Fire – fire – fire – Oops!
So super sophisticated jet fighters are worried enough by small arms fire to return fire and straffe a whole column of cars and kill a dozen people. Small arms fire that can reach a few thousand feet in the air whereas the jets normally fly at over 10-30,000′ (unless they are Tornados doing low level flying). These are tiny bullets that by the time they reach the top of their trajectory have lost a lot of their momentum (if fired vertically). If fired at lower angles, they are even less likely to hit any plane.
These bullets are more likely to kill people on their own side than planes.
Bullets fired in the air will kill bystanders when they come down again, so long as the bullet isn’t fired straight up. If fired at an angle then their forward velocity doesn’t change, and that’s what kills and seriously injures. If fired vertically then it’s gravity and air resistance which affects the speed down (terminal velocity), so at most will cause injures and a few seriously sore heads but probably not many deaths.
However, doing some reading it seems it was a A10 Thunderbolt which fired at the rebels after they had fired with an anti-aircraft gun. So not a AK47 but something a lot more serious. In this case serves them right. And as Longrider says, this is what you get if you use untrained soldiers.
But I’ve been thinking – since Gaddafi’s forces can’t use tanks and heavy weaponry they’ve been taking the same route as the rebels, using flat bed trucks and similar cars & vans. That way they don’t become targets to the UN authorised aircraft enforcing the no-fly (or rather no heavy military) zone. I wonder if these “rebels” were actually Gaddafi forces attempting to shoot down a plane. Rebel forces have admitted that the killed were theirs but considering the lack of organisation and communication amongst the rebel forces they probably have little clue as to what’s going on.
In fact such a tactic would be a great way for Gaddafi forces to infiltrate rebel groups and then turn the tables. Just look disorganised and chaotic and carry around a rag bag of different weapons, vehicles, and clothes, then when inside bring out the proper guns.
SBML
-
April 5, 2011 at 13:23 -
“In fact such a tactic would be a great way for Gaddafi forces to infiltrate rebel groups and then turn the tables. “
It’s what I’d be doing, if I were him…
-
April 5, 2011 at 14:29 -
“I wonder if these “rebels” were actually Gaddafi forces attempting to shoot down a plane.”
A new and plausible conspiracy theory. Great!
-
April 5, 2011 at 17:38 -
How can enforcing a “no fly” zone result in a NATO plane firing at a column with small arms? Even assuming the pilot believed the column to be Gaddafi’s forces, they were a minor threat to him without heavy guns. This predictable escalation will entrench us in another unwinnable and pointless conflict. But Abdulbaset al Megrahi sends his best wishes.
-
April 5, 2011 at 18:43 -
“they were a minor threat to him”
If a particular group was doing their best to kill you how threatening would they have to be before you responded to the threat? For example, if there was only a 10% chance they could kill you would you respond? What about 5% or 1%, or what about that they were trying in the first place?
The day we start telling our military personal they can only engage a threat when they judge the outcome to be 50/50, which is essentially where this train of thought is going; is the day the liberal agenda has finally concurred the last part of the public sector it does not already hold in a vice.
-
April 5, 2011 at 18:58 -
SBML stated above about small arms fire being no threat to airplanes – I was partly responding to that
-
-
April 5, 2011 at 18:44 -
Whilst the odds of a Golden BB are very small, no pilot wants to be the poor sap who gets it.
If you are stupid enough to shoot at a fighter plane then you have to realise that the pilot or his mates are going to do their damnedest to make sure you don’t make that mistake a second time.
-
-
April 5, 2011 at 18:37 -
“So super sophisticated jet fighters are worried enough by small arms fire to return fire”
I’ve never flown, although I did once speak to pilot who flew starting with the Falkland’s and continued many years after. He told me that small arms fire was the scariest thing you face as a pilot, because it is so chaotic, so random and can often be so heavy. If one bullet hits a ‘super sophisticated jet’ both travelling at many hundreds of miles an hour the outcome can be most unpleasant.
As such, if there was any intention to suggest an over-reaction, I cannot share it. If you don’t want to get fired upon by a fighter, don’t fire upon it in the first place.
-
April 5, 2011 at 20:40 -
“Bullets fired in the air will kill bystanders when they come down again, so long as the bullet isn’t fired straight up.”
I just wish some of the trigger-happy idiots would fire straight up.
On windless day; and at exactly 90 degrees.
-
April 5, 2011 at 22:59 -
In the Vietnam war the majority of aircraft were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire. Every Viet Cong was instructed to fire at every aircraft they saw and of course that meant rifles, light machine guns as well as the wide range of cannon AAA.
It only takes one bullet in the right place to down an aircraft. When there is a hailstorm of fire the odds of being hit rises significantly.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }