Replies

I thought so. I was watching it and thought “Huh. Doesn’t look like an Apache...”

It looks like the standard mode is to fire a long burst at a target, followed immediately by two rockets to put an exclamation point on it.

Wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.

Read a great account in the book “No True Glory” of a bunch of jihadis who were firing off mortar rounds at US troops around Fallujah one night. They had an unarmed Predator overhead the enemy observing them. It was a walled courtyard, and the enemy had three tubes set up. They would rush out, each with one round in their hands, drop them in the tube, and immediately run back inside.

There were no air support assets available, all they had was artillery, so they were playing a game of cat and mouse, trying to guess when they would run out with the mortar rounds, and fire the artillery in advance to try to catch them out there.

Pretty soon, the small room with the UAV camera feed (that usually only held a few people) was crowded with up to 25 Marines who heard the story of the crazy jihadis who were playing tag with the artillery rounds. They watched as, over and over again, the rounds would come in missing the jihadis, and the mortar tubes somehow remained undamaged throughout.

It was said some of the Marines displayed some respect for the insanity of those guys, with one saying “You wouldn’t catch me playing tag with 155mm artillery shells.”

Finally, they got a couple of planes overhead with some smart ordinance, and called one of them in on the house itself.

As they were lining it up, a pickup truck pulled up to the house, and they could clearly see on the infrared several dogs running over. Dinner time, pizza delivery. One of the Marines said aloud “Come on, dogs. Get out of there. I like dogs.” The guy dropped dropped off the dinner, and as he pulled away, a bomb impacted the house and turned it into a hollow shell.

Great book, I highly recommend it. Many references to Mattis in there.