Resolute Support Excalibur Round Lands On Taliban Machine Gun Team
first published on December 13, 2017 by Josh
A Marine rifle squad is pinned down in the open by a Taliban machine gun team, until they call in an excellent artillery strike. The round that impacts with the machine gun team is a 155 M982 Excalibur extended range artillery round. It is so efficient, that not only do they not need to adjust the fire of the round, they don’t need to fire a second round at all. Goodnight Taliban machine gun team.
When it comes to artillery rounds, the Excalibur round is king. It was designed by Raytheon Missile Systems and BAE with the intent of being extremely accurate. As a result, the round is GPS guided, and can be used in extremely close fire support missions. In fact, it is so accurate that it can be fired within 75 meters of troops or civilians on the ground.
That level of guidance however, comes at a price. The cost of a singular Excalibur artillery round sits at a whopping $258,777 in 2015. In 2016, the United States Army was able to order even more of these rounds in bulk, bringing the cost per round down to $68,534. As of 2015, only 770 of these rounds had been fired in combat situations.
In the video below, we get to see a Taliban machine gun team get dominated by an Excalibur. The machine gunners had managed to ambush a Marine rifle squad in the open, and pin them down. As they maneuvered, the Marines organized a quick fire support mission, and called down the steel rain.
Members of Operation Resolute Support fired a singule Excalibur round from a cannon, and with the aid of an aerial reconnaissance drone, nailed their target on the first round. This immediately gave the Marines on the ground the initiative and ended the firefight.
While the Excalibur may be expensive, this video proves that the accuracy of the round is something that is indeed needed on the battlefield.
