Despite all the problems we contemporary humans believe we have, they are nothing compared to what the previous two generations of humans had to face. Why? Remember, or grandparents and parents lived through two global wars, a pandemic in between, then decades of living in fear of nuclear annihilation, and millions of smaller, personal dramas history books care little about.
Take the video below as reference, if you still think we have it hard. Imagine the sound of a massive gun firing shells over your city, like all those people before us felt so many times. Kind of changes the perspective, right?
What you’re looking at is a video of a live-fire exercise performed by an undisclosed military unit, in an undisclosed location, and published on Youtube, on a channel called Military in Action. These guys are used to “showing the latest videos of weapons, aircraft, tanks, ships, guns, artillery, vehicles, military operations and technologies,” and this is one of their most recent clips.
At the center of the live-fire exercise is the Panzerhaubitze 2000, or PzH 2000. Manufactured by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall, it serves the needs of the German Army and others as “the most modern self-propelled howitzer in the world.”
The artillery piece is loaded with a 155 mm gun and can carry 60 ignited projectiles at the time. When it fires one of them (the thing can fire three in ten seconds, thanks to an automated ammo management system), the shells can reach targets as distant as 420 km (261 miles). It’s mobile, being capable of reaching speeds of 60 kph (37 mph) on the road thanks to the 1,000 ps engine. Being tracked though, it doesn’t necessarily need a road to get where it’s going.
Below is an 8-minute video showing the thing in action. We’ll let you enjoy it, or get frightened by it.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News