The Gun Counter

GBU-24A/B. An oldie but a goodie.

Maybe not a "shack", but close enough to suit me!

It looks like there were expecting it. Allot of people seem to be keeping their distance and when the bomb finally comes no one is near the artillery and no one seems surprised. The could be baiting the US planes with obvious kills of old/worthless equipment to keep them from attacking ISIS primary forces.

Dangit. Needs more secondaries.

That really looked like a low-order detonation or a photochop/round exploding in the tube. No shockwave to speak of, and that definitely did not sound like a high explosive. No crater, no diving for the ground/being turned into goo by the overpressure, no arterial bleeding from the shrapnel.

I'm going with fake. Probably a round detonating in the tube that ISIS tried to make look like they were heroes.

JAG2955 wrote:That really looked like a low-order detonation or a photochop/round exploding in the tube. No shockwave to speak of, and that definitely did not sound like a high explosive. No crater, no diving for the ground/being turned into goo by the overpressure, no arterial bleeding from the shrapnel.

I'm going with fake. Probably a round detonating in the tube that ISIS tried to make look like they were heroes.

Killjoy!!! You spoil all my fun! (Although the lack of secondaries did kinda worry me.)

I'm not sure whether to be happy that ISIS is getting bombed, or upset because my taxes probably paid for that artillery piece at some point in time.

JAG2955 wrote:That really looked like a low-order detonation or a photochop/round exploding in the tube. No shockwave to speak of, and that definitely did not sound like a high explosive. No crater, no diving for the ground/being turned into goo by the overpressure, no arterial bleeding from the shrapnel.

I'm going with fake. Probably a round detonating in the tube that ISIS tried to make look like they were heroes.

Concur. Ground strike would likely have the same 'explosion pattern' (bomb comes in from left, so main fireball is to the right with dirt/earth thrown up left of impact). But it would also have a MUCH larger initial fireball which would be pretty much omnidirectional. Blast didn't so much as sway the tow wheel set near the piece, and the entire breech can be seen on fire after the hit, not blown out of sight into the resulting crater. Based on view angle from the camera, our illustrious cameraman would have been very near the 'innards turned to goo' radius, and definitely inside the 'WTF just happened' radius.

Yeah, re-looking at it, doesn't match what I've seen from test range footage from GBU-24's (and that is what the bomb image in the video is).

Given that it uses a MK-84 (2000lb) warhead, unless they were using a really large zoom factor (and the image doesn't look that shaky), then the camera man and all the soft pudgies shown were toast.

Also, the only time I've seen GBUs captured in video was from test range footage using very high speed cameras*. I don't think most digital video cameras can replicate that today.

It also strikes me that this did not look like an active arty position (red legs on the board can chime in to correct me here), with ready re-loads, empty shell casings and the various bits of kit that I see in footage of arty firing in combat.

*My favorite one was footage of a test with 2 weapons dropped on a truck. First one hit the front wheel well. At first they thought the second one misfused and detonated early in an airburst, until the high speed footage showed the engine block, blown out of the truck in a ballistic arc, and intersecting the second weapon in the air at just the right angle to initiate the fuse.