Good afternoon, Fightersweep Fans! We’ve got some homegrown footage of 2.75-inch death for you today! This video was taken during a training flight during a detachment to NAS Fallon, Nevada during the airwing’s workup cycle. Check us out as we fire rockets at targets on the ground!
This was my first time shooting these bad-boys, and let me tell you, it was awesome! Starting from the hold short of runway 31L, my lead and I takeoff and head towards the B-17 range, a mock enemy airfield that is a part of the huge Fallon Range Training Complex. Once overhead, we execute a number of roll-in deliveries with 2.75 inch Zuni rockets before we rejoin and RTB for the carrier break.
As you may know, rockets are not all that commonly used in this day and age of GPS and laser-guided weapons. Since pilots don’t get as much practice shooting rockets as these other weapons, so it’s important that all pilots become familiar and proficient with their use prior to deployment. Although rockets and strafing have much in common, rockets provide increased standoff while still providing a lower collateral damage risk than many of the larger bombs.
The mighty legacy Hornet is able to one-up the Rhino on this one too. Due to the Super Hornet’s canted pylons, the aircraft wouldn’t be able to shoot them exactly straight and since they’re unguided, that probably wouldn’t make for good headlines on CNN.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In the future, rocket pods may even gain more prominence as they become precision weapons with laser guidance. This could also help solve the problem of unguided rockets on canted pylons. The rotary-wing communities have already been training with these weapons and their lethality will only give them more and more traction in the fixed wing-world.
We hope you enjoy this video of a good deal U.S Navy rocket-shoot!