_1239409908

[Bigduke6]

What Dave H said. The rocket was remote-control launched, or at least, I didn't see any insurgents beating feet as soon as the rockets shot off. I take this to mean that CLOSEST the shooters intended to be, when the US counterfire got there, was the camera.

Which as we can see rode out the bombardment just fine, and it was standing up, and there even was a short round that looked pretty close indeed.

And there had to be insurgents close enough to take the tape out of the camera. So figure in a hole somewhere nearby.

So for a bunch of teenagers with few goals in life but to hate foreigners and kill them if possible, all in all, it probably was quite an adventure. Not only did they get to see fireworks, they got a valuable lesson on what the US indirect can, and for that matter cannot do.

But the incoming shell sound is scary, I'll give it that. And great response time and accuracy.

Just gotta wonder. The shells, the guns, the gunners, recruiting and training them and getting it all to Iraq and keeping it all supplied - that's a pretty expensive way to frighten some teenagers.

[Battlefront.com]

To me the camera didn't even look manned. Me thinks Darwin's laws are starting to have an ill effect from our perspective, just as Dave H said. The worst ones are usually killed first, the really good ones tend to survive to fight another day with yet more experience. Years ago I remember some uniformed counter-insurgency experts mentioning this negative of prolonged COIN ops. The longer it goes, the smaller the better the enemy becomes even if it becomes smaller. And the slower the attrition of the leadership, the worst it becomes.

Anecdotally I remember the stories of bomb makers blowing themselves up accidentally was fairly frequent early on, then it pretty much tapered off to nothing. Darwin's laws of bomb making are really unforgiving

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Wow, I totally meant to post this link with this...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7ef_1225140389

To me this looks like a decoy position. The concentration of firepower away from the firing position of the camera man looks pretty specific. That helo, for example, wasn't looking around for something to shoot at... it went right in after the same spot the A-10 apparently hit. It might explain why they fired only one round at a time and didn't appear to care where it went.

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

Interesting little vid I thought you guys might like...don't see this much.

Am I the only one to whom this whole film looks faked? Seemingly a couple of mortar rounds land. Then a while later a bunch of artillery lands in almost the same spot as the alleged "enemy" mortar rounds. Huh? Only one artillery round lands anywhere near the camera, which in my opinion is set up on a tripod and presumably unmanned. If you look carefully, the film (or more likely tape) has been edited in several places to compress the time.

To me, this just looks like a practice mission, probably somewhere in the US in fact, that somebody taped and then put up here under false pretenses. Sorry, mord, old buddy, but I think there might be a good chance that you've been had.

Michael

[zwobot]

Why is there always this disturbing music in those otherwise interesting videos?

[JonS]

edited in several places to compress the time.

ISTM that compression occurs after virtually every round.

AIUI, the set up is that a the start of the clip Toby Taliban fires several rockets(?) from the position high-left of the frame. Subsequently someone (presumably the US, but it could be anyone with 155mm, which is approximately half the worlds armed forces) fires CB onto the location the rockets(?) were fired from. Due to the compression mentioned above it's really hard to tell much of anything about the fire mission, unless you're inclined to get into shadow analysis to try and work out elapsed time ... which I'm not.

About the only thing I could make out of it was that the people firing the CB mission were off with their target grid, by about 100m. Also, it seemed like there was only one gun firing the CB mission. That'd make sense if they were doing a "destruction" mission (and it would also explain the pauses between rounds), but that mission type requires good observation of the target, which appears to be lacking.

OTOH, shells in flight and impacting always sound sexah. So that's all to the good

[Yair Iny]

Michael: I don't think it's fake. It looks like it might have been made as a training video for insurgents, in the sense of, this is what you can expect the enemy to do, so fire and get the hell out of there.

[purpheart23]

NM, not worth the waste of time.

[Battlefront.com]

Remember, Jihadists have short attention spans just like the rest of today's youth. The video of the incoming rounds was edited so they didn't lose their audience

I agree with Jon that the response seems to be almost casual. My guess is that they know the threat is basically over and all they're trying to do is make a point and perhaps knock out the launcher (which is low value anyway).

Steve

[travcrouse]

How long would it typically take for a counter battery mission to respond to these knuckleheads? The Arabic script in the middle of the clip says "And after 10 minutes"... That's BS right?

[theFightingSeabee]

I think Mord's video is real. These guys love to film themselves attacking Americans, makes them feel powerful having people see them attacking the most powerful country on Earth. I think the counter attack started and they ran away, leaving the camera behind. If that camera was a person, I think he would at least have been injured.

In the other video, it's hard to tell what's going on. It's true that they could have been a decoy team, but I think the more likely explanation is that there are several small teams, all firing mortars and anything else they have available from different positions. The air support could very well have been hitting additional mortars, or a squad of infantry. The incoming was very close, though. I would assume that since the rounds were impacting on the far side of the hill (from the counter-battery perspective), that they were'nt really able to adjust accurately enough to hit the enemy mortar. The slow firing of the taliban could have been a suppression mission, just keeping the NATO forces' heads down while the main force moved or attacked.

[Mord]

Am I the only one to whom this whole film looks faked? Seemingly a couple of mortar rounds land. Then a while later a bunch of artillery lands in almost the same spot as the alleged "enemy" mortar rounds. Huh? Only one artillery round lands anywhere near the camera, which in my opinion is set up on a tripod and presumably unmanned. If you look carefully, the film (or more likely tape) has been edited in several places to compress the time.

To me, this just looks like a practice mission, probably somewhere in the US in fact, that somebody taped and then put up here under false pretenses. Sorry, mord, old buddy, but I think there might be a good chance that you've been had.

Michael

Yeah, I agree the camera is unmanned, mainly because I think we would've heard the sound of somebody filling their britches, on at least one of those rounds.

As for the rest I can't say...I got that in an email from military.com. The main thing that I found cool was actually seeing the video from the perspective of incoming...assuming it's from the enemy perspective...they say it was captured content...but who knows?

Regardless, I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to be standing there!

Mord.

[slug88]

Wow, I totally meant to post this link with this...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7ef_1225140389

Hmmmm, I noticed something very interesting in that video. The terrorists are speaking Russian. At about 6:50, you can very distinctly hear one of them say, "watch, he's about to shoot", right as the Apache begins firing. Perhaps veterans from Chechnya?

[Clavicula_Nox]

Hmmmm, I noticed something very interesting in that video. The terrorists are speaking Russian. At about 6:50, you can very distinctly hear one of them say, "watch, he's about to shoot", right as the Apache begins firing. Perhaps veterans from Chechnya?

Most likely; we aren't just fighting Middle Easterners there.

To me, this just looks like a practice mission, probably somewhere in the US in fact

No one is going to be running around on the range prior to a practice firing.

How long would it typically take for a counter battery mission to respond to these knuckleheads? The Arabic script in the middle of the clip says "And after 10 minutes"... That's BS right?

Depends on the responding battery's activity and the position of their projectile detector thingys (I forget the name), but generally it's around 1-3 minutes +/- a few minutes. I can't recall out-going ever taking 10 minutes to respond, unless there was some damage to equipment.

[Battlefront.com]

I'm sure that's not a practice video. They wouldn't have allowed the bush to get in the way, they wouldn't have put a Jihadist logo in the upper right corner, and they would have pumped a lot more rounds onto the target. Artillery guys are such show offs

Steve