Tam reminded me of it in a round about way.
The longest shot I have ever made with any sort of gun was 3,000 meters while moving at a target that was also moving.
It seems impressive, doesn't it?
Prepare to be underwhelmed.
I made that shot with an M68 105mm cannon from an M1(IP) tank. The target was the size of a car.
What reminded me of this shot was Tam mocking the term weapon system as applied to a pistol.
The Abrams is a true weapon system. It is several distinct components all working together to be greater than their sum. Several sensors feed data into a computer that computer gives aiming cues to the gunner, other sensors compensate for movement of the vehicle and target. All of this adds up to making the shot at incredible ranges.
That's a weapon system. A pistol is merely a gun.
I has a sad, my longest with the M1IP was only 2700. Is this where I tell my funny night-vision story? Ok, I will. My unit was doing a night shoot and we were in the back, waiting to shoot. We were watching thru the night vision thru the gunner's scope and a dude hopped out of the tank in front of us and stood on the back deck. He then proceeded to take a whiz and we could see the stream clear as day! It lit up brighter than anything else we could see.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite night vision moment was the infantry unit who didn't know about night vision laboriously sneaking up on us for about an hour. My platoon Sgt was like, "wait for it... wait for it..."
ReplyDeleteWe opened up with the coax's and slaughtered them. We're laughing our asses off and they're all "what just happened?"
Best REFORGER evah!