XBradTC

The Multiple Launch Rocket System was used to great effect during Desert Storm, with its Dual Purpose Improved Conventional  Munitions warheads (basically, anti-armor/anti-personnel bomblets) raining down upon the heads of the Iraqi army at ranges of up to 70 kilometers. Beginning in the mid-2000s, the Army fielded a version of MLRS that featured a single 225 pound warhead, but that was also guided by a strapdown inertial navigation system with automatic GPS updates. And friend of the blog Esli had cause to film a pair of GMLRS strikes in 2008.

As best I can recall, I filmed this on 8 FEB 2008 during a 5-7 CAV clearance operation in vicinity of the town of Minari, south of Baghdad in an area called "the salt flats" that was filled with multiple AQI caches, lots of bones, and a few dead bodies.  We spent a few days identifying, consolidating, and blowing them in place via controlled detonation.  If you looked through the other pictures I posted the other day, there were a couple other caches as well.  During that operation, these particular buildings were identified as likely to be storing mines and IED-making materials by our Bandit Troop and possibly were HBIEDs, so we developed a target package for pre-planned approval of use of GMLRs to destroy them (i.e. this was not an unplanned mission during a Troops-in-Contact, but a planned event).  Prior to execution, B TRP went through the area and explained to the locals that we were going to do this and moved the locals out of the area before dropping the buildings.  None of them lived in the buildings.  I took the video, from the best of my recollection and looking at flash-to-bang time, from somewhere between 500-700 meters away.    Of note, the first building has significantly less debris thrown in the air, and I believe that it had a concrete floor while the second puts up a big cloud of dirt, and I think it did not have a concrete floor for some reason.  I also ran over my one and only car in a Bradley during this time, but it was a complete junker even before I ran it over.  Yes, I said Bradley, but that is what a squadron S3 rolls in.