Originally Posted by
Bob Viking
I had no idea you would need to get so close with the Vulcan. I assumed that, with a much higher muzzle velocity, you would have increased stand-off.
BV
The 2200' refers to the minimum allowed. Normally guys will pull of around 3000' on low angle strafe (pink body agains ground reflex). 12000' is the max open fire range, but we learn our guys to wait until closer as the dispersion and thereby the effectiveness of the strafe pass is increased the closer you get to the target.
For steeper angles the min range and pull-off distance increase. for 25 degrees high angle strafe the cease fire slant range is around 5500', and 7000' is the number for 45 degrees high angle strafe pass. However, the increased min range does not mean less precision as the bullets tend to disperse less the steeper the angle. 45 degrees is highly effective with good self protection built in against manpads and small arms fire, but at night on NVG's we don't go steeper than 25 degrees as the workload is to high and we might risk target fixation and ground clobber. At night however the darkness works well for us with regards to being spotted.
I am 100% sure that this incident is a gun/ammo malfunction as the marks on the jet looks very familiar.