A-10 drops a four-pack of brrrt on speeding Taliban hatchback (VIDEO)
You can run, but you can’t hide from an A-10 Thunderbolt II and its massive GAU-8 30mm cannon will leave a mark that won’t buff out.
U.S. Air Forces Central Command released full motion footage of an engagement betwixt an A-10 and what the service described as “a Taliban vehicle fleeing the scene of an attack in Kandahar.”
The short video shows a light-colored economy car beating feet down a dusty desert road only to be stopped by a string of 30mm rounds from the A-10. Zooming in on the stopped vehicle shows four basketball-sized holes punched in the top of the vehicle before another line of shells is applied for good measure. Although there is no sound in the footage, which has been redacted for operational security, just imagine lots of low “brrrrt” as 30mm foot applies to ass.
According to Centcom, the Taliban-mobile wasn’t out on an afternoon drive in the country looking for an aloha snack bar. “The insurgents in the vehicle were armed with a DShK heavy machine gun, which they had been using to attack the Afghan people,” said the Air Force.
The GAU-8/A, made by General Electric, is a 19-foot long 7-barreled rotary cannon that fires huge 30x173mm shells— each about the size of a catsup bottle as fast as 3,900 rounds per minute. Unloaded, the gun weighs more than 600-pounds.
Airmen feed 30mm ammo for an A-10 through an adapter before loading it into the ammo drum of a GAU-8/A cannon at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. A typical load is 1,174 rounds of the 24-ounce cartridges. (Photo: U.S. Air Force)
Airmen remove a GAU-8 Avenger 30 mm cannon from an A-10C. The A-10’s cannon is inspected and cleaned once every 36 months or every 25,000 rounds fired. (Photo: U.S. Air Force)
Little wonder the only aircraft designed to carry it, the A-10, which has been out of production since 1984, isn’t going to retire anytime soon, no matter how hard the Air Force brass tries.
If it ain’t broke…
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