No Place Safe For Terrorists
March 14, 2009
This video was taken inside the cockpit of an A-10 by the pilot. It was a night view. What you see is from 9700 feet away (almost two miles). Four terrorists are walking along a street with no clue that someone is watching them…….. from almost 2 miles away. The A-10 fired a 30 mm cannon WITHOUT injuring the dog nearby who escaped unharmed.
You can see the gun camera shake a bit as the pilot fires; then count about 4 seconds for the rounds to travel 2 miles. Every tenth round is a tracer, so the bullets you actually see are every tenth; they are getting hit with hundreds of rounds, but the dog (in the upper right hand portion of your screen) is unscathed, in fact, you’ll noticed he senses the incoming before the terrorists even knew what hit them.
Muzzle velocity on the 30mm cannon is 2430 feet per second. The result is that four fewer guys won’t be blowing up women and children anymore!
March 14, 2009 at 9:10 AM
I don’t think this is from an A-10 firing its GAU 8 but more like an Apache firing its chain gun. The rate of fire is too low for the A-10′s cannon.
March 14, 2009 at 9:13 AM
You may be correct.
I posted this with the information I was given.
Thank you for your insights.
March 14, 2009 at 9:17 AM
Dollars to donuts that this is footage from an Apache.
March 14, 2009 at 9:18 AM
Talk about overkill! One of those rounds will rip a truck in half. A quarter-second burst will turn a main battle tank into a smoking ruin. I reckon tens of thousands of dollars of ammoXXXXordnance were expended on those terrorists when a dollar or two of rifle bullets would have done as well. But it is still cheap at the price.
And it probably made the pilot’s day to actually kill some enemy.
There are some A10 videos on Strategy Page. I’ll hunt up a good one for you.
March 14, 2009 at 4:43 PM
Greetings:
That second burst is the mark a of a true craftsmen.
March 14, 2009 at 8:29 PM
Gee, ‘only’ an Apache. Really, it is a much better use of taxpayer dollars than the main gun of an A-10. Come to think of it, the (nearly?) stationary position of the gun platform is much more consistent with a rotocraft than a fixed-wing plane.
Oh, here’s that A10 vid: http://www.strategypage.com/military_videos/military_photos_2007162453.aspx
Note that it starts with the plane on the ground, followed by takeoff, and ends with a landing with the flaps all the way down. Notice that the nosegear is off-center; that main gun is on the centerline.
May 18, 2009 at 7:46 PM
From soundtrack, rate of fire in the range of 1000 rpm, not out of line with a 30 mm single barrel cannon
If it was the nose mounted gating gun of an A 10, I would suspect the noise would be more like a buzz than a discrete bang bang.
Rounds seen would then not be tracer at 1 in 10 as i see maybe 25 in first salvo indicating a required rate of fire of about 5000 rpm,
Appeas to be quite clear that each ( visible )round as it hits does majour dammage, explosive shell rater than solid bullet
Likely reason to use 30 mm cannon over gatling, accuracy at long range.