(FUNKER350 TAKES A SHOT AT TRYING TO DESCRIBE WHAT IS GOING ON HERE)

This is a weird one, and definitely not something I’ve seen before. This video was recorded in the city of Popasna and it shows a mixed section of Russian attack helicopters doing something a little weird. The first helicopter, what appears to be a KA-52, comes in low and fast, then tilts his nose upwards and randomly expends his entire rocket pod. The second helicopter, what looks like an Mi-28N, follows suit with the same fire mission, but does so from a little deeper. This angling the nose up bit to expend your rocket pod is not something I’m personally familiar with, so if anyone does recognize this technique before I theorize go ahead and hit the comments.

Here’s my theory. What goes up, must come down. When it’s a rocket, the point of impact is still going to be explosive, same with a MK-19. When you have two known factors, you can eyeball in a range to your target and use just about any weapon system as an indirect fire one. Did the pilots do some quick math here based off of the maximum range of their rockets and just turn their aircraft into flying MLRS platforms? Or, maybe they needed to expend all rockets before returning to base?

Seriously, this one is vexing me. Someone give me a hand. Am dumb grunt. No understand pilot things.