B roll footage of casually shooting a 155mm howitizer OVER a highway…?
Highway path indicated in blue, red arrows indicate cars and trucks on highway visible downrange of the artillery piece.
A simulated beach assault in which artillery was fired from the sand toward the interior of the sprawling base was intended to be a capstone demonstration of the capabilities of the Marine Corps. But the display went awry — and was forced to end early — when an artillery round exploded midair, sending shrapnel raining down onto a California Highway Patrol cruiser that was parked on an Interstate 5 on-ramp.
While no one was hurt, experts say the decision to fire live munitions over the freeway during the ceremony was highly unusual.
Incompetence and cannons do not mix well. This was incredibly irresponsible. I am astonished they would just upload a video of it too…
The issue is less a shell detonated at the wrong time and more that they fired a seriously large shell over a public highway for no good reason.
I wouldn’t target shoot with a high caliber rifle in the direction of the highway from that location let alone shoot the largest caliber artillery cannon the US military uses in land operations, it violates basic muzzle control logic at a disturbingly basic level with a huge munition.
I am sure there are cases where you might see artillery firing in a way that isn’t actually dangerous that might look dangerous to a non-expert. This isn’t one of them.
See this video of a direct fire exercise to see a similar situation where shells are landing at about the range the highway is away from the cannon in the above video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=--JmEF446fE
The Swiss might disagree:
(Though this is completely safe because the shells fly way above the road)
I have seen this range. You physically cannot see or shoot the highway from the firing line. There are baffles to physically stop the bullets from being able to reach the highway. If you shoot too low you’ll just hit the baffle.
I mean that’s the exact same logic they used here. The shells were supposed to go at above the highway. But one exploded midair and the shrapnel fell onto the highway
Yeah but there is direct line of sight between the cannons and the highway, I imagine at that swiss rifle range the road is dug in so that you couldn’t physically send a bullet at a vehicle by accident. Not so here with the 155mm M777s, though I imagine they were set to fire much farther (hopefully?!) that doesn’t mean you couldn’t draw a valid ballistic arc straight from a cannon to the highway especially when you consider the possibility of a malfunction or operator error on loading charges.
With the internet ,you don’t have to!
It’s basically a wall you shoot over, and if you can shoot over the wall, the round doesn’t have the ballistic trajectory to fall into the road.
yah that’s direct fire, it’s how it’s supposed to work. what you say could also happen if crayon eater forgot to load one charge thing (MACS), or cut bag charge wrong way
Well, sure, that’s an issue, but I expect that they’re going to go look into that. But if the statement is correct that this is a very rare malfunction that we experienced right after rolling out a ton of new artillery shell production capacity for the first time in a very long time — my understanding is that the prior production capacity dated to World War II — then it might indicate a flaw that could have consequences elsewhere.
I don’t know whether the Ukrainians are reporting premature detonations back upstream.