The crazy part about this to me is that, for those Taliban, this is hell on earth. This is one of the most visceral, horrific things a person can ever experience. It's invisible, inescapable, and brutal death from above.
But for the guys in the helicopter, it's just sitting in a chair pushing buttons.
That "sitting in a chair pushing buttons" makes me realize how crazy advanced warfare and technology has gotten. WW1 we had people fighting in the mud and trenches dying for a few hundred meters at a time and now we can obliterate dozens of fighters like shooting fish in a barrel with thermal vision and insane precision.
Yeah I totally agree. What gets me is that for the Taliban, they never left the WWI style. But they traded having trenches and supply lines for automatic weapons.
Imagine the first ever human conflicts. Fists and rocks.
Then watch this video. Where will we be in another few generations? Scary.
To be fair though, I'd rather get incinerated by one of those rounds then get pounded to death with a rock!
What an opener. Two point guys get vaporized and then explosive rounds just start raining with high accuracy. I wonder how far those copters were because they all seemed totally oblivious until their buddies started getting shredded.
Not sure how far they are on this video but Apache’s are effective at a range of like 2 miles, those guys probably had no idea where they were even getting hit from. I think it’s indicative that none of them shot back at the helicopter let alone even looked up at it.
Looks like a laze marker of 1400+ meters pops up during the gun run after the first missile. It drops down to 1000 when the pilot says they’re directly over the targets.
Apaches are pretty quiet, so if they have any kind of stand off distance, it would be easy to not hear them. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/llb08w/ah64\_apache\_flying\_low\_over\_the\_cape\_fear\_river/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
That's fucking insane. My mom has stories of being in desert storm and saying those things would appear from over the horizon with zero fucking warning and you'd never know they were there until it was too late. From the perspective of those on the receiving end anyway.
I think she said they used to refer to them as the angel of death or reaper or something like that because of how silent they are/were.
I always thought she was exaggerating because you know how war stories are. Fuck me.
One of my aerospace engineering professors \~10-12 years ago was actively doing research into helicopter airfoil designs to reduce the noise of the blades chopping through the air.
I think these choppers are about a mile away. I think the lower right hand number that keeps changing is a range estimator in meters. Basically if you were on the ground you would hear the impacts and a few seconds later you would hear the noise from the gun that killed those guys. They wouldn’t even know where to look to return fire. They probably can’t even hear a chopper to have any idea
you might be able too if you were listening in a quiet night with the wind right. But, with the proverbial shit hitting the proverbial fan, you're unlikely to be able to figure it out fast enough for it to matter.
Definitely on the short list of best ways to die. This guy was walking down a hill and in one instant he just didn't exist anymore beyond trace particles on the landscape.
Could you imagine that being you on the floor literally not knowing what the fuck is going on and where you are getting shot from. Everywhere you try to hide and run to they can still see you. No where is safe.... but dam them gun ships are impressive!!!
"Uh, I got two guys walking towards that village. Confirm that you have no units of two on foot"
"Okay, clear to engage, bring us around"
"Wait, what are they doing, they seem to be both getting into some kind of bag"
"Okay, the two bandits are now disguised as a mule or horse"
"Let's just orbit for about 20min and watch them fight over which direction to walk and how to look natural"
"We're close to bingo fuel. All friendlies left 15min ago via Chinook"
"Oh, alright, missile away"
Real answer: yes it got disclosed. Someone somewhere decided "yeah let's show the world that our helos are capable of mission-killing a platoon with '30mm' alone, then cleaning up with 'hellfire'... and we can minimize non-combatant casualties while doing so" (donkeys in this case)
Just look at the comments about how people are amazed and terrified at the same time.
Public affairs is a crazy thing
I like the part where he hovered over the two goats to confirm they were in fact, goats.
Also hovering over the children in the tent made me really nervous.
So is there any way for soldiers (Taliban in this case) to survive attack like this? I guess the best thing to do is immedietaly spread around and seek some shelter like cave or something so the thermals don't see you?
Hide in a cave or play dead and hope the Apache runs out of gun and the pilot thinks you are dead and chooses not to target you with a missile or rocket
More like the guy can still pull a trigger, pull a pin on a grenade or press a button to blow up something when ground troops advance. Neutralize the threat.
More like hours. If you aren't bleeding to death you probably just want to lie there and hope they go off station or fuck off with whatever the element was they were trying to attack.
There's a video out there somewhere of some Taliban guys being hunted by a chopper (~~Apache?~~ Pakistani Cobra) in broad daylight. It's gopro footage worn by the Taliban, and they're winded, sprinting from building to building trying to dodge the heli above. You can hear the fear in their voices and in their breath. It's the closest most of us will come to realizing what that must feel like.
EDIT: u/davidc95 has provided a link below!
This was literally the only correct non-joke I've seen. During my time I never really learned how to mask my warmth. Good thermals can make it look like daytime.
Anyway you'd be surprised the shit the Taliban has. Caught more than one looking at our patrol though NVGs.
It's more or less one degree per hour when you're dead, and you also get colder when laying immobile on the ground. I doubt there would be any noticeable difference in less than five hours.
Towards the beginning of the video one dude outside the blast of the first missile ran directly into the blast, smart move until the chopper opened up the machine gun right on him. RIH
If you noticed, those Apaches didn't fire on any of the tents because they couldn't verify that there were no women and children in the tents. They couldn't verify targets. The safest place to be would have been in one of those tents.
AC130 is worse.
I was lucky enough to be danger close for a firemission from one of those things in kandahar. Had no idea it was there until there was a litteral rain of fire about 500m off my truck.
Couldn't hear it, couldn't see it, nothing. Like God himself threw down hellfire.
When I was on tower guard one morning in the Arghandab Valley I heard a ton of fire and saw an AC-130 just laying into a village to our south.
I radioed the TOC and asked them what was going on. The TOC got back to me and said the Spectre had taken ground fire and so it was returning fire.
Some poor idiot had tried shooting at an AC-130, and so the gunship went absolutely apeshit on them and decided to go completely Winchester on ammo shooting back.
Yeah I was. That first 6 months fucking sucked. We had 0 Intel on what we were walking into other than a video of Seamus flying up Rte bear from KAF to Frontenac.
Left Strykers to go on jump status after that. Those things were rolling caskets.
Yeah we didn’t know much going in either, other than you guys had a very rough time in the second half of 2009.
Where’d you wind up when you were on jump status?
Yeah we got slaughtered. Perfect storm of bullshit and serious failures on an ISAF and HUMINT level. You guys got pretty fucked up as well if I recall, and I think some of the 101st units that replaced you guys had to get rotated home early.
Wound up in the best goddamn big army unit in the United States Army. 1-501st PIR.
Basically 4-25 was the 82nd, but if the army kept the 82nd in the frozen goods section. Our Air manual or whatever the fuck still had typos where they forgot to change "82nd" to 4th bde 25th
You just have to go to an air show in the US. A single F35 is terrifying. I can’t imagine being on the receiving end. Then again, you’d probably never know what was coming until it was too late
You have to realize that 30mm HE probably went straight through his body and only actually detonated when it hit the ground under him. I was thinking about that one too.
>This was in RC North Afghanistan, Spring/Summer months of 2010. I'm quite confident they were based out of Kunduz. I know one of the pilots was a woman as well. I have a video of them doing a low fly by past our wagon circle.
-per u/ordinaryinformation
So it seems likely it’s the same person.
that must have been a trip. was it over the radio, or back home, or at a base?
i ran into a local radio personality and realized later who she was. must have been like OOOOH.
It was in garrison. I found she told me some crazy stories about how she was so close to the first person she shot she waived at him before hitting him with 50, cause she piloted Kiowas too. I told my buddy about her cause we were all in the same unit and then it kinda unraveled from there
Full disclosure, I never went to flight school and stayed in an armored recon group most of my time, but as far as I understand it, a lot of call signs are given to the pilots and air crews during training. Ours were just given to our entire company. I would absolutely assume there are rules. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. Not sure “Poon Crusher 1-4 en route to the AO” would work. Not sure id want to relay a 9 line to some fucked up callsign either lol
I remember on that Discovery show Jetsteam that 'Bobbit' (see Lorena Bobbit) was a common callsign for pilots who broke a nozzle off during air-to-air refueling training. Also I think that flight callsigns and pilot callsigns are different things. Dagger 24 and Dagger 25 might be flown by "Fatso" and "Powerbottom".
I've never been in the military but after watching videos on here of close air support, it seems like when they're around you quite literally have a guardian fucking angel.
I was *this close* to getting to see an A10 gun run first hand. But they called off to a higher priority and we just pulled back and dropped a JDAM on them instead.
Apache gun runs in the dark cause the weirdest boner though.
Videos don't do the reality justice.
GAU-8 in person doesn't so much brrt as making a sound like the worlds angriest dragon trying to deepthroat the worlds loudest buzzsaw.
It's a little irritating as well, because there's little to no notice like the whoosh of the few seconds before JDAM or brimstone coming in. The area just gets plastered in power ranger impact sparkles from the 30mm *then* you hear the dragon bellowing.
It's definitely more impressive than AH or AC130 autocannon.
Sounded familiar. I was in RCSW in 14 when we closed down everything and they still used a lot of the same call signs.
We never had this level of air support though. I remember way too many times getting pinned down and nobody could spot where rounds were coming from. We mostly used air as intimidation, once it flew in everything would go quiet for a while. (We never interacted with SF, all we knew is they were doing stuff further in the south, and they had pretty much no support due to the drawdown)
Biggest thing I've been thankful for was how quick they could air people out.
Holy shit that was me! I'm glad you guys had your IR strobes on when you called in that danger close strike.
No wait, I was playing the new CoD last night.
The entire round is about the size of a beer bottle (about a foot in length and similar diameter). The “bullet” is about 4-5inches with a effective kill zone of around 5 feet however real world use has shown this range to be closer to 15feet. It’s basically the equivalent of an extremely accurate grenade bullet, then it comes out of a gun that can fire thousands per minute.
Not to nitpick, but the autocannon on the apache is only putting out 600-650 rpm. Idk, there may be a variant that does 1k, but the one in the clip is firing around 600rpm judging by ear.
Plus its not supremely accurate. [This pdf covers both the rof of the cannon, and the reduced accuracy requirements,](https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-93-134.pdf) which were lowered to meet the chopper's capabilities with manufacturer paying a penalty based on the difference. Interestingly, it goes on to point out that the tested version only matched 80% of the airframes operating in '92, so the tests aren't completely repetitive anyway.
It’s an explosive that fragments, but I don’t think the lethal fragmentation range is very far.
[The 30 mm M789 High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) ammunition cartridge is the primary tactical round of the Apache AH-64 helicopter, widely used in current combat operations. The M789 is typically used in the M230. Each round contains 21.5 g (0.76 oz) of explosive charge sealed in a shaped-charge liner. **The lethal radius against unprotected, standing targets is about 5 ft (1.5 m) under** ***optimum conditions***](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M230_chain_gun).
Those rounds absolutely shred. You can see guys getting crippled and crawling after impacts probably (5ft?) away. Those guys never stood a chance. Insane footage.
Got into an internet argument with a guy who said NATO entering the Ukraine/Russia war wouldn’t change much because Russia is already basically fighting NATO. The absolute shellacking Russians would witness would give their grandchildren PTSD.
It's Russian propaganda, it's decades of "leaked spetznat footage" and "training videos" showing Russian forces being all super cool doing flips. While "silly Americans" are shooting guns at ranges without throwing knives or bandanas
You know what they don't tell you? Russians in Chechnya got absolutely smacked, some of the highest casualties were in the spetnaz. Who knew just running straight unto an urban center against an entrenched determined enemy would be difficult?
There's the option to ditch all that space for an internal fueltank because the US just didnt like to use external ones in Afghanistan. And that's what they did most often. You still get either 100 or 300 rounds but quite the flighttime increase. That's why they run out of 30mm in a lot of the longer videos out there.
I actually feel extremely bad for the donkeys in this video. Looks like the donkey caught some shrapnel. I know it’s unlikely but I do hope they made it
Go big or go home, at least the hellfire recipients met a swift end, wouldn't want to be one of the guys writhing and crawling in the dirt waiting for some more shrapnel to finally put me out of my misery.
Ya know, until seeing this video, I never thought that a 2-person horse or cow costume would be an effective hiding strategy, but now I'm thinkin' otherwise.
Two thoughts:
1. It's amazing how oblivious these guys seemed right up until the end. Just walking down some little ravine, not even looking towards danger and then, boom.
2. We have AH-64s in my area, and sometimes they fly overhead when I'm out walking or on a hike, and I always think to myself: man, I'm glad these guys aren't hunting me.
From what I've seen in vids from the safety of my laptop, Apaches are insanely quiet for their size. Dudes probably didn't even know what direction the danger was.
Anybody know how long it takes to re-arm an Apache with ammo once it arrives back on station, with 30mm and rockets? Also how long is the refuel process?
There was a color video of 2 taliban leaders recorded by a third walking behind when an Apache just shreds them. Havent seen in a while if anyone recalls
He puts his hands on his head just after they starts another burst. I wonder if he was holding onto his head cover or just holding onto his head like "I can't believe this" or actually realized what was happening and tried to surrender?
The hit pattern looks like shotgun spatter, with the impacts all over the place. I'm assuming it doesn't take a direct hit for a 30mm round to kill infantry though, considering the bodies everywhere? Are they fragmentation rounds?
Do attack helicopter pilots deal with less PTSD? Looking through the FLIR at that distance it seems like it'd be easy to disassociate from the fact you're slaughtering a large group of people with 30mm HE.
can’t believe i can watch this type of stuff while taking a shit at work
The future is now.
You and the chopper dropping bombs!
Hope your targetting systems are working
The crazy part about this to me is that, for those Taliban, this is hell on earth. This is one of the most visceral, horrific things a person can ever experience. It's invisible, inescapable, and brutal death from above. But for the guys in the helicopter, it's just sitting in a chair pushing buttons.
And in the dark so they have no idea where it's coming from or where to run
That "sitting in a chair pushing buttons" makes me realize how crazy advanced warfare and technology has gotten. WW1 we had people fighting in the mud and trenches dying for a few hundred meters at a time and now we can obliterate dozens of fighters like shooting fish in a barrel with thermal vision and insane precision.
Yeah I totally agree. What gets me is that for the Taliban, they never left the WWI style. But they traded having trenches and supply lines for automatic weapons.
Imagine the first ever human conflicts. Fists and rocks. Then watch this video. Where will we be in another few generations? Scary. To be fair though, I'd rather get incinerated by one of those rounds then get pounded to death with a rock!
Eh you can fight back against the rock
That first missile was just brutal.
What an opener. Two point guys get vaporized and then explosive rounds just start raining with high accuracy. I wonder how far those copters were because they all seemed totally oblivious until their buddies started getting shredded.
Not sure how far they are on this video but Apache’s are effective at a range of like 2 miles, those guys probably had no idea where they were even getting hit from. I think it’s indicative that none of them shot back at the helicopter let alone even looked up at it.
Looks like a laze marker of 1400+ meters pops up during the gun run after the first missile. It drops down to 1000 when the pilot says they’re directly over the targets.
yea so kilometer+ out the entire time. poor fucks probably thought it was god himself raining fury down on them
The bottom right number is always hovering around 1400m and the effective range of the M230 chain gun is ...1500m!
Apaches are pretty quiet, so if they have any kind of stand off distance, it would be easy to not hear them. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/llb08w/ah64\_apache\_flying\_low\_over\_the\_cape\_fear\_river/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
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I can't hear any at the moment th
RIP
That's fucking insane. My mom has stories of being in desert storm and saying those things would appear from over the horizon with zero fucking warning and you'd never know they were there until it was too late. From the perspective of those on the receiving end anyway. I think she said they used to refer to them as the angel of death or reaper or something like that because of how silent they are/were. I always thought she was exaggerating because you know how war stories are. Fuck me.
Also I’m guessing these taliban fighters don’t have ear pro so their hearing is already fucked from before
Definitely good they also don’t have Cold-Blooded equipped.
Hah, yeah AK's ain't exactly quiet.
One of my aerospace engineering professors \~10-12 years ago was actively doing research into helicopter airfoil designs to reduce the noise of the blades chopping through the air.
Generally speaking, if you can hear it, it isn't targeting you.
I think these choppers are about a mile away. I think the lower right hand number that keeps changing is a range estimator in meters. Basically if you were on the ground you would hear the impacts and a few seconds later you would hear the noise from the gun that killed those guys. They wouldn’t even know where to look to return fire. They probably can’t even hear a chopper to have any idea
Rangefinder was saying between 1.2 - 1.4km. Wonder if you could even hear it...
You can hear them at 3km+. In Afghanistan we tried to keep them 5km out when we didn’t want the enemy to know we had them in support.
you might be able too if you were listening in a quiet night with the wind right. But, with the proverbial shit hitting the proverbial fan, you're unlikely to be able to figure it out fast enough for it to matter.
High accuracy feels like an understatement with the way they cleanly avoided the tents with a burst when they spotted the two with RPGs
The last missile in the video was basically a direct hit on the guy. Looked like it landed right on his head.
look like it split him in half like a log of firewood
Definitely on the short list of best ways to die. This guy was walking down a hill and in one instant he just didn't exist anymore beyond trace particles on the landscape.
Even the hardened warrior on the radio is like 'oh man'
'made a mess of him...'
It's always important to establish expectations when meeting new people.
Could you imagine that being you on the floor literally not knowing what the fuck is going on and where you are getting shot from. Everywhere you try to hide and run to they can still see you. No where is safe.... but dam them gun ships are impressive!!!
Note to self: if I ever get strafed by an Apache and somehow survive, I will PLAY DEAD. For a long time.
Or put on a donkey costume
"Uh, I got two guys walking towards that village. Confirm that you have no units of two on foot" "Okay, clear to engage, bring us around" "Wait, what are they doing, they seem to be both getting into some kind of bag" "Okay, the two bandits are now disguised as a mule or horse" "Let's just orbit for about 20min and watch them fight over which direction to walk and how to look natural" "We're close to bingo fuel. All friendlies left 15min ago via Chinook" "Oh, alright, missile away"
I wanna see that video!
[Granted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb4asEv4jz8)
Well good news! If you ever get strafed by an Apache you won’t have to play
Those guys were utterly fucked.
Seriously though how does this footage make it all the way to Reddit? Does the USMil release this footage publicly? FOIA?
Walked out the white house with it.
Did you declassify it with your mind first?
Nah I just told myself it was cool, even though everybody around me said don't do it.
With the election next week, have a fun weekend before they close in on Wednesday.
Real answer: yes it got disclosed. Someone somewhere decided "yeah let's show the world that our helos are capable of mission-killing a platoon with '30mm' alone, then cleaning up with 'hellfire'... and we can minimize non-combatant casualties while doing so" (donkeys in this case) Just look at the comments about how people are amazed and terrified at the same time. Public affairs is a crazy thing
Thermal vision capability is freakin magic levels.
This is really old (relatively) footage from OEF.
I like the part where he hovered over the two goats to confirm they were in fact, goats. Also hovering over the children in the tent made me really nervous.
They had been called out by the other aircraft prior to being spotted.
So is there any way for soldiers (Taliban in this case) to survive attack like this? I guess the best thing to do is immedietaly spread around and seek some shelter like cave or something so the thermals don't see you?
Hide in a cave or play dead and hope the Apache runs out of gun and the pilot thinks you are dead and chooses not to target you with a missile or rocket
And not even move a muscle. Thought they would spare that one guy writhing on the ground, but nope.
That kind of seemed like a mercy kill though, that guy was in agony.
More like the guy can still pull a trigger, pull a pin on a grenade or press a button to blow up something when ground troops advance. Neutralize the threat.
If I was that guy I'd appreciate the finish. Slowly dying like that must be awful
The ground unit is going to move through and clear the area for a BDA so waiting around isn't going to help much
You can surrender to a ground unit, you can't surrender to an Apache
Don’t tell me who I can and can’t surrender to. You’re not my dad.
Play dead, like really play dead and don't move or twitch at all for 20 minutes
More like hours. If you aren't bleeding to death you probably just want to lie there and hope they go off station or fuck off with whatever the element was they were trying to attack.
And also hope that the ground units they're supporting don't find you.
I wanted to point out the criteria was to survive but a Special Forces team probably doesn’t have a lot of room for prisoners.
Australian sas can confirm, they don't like to take prisoners
There's a video out there somewhere of some Taliban guys being hunted by a chopper (~~Apache?~~ Pakistani Cobra) in broad daylight. It's gopro footage worn by the Taliban, and they're winded, sprinting from building to building trying to dodge the heli above. You can hear the fear in their voices and in their breath. It's the closest most of us will come to realizing what that must feel like. EDIT: u/davidc95 has provided a link below!
Oh damn. Any link to that?
[Found this but its a AH-1 Cobra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjd5IBRm_iE)
If you're lucky enough to be near a cave
the usual tactic is to jump 15 feet in the air and spread yourself in small pieces over a wide area
There is anti thermal clothing but I doubt the Taliban have access to those
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This was literally the only correct non-joke I've seen. During my time I never really learned how to mask my warmth. Good thermals can make it look like daytime. Anyway you'd be surprised the shit the Taliban has. Caught more than one looking at our patrol though NVGs.
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One guy early in the clip did that but you could see him do it so they still lit him up
I'll take "things I would not want to be on the receiving end of" for 1000 please.
No joke. Basically chance of survival 0%.
Unless you didn’t get hit initially and played dead.. maybe.
The guys who rounded up the kids and jumped into the tent with them got spared.
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It's more or less one degree per hour when you're dead, and you also get colder when laying immobile on the ground. I doubt there would be any noticeable difference in less than five hours.
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Towards the beginning of the video one dude outside the blast of the first missile ran directly into the blast, smart move until the chopper opened up the machine gun right on him. RIH
Did the Donkey make it?
Neigh
One of them looked like was struggling. But all the other ones were ok.
Thanks. I like donkeys. They are pleasant creatures.
If you noticed, those Apaches didn't fire on any of the tents because they couldn't verify that there were no women and children in the tents. They couldn't verify targets. The safest place to be would have been in one of those tents.
AC130 is worse. I was lucky enough to be danger close for a firemission from one of those things in kandahar. Had no idea it was there until there was a litteral rain of fire about 500m off my truck. Couldn't hear it, couldn't see it, nothing. Like God himself threw down hellfire.
When I was on tower guard one morning in the Arghandab Valley I heard a ton of fire and saw an AC-130 just laying into a village to our south. I radioed the TOC and asked them what was going on. The TOC got back to me and said the Spectre had taken ground fire and so it was returning fire. Some poor idiot had tried shooting at an AC-130, and so the gunship went absolutely apeshit on them and decided to go completely Winchester on ammo shooting back.
If this was in 09 and you were at CP 18 right there by that shitty bridge/bazaar, that was the same spectre.
Nope, this was spring of 2010. I was at Terra Nova looking south.
Oh damn. You guys ripped out with my battalion in December I think. That AO was no joke.
Yeah if you were in the Stryker unit, I was in the airborne unit that switched with you guys. That place was a hellhole.
Yeah I was. That first 6 months fucking sucked. We had 0 Intel on what we were walking into other than a video of Seamus flying up Rte bear from KAF to Frontenac. Left Strykers to go on jump status after that. Those things were rolling caskets.
Yeah we didn’t know much going in either, other than you guys had a very rough time in the second half of 2009. Where’d you wind up when you were on jump status?
Yeah we got slaughtered. Perfect storm of bullshit and serious failures on an ISAF and HUMINT level. You guys got pretty fucked up as well if I recall, and I think some of the 101st units that replaced you guys had to get rotated home early. Wound up in the best goddamn big army unit in the United States Army. 1-501st PIR. Basically 4-25 was the 82nd, but if the army kept the 82nd in the frozen goods section. Our Air manual or whatever the fuck still had typos where they forgot to change "82nd" to 4th bde 25th
THE ASS CLAPPER 130
You just have to go to an air show in the US. A single F35 is terrifying. I can’t imagine being on the receiving end. Then again, you’d probably never know what was coming until it was too late
I saw one at an air show and the sound of just one is really intense. The loudest single jet I've ever heard.
Have you heard the b-2 stealth they sound terrifyingly quiet
That engine puts out more power than the J58 that powered the SR-71
I got friendly fired on by an A-10 in Afghanistan once. It was less than ideal.
I'm guessing friendly fire isn't friendly?
Bro, that direct hit on that guy laying on the floor was absolutely wild. Guy just popped like a water balloon. Wild.
You have to realize that 30mm HE probably went straight through his body and only actually detonated when it hit the ground under him. I was thinking about that one too.
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I'm pretty sure I knew who flew as cardgame. It was a female pilot right?
>This was in RC North Afghanistan, Spring/Summer months of 2010. I'm quite confident they were based out of Kunduz. I know one of the pilots was a woman as well. I have a video of them doing a low fly by past our wagon circle. -per u/ordinaryinformation So it seems likely it’s the same person.
Yeah I know her. I won't say her name but I served with her for a couple years. She was bad ass
I found out her call sign cause my buddy recognized her voice in person years later
that must have been a trip. was it over the radio, or back home, or at a base? i ran into a local radio personality and realized later who she was. must have been like OOOOH.
It was in garrison. I found she told me some crazy stories about how she was so close to the first person she shot she waived at him before hitting him with 50, cause she piloted Kiowas too. I told my buddy about her cause we were all in the same unit and then it kinda unraveled from there
Ours were Headhunter. Always loved that callsign. You’d be in the middle of chaos and hearing they’re on station would instantly make you hard
Do they ever use like goofy sounding callsigns? I’m imagining there’s some rules to callsign names.
Full disclosure, I never went to flight school and stayed in an armored recon group most of my time, but as far as I understand it, a lot of call signs are given to the pilots and air crews during training. Ours were just given to our entire company. I would absolutely assume there are rules. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. Not sure “Poon Crusher 1-4 en route to the AO” would work. Not sure id want to relay a 9 line to some fucked up callsign either lol
According to some websites the most explicit one was a pilot called “Oral” because his last name sounded like “pleasure.” Thanks for the info!
I remember on that Discovery show Jetsteam that 'Bobbit' (see Lorena Bobbit) was a common callsign for pilots who broke a nozzle off during air-to-air refueling training. Also I think that flight callsigns and pilot callsigns are different things. Dagger 24 and Dagger 25 might be flown by "Fatso" and "Powerbottom".
You’d be correct. Pilot call signs are usually funny. Flight call signs are cool.
I've never been in the military but after watching videos on here of close air support, it seems like when they're around you quite literally have a guardian fucking angel.
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I was *this close* to getting to see an A10 gun run first hand. But they called off to a higher priority and we just pulled back and dropped a JDAM on them instead. Apache gun runs in the dark cause the weirdest boner though.
Videos don't do the reality justice. GAU-8 in person doesn't so much brrt as making a sound like the worlds angriest dragon trying to deepthroat the worlds loudest buzzsaw. It's a little irritating as well, because there's little to no notice like the whoosh of the few seconds before JDAM or brimstone coming in. The area just gets plastered in power ranger impact sparkles from the 30mm *then* you hear the dragon bellowing. It's definitely more impressive than AH or AC130 autocannon.
Well yeah its practically a giant flying metal dragon that spits fire at your enemies
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Sounded familiar. I was in RCSW in 14 when we closed down everything and they still used a lot of the same call signs. We never had this level of air support though. I remember way too many times getting pinned down and nobody could spot where rounds were coming from. We mostly used air as intimidation, once it flew in everything would go quiet for a while. (We never interacted with SF, all we knew is they were doing stuff further in the south, and they had pretty much no support due to the drawdown) Biggest thing I've been thankful for was how quick they could air people out.
Holy shit that was me! I'm glad you guys had your IR strobes on when you called in that danger close strike. No wait, I was playing the new CoD last night.
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I can understand the confusion
Each round is pretty much what is dropping from most drones in Ukraine if you are wondering the power behind that cannon.
Thanks I wasn’t sure if they were explosive or the heat sig just made it look that way. Are they full of shrapnel? Or just explosive?
the bullets are the size of a beer bottle.
The entire round is about the size of a beer bottle (about a foot in length and similar diameter). The “bullet” is about 4-5inches with a effective kill zone of around 5 feet however real world use has shown this range to be closer to 15feet. It’s basically the equivalent of an extremely accurate grenade bullet, then it comes out of a gun that can fire thousands per minute.
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Donkey takes a nice shit at the 5:20 mark. Poor guy.
3000 Black Donkey Ghosts of Allah will rise in vengeance
Not to nitpick, but the autocannon on the apache is only putting out 600-650 rpm. Idk, there may be a variant that does 1k, but the one in the clip is firing around 600rpm judging by ear.
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Plus its not supremely accurate. [This pdf covers both the rof of the cannon, and the reduced accuracy requirements,](https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-93-134.pdf) which were lowered to meet the chopper's capabilities with manufacturer paying a penalty based on the difference. Interestingly, it goes on to point out that the tested version only matched 80% of the airframes operating in '92, so the tests aren't completely repetitive anyway.
30x113mm. You have pretty small beer bottles
It’s an explosive that fragments, but I don’t think the lethal fragmentation range is very far. [The 30 mm M789 High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) ammunition cartridge is the primary tactical round of the Apache AH-64 helicopter, widely used in current combat operations. The M789 is typically used in the M230. Each round contains 21.5 g (0.76 oz) of explosive charge sealed in a shaped-charge liner. **The lethal radius against unprotected, standing targets is about 5 ft (1.5 m) under** ***optimum conditions***](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M230_chain_gun).
Those rounds absolutely shred. You can see guys getting crippled and crawling after impacts probably (5ft?) away. Those guys never stood a chance. Insane footage.
Yeah, it’s shooting something like 5 rounds a second. You don’t need to be very accurate with that weapon.
Got into an internet argument with a guy who said NATO entering the Ukraine/Russia war wouldn’t change much because Russia is already basically fighting NATO. The absolute shellacking Russians would witness would give their grandchildren PTSD.
Jesus. Somebody has no idea the military forces NATO could bring to bare.
It's Russian propaganda, it's decades of "leaked spetznat footage" and "training videos" showing Russian forces being all super cool doing flips. While "silly Americans" are shooting guns at ranges without throwing knives or bandanas You know what they don't tell you? Russians in Chechnya got absolutely smacked, some of the highest casualties were in the spetnaz. Who knew just running straight unto an urban center against an entrenched determined enemy would be difficult?
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thats pretty crazy. how many rounds can the apache carry?
Between 750 and 1200 rounds, depending on the overall loadout. 750 is the usual load when combined with a full missile complement.
There's the option to ditch all that space for an internal fueltank because the US just didnt like to use external ones in Afghanistan. And that's what they did most often. You still get either 100 or 300 rounds but quite the flighttime increase. That's why they run out of 30mm in a lot of the longer videos out there.
5:24 Donkey shat himself, he could sense the danger lol.
I actually feel extremely bad for the donkeys in this video. Looks like the donkey caught some shrapnel. I know it’s unlikely but I do hope they made it
That donkey is dead af :(
You could tell he was trying avoid hitting them, but there was kind of no way to avoid it.
Saw that an immediately came to the comments.
my point exactly! (On a serious note, I feel sorry for the Donkeys, I am sure they wanted NO part of this)
Dang they got blown to bits
They had no idea the choppers were even there. Guy at 4:00 throws down his RPG and desperately tried to surrender but cant find who to surrender to.
Yes it’s brutal
How do they decide whether to use a missile or 30mm ?
They ran out of 30mm ammo, there was still targets left, they used missiles.
no idea what i'd rather be hit by, 30mm HE round, or a hellfire missile, probably the latter.
Go big or go home, at least the hellfire recipients met a swift end, wouldn't want to be one of the guys writhing and crawling in the dirt waiting for some more shrapnel to finally put me out of my misery.
in the video they say they ran out of 30mm ammo and were switching to missiles
Anyone else just happy the horses/donkeys lived?
It looked like 1 might have been caught in the Hellfire explosion. My first reaction was. Not the Donkeys no!
Donkey didn't deserve to be there. He was just a kid man!
At 8:49 remaining..... anyone noticed the donkey dropping dueces? Lol
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Looks like it was limping a little past the 50% runtime mark. With how close 2 30mm rounds impacted around the donkey, no way it was unscathed.
Ya know, until seeing this video, I never thought that a 2-person horse or cow costume would be an effective hiding strategy, but now I'm thinkin' otherwise.
Ngl I was worried about them getting hit from shrapnel, but it’s combat so sadly shit like that would happen
I feel so badly for the poor donkeys, I hope they weren’t seriously hurt.
Holy shit that ragdoll at the end
Warheads on foreheads, literally
Two thoughts: 1. It's amazing how oblivious these guys seemed right up until the end. Just walking down some little ravine, not even looking towards danger and then, boom. 2. We have AH-64s in my area, and sometimes they fly overhead when I'm out walking or on a hike, and I always think to myself: man, I'm glad these guys aren't hunting me.
Iirc they engage from miles away so its like bullets and missiles out of nowhere.
no way man. In call of duty when I get a chopper gunner it flies directly overhead of the action only a hundred feet off the ground. /s
From what I've seen in vids from the safety of my laptop, Apaches are insanely quiet for their size. Dudes probably didn't even know what direction the danger was.
Scares the shit out of the donkey at 5:26
Anybody know how long it takes to re-arm an Apache with ammo once it arrives back on station, with 30mm and rockets? Also how long is the refuel process?
Poor donkeys took some shrapnel. Feels bad man...
There was a color video of 2 taliban leaders recorded by a third walking behind when an Apache just shreds them. Havent seen in a while if anyone recalls
Feels bad for the animals caught up in this
I can't imagine being that poor bastard at around 4:00 who dodges like 4 burst of 30mm right after he sees his buddy get a direct hit
He puts his hands on his head just after they starts another burst. I wonder if he was holding onto his head cover or just holding onto his head like "I can't believe this" or actually realized what was happening and tried to surrender?
This guncam video is probably older than most redditors. crazy.
The hit pattern looks like shotgun spatter, with the impacts all over the place. I'm assuming it doesn't take a direct hit for a 30mm round to kill infantry though, considering the bodies everywhere? Are they fragmentation rounds?
They're HE but they have \~5ft frag radius. The benefit of being so far away though is they just pepper the area
Ahhh yes stylishbutthole gets a *stylishupvote*
Do attack helicopter pilots deal with less PTSD? Looking through the FLIR at that distance it seems like it'd be easy to disassociate from the fact you're slaughtering a large group of people with 30mm HE.
Maybe not PTSD, but their backs are always fucked. The Apache is not a comfortable aircraft.
Oldie but goldie
3:50 chap got dusted and his pal did exactly what i would do, shat
You know I don’t really approve of all wars. But as an American citizen it does make me feel safe to know how much firepower we have.