Friday, September 30, 2011

"Help! Help! I need you!"

Troops in contact in Afghanistan calling for gun runs from an A-10 pilot. You can hear the seriousness in their voices, the chatter of machine guns in the background, and the pilot's ground proximity warning system telling him "Altitude, altitude". . . "Pull up! Pull up" as he's walking 30mm rounds from the GAU-8 Avenger gun in the nose onto the target while calmly plummeting straight towards the ground. Simply awesome.




The video doesn't include the aftermath, or whether the fires effectively stopped the fight or not, but it does give you an idea of how much caution goes into using such a weapon system on the ground. Nobody wants HE rounds hitting the wrong target.

4 comments:

Broken Andy said...

Holy crap that will get your heart rate up. Why aren't they using AC-130's for close ground support like that?

Unknown said...

I think the AC-130s are reserved for SOF.

Drew said...

hahhaa possibly the only time you'll hear a solider say "COME ON WITH IT BABY GIVE IT TO ME!" in the field. amazing how many time they go over the game plan. hells yeah! this made my friday.

Unknown said...

As much as you have to respect the troops getting shot at on the ground, I have to give respect to the pilot who's flying towards the ground at high speed while remaining calm. No doubt he was getting shot at as well. Brave dudes.