Michael's Dispatches
Spitting Cobra
- Details
- Published: Friday, 15 January 2010 14:04
Bringing ammuntion to Afghanistan is far more expensive than most places—all is brought in by air. Pakistani and Russian officials understandably don’t want our explosives traveling through their territory; nor do we. I once flew from Kuwait to Bagram in a C-17 that was filled with 155mm projectiles and a couple of passengers.
The cannons can be towed or picked up by helicopters and moved many miles within an hour, and so it’s possible to stage a long-range attack with the guns by suddenly moving them. The guns can wait quietly for months or years without need of refueling or runways. The crews are small, and the ammunition is hardy and can be stored for a lifetime.
Some muzzle flashes are not bright because the target is near, requiring little propellant.
The Dragon roars: This was an HE mission and the target was far away requiring a larger charge. Sometimes they are even brighter.
The guns are dangerous, so the crew must be well trained, and they must frequently drill. Recently, a soldier got hit in the helmet by a recoiling 155mm cannon. He escaped with no injury but was lucky not to be killed.
Shots can be directed through many methods. Aircraft such as A-10s or Predators can spot targets, as can soldiers on the ground. A satellite could just as easily spot targets. There is no “best way”; each situation is different. However, it’s tempting to say the “best way” to call in the guns is to have highly trained troops on the ground who can get eyes on the target. These troops train specifically for calling such strikes. Their jobs require great preparation, including much classroom time, physical ruggedness, and coolness in the face of getting killed. But that’s a different story.
Every shot is accounted for. Some months back, I was staying in downtown Kandahar and photographed illumination floating down over Arghandab. When I got to 5/2 SBCT, the date/time stamp on the photos was used to ask the FSO (Fire Support Officer) what the missions were about. He looked it up on the computer a few minutes later. The fire mission had not come from 5/2 (but plenty of other missions spilled onto the screen). There is no such thing as a mysterious fire mission from U.S. forces—there are always records that are stored in various places.
Before firing, HQ checks that no aircraft are in the flight path. Otherwise, sooner or later we’d likely shoot down one of our own aircraft or, worse, a commercial airliner filled with passengers. These shots can fly higher than the summit of Mt. Everest (really), and could easily traverse through the cabin of a commercial flight.
There are many sorts of cannons, ammunitions and fuzes.
White Phosphorus “WP” ammunition is used for screening, and there is “HE” or “high explosives,” and many other sorts. Mostly in Afghanistan our people use illumination and HE.
The enemy uses unexploded projectiles as IEDs. In Iraq, projectiles mostly came from ammo dumps that our government failed to secure after the invasion, thus costing untold numbers of Iraqi and US lives. Sometimes the enemy would bury the projectiles in the roads, or cast them into concrete just like road curbs. They would fill trunks of cars with artillery rounds—some ammo was from South Africa—and those made powerful car bombs. Unexploded artillery rounds that “kicked out” could be found at the scene of some car bombs.
American projectiles are relatively very reliable and normally explode when they impact targets, but earlier in 2009 while in the Philippines, Philippine commanders told me that many of the IEDs killing their soldiers come from old ammunition that didn’t explode on impact. The enemy returns the bad ammo in the form of IEDs.
On dark nights, illumination rounds, both visible and invisible to the naked eye, can be seen pretty much every night. Visible “illum” is very bright and casts eerie shadows over the battlefield. The IR illum is fired often when our guys are about to do something serious. Our guys want the enemy to be in the dark but we want to see through the NVGs (night vision gear). To the naked eye, IR illum appears like a dim candle slowly floating in the sky. Through NVGs it’s like broad daylight (the NVG equivalent of broad daylight, anyway). IR illum is often fired on nights when natural illumination is low, such as when the moon is hiding around the edge of the Earth, or behind clouds. Helicopter pilots like IR illum during “red illum” periods (when too dark to fly without special gear) because it helps them see the ground and thus they can avoid crashing the helicopter.
