Insurgents Freezing Mortars?

[FNWendigo]

Yeah the US also found an insurgent training manual that said to wrap aluminum foil around rpg rounds to “penetrate the force field” around the M1 Abrams.

[dfunited]

By 2009, our locals just mobilized the mortars to pickup trucks. They'd pop a few off and then drive like hell. They usually outran the counter artillery, but not the UAV watching.

[jamesdarnell]

No, it was a piece of ice between the round and the firing pin. So when the ice melted the round would slide down the tube( usually reinforced PVC pipe) striking the firing pin igniting the charge and sending the round out of the tube. Very inaccurate but safe for them. The American artillery would usually respond within 3-4 minutes with counter battery radar data. We would then go out to the firing point and usually find blown up PVC pipe and cold water on the ground in an artillery round crater.

[dfernandez]

We need the Myth Busters back to figure this out

RIP Grant 😢

[kenshinyang]

Mikeburnfire explains this from his own experience

[Khornecussion]

All the vets in the comments giving the actual info. Thank you. Both for your service, and elaborating.

[kenttheboomer]

It went from "Why did they do it?" to "Did they do it?" in two seconds. I think I now have whiplash. Who do I sue?

[benedictwatt]

It's got the same kind of vibe as the drip rifles used by us australians and the Kiwis in Gallipoli during our evacuation, where a rifle was set up wit a can suspended beneath, tied to a rope. Then, there was a slowly dripping water flask that'd drop water into the can periodically, and whenever a drop hit the can, it'd pull the trigger of the semi-automatic rifle, making it look like we were still in the trenches fighting, when we were actually hightailing for the beaches.

[awashhydra]

I heard about this while i was deployed with the us army in 2007 to 2009 to iraq. The version of this explanation i heard was for fingerprints. The insurgent would handle the mortars but the shrapnel could still have fingerprints on them. So they would freeze them so the fingerprints would be on the ice more like a light frosting, they would then fire them.

[jddockery]

1400 like clockwork, Ice in Iraq is predictable.

[briandavenport]

I was there in 2007 and we had a counter fire radar system set up. When the projectile reached a certain height at a certain speed, our artillery battery was notified. We usually had artillery rounds going out within 3-5 minutes…. And that’s a whole grid square.

[grantgarrison]

They did use some sort of delay. I don't know what they actually did but the firing positions were abandoned well before the base could engage. And that is almost instantaneous. There was ONE time the terrorizers stuck around and kept re engaging with mortars which earned them the right to be vaporized by an AC-130 gunship... Nothing like 105 rounds slamming into the earth like the hammer of Thor.

[RagsRiches]

I dont give a d*** what he looked like, or if he had $50 in the bank! You treat everyone with honor an respect!!

[charlesshelton]

The taliban did something similar when my team was in Afghanistan. They also used Chinese made 106mm rockets

[bigvegass]

They used blocks of ice to hold up the mortars in the tops of the tubes. The ice would melt and the mortars would drop down the tube, thus firing. They'd group mortar tubes so when one would go, it'd hasten the others launching. They did NOT freeze the mortar rounds.

[samsonsoturian]

Low-risk low-skill attacks like this is why the war was mostly noise

[rbrick]

It’s wild that Veterans from 03-13 are basically insurgents themselves, learning all the plays from their enemy

[jamesdavis]

That’s actually pretty clever if it worked.

[canadiansnuggler]

“GOD! I DON’T WANNA WEAR THIS THING ANYMORE!!”
- Blank Gizzard moments after mortar shells struck the base where he was stationed at

[hailtothe_rooster]

Another tactic they did were mobile IRAM teams

They’d set up the Improvised Rocket Assisted Mortars in the back of a bongo and run parallel to targets.

It was common enough to have roving IRAM patrols as a QRF to intercept them. Anybody familiar with the Taji 500?