The wacky things you might find on your property. At least it wasn't armed:

San Antonio man finds U.S. military rocket launcher

It could have been a lot worse though because he could've been wearing a Texas A&M t-shirt instead of a University of Texas shirt, and then the Aggie jokes would've been flying on teh intrarnets.

Hook 'em horns!

Holy crap, someones getting fired!

It looks like a Dragon TOW missle launcher. As long as it was empty, I sure as hell wouldn't have called anyone about it. I'd have hung her up on my living room wall! If it weren't empty, I sure as hell would have put it right back where I found and then called someone!!

It was an interesting system in that it had many individual, one shot fixed burn rocket motors all along the circumference and length of the missle which fired sequentially. The computer determined when to fire the next motor on the spin stabilized missile depending on the guidance input from the tracking unit and where the motor was in relation to the ground (ie, gravity) at the time. It was relatively short ranged and range decreased with increasing guidance inputs b/c it would have to fire motors for guidance corrections. The bonus was a smaller and lighter unit b/c it didn't need controllable fins in the air stream.

--Outlaw.

I bet if it was loaded, it would be GREAT for moose hunting!

Well, ummm, I doubt there'd be much of the moose left .

quote:

Originally posted by DrHerb:
I bet if it was loaded, it would be GREAT for moose hunting!

Roybaty, you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Think how much time one can save hunting moose with that thing - you don't have to cut meat to pieces and bake them, just BANG and meal portions for the whole family are ready in no-time !

Cheers - Art

Actually, it looks like one of the changeable missile tubes for the Javelin system:

quote:

Originally posted by roybaty:
Well, ummm, I doubt there'd be much of the moose left .

quote:

Originally posted by DrHerb:
I bet if it was loaded, it would be GREAT for moose hunting!

Well, I guess all the moose (meese?) in Texas are breathing a huge sigh of relief...

cheers

horseback

That's a Dragon. I was a Dragon Missile Gunner before I moved up to the TOW and iTOW. Those are now relics of the past.
The Javelin is where it's at today.

@Urufu_Shinjiro. If you look closely, you will see that they are photos of two different systems, although they do have some similarities at a first glance.

Looks more like a Dragon

Ah, indeed resembles the dragon more. Either way, it's got to be a heck of a story how this thing ended up on this guys property, lol.

Yeah, it does look more like a dragon. I don't think the dragon was fire-and-forget but some soldier sure did fire and forget something and he is pobably in some hot water.

It is not good practice for a soldier to leave residue in the field. The optics do not seem to be present, and all that is left is the relatively inexpensive tube.
It would be about the same as finding the tube of an AT4. After it's fired, it really isn't of too much use, although the tubes would be destroyed in combat to prevent the enemy from finding a use for them.

You can buy those at the local Wall Mart from Gunz-USA...

quote:

Originally posted by RPMcMurphy:
I don't think the dragon was fire-and-forget...

Correct, the Dragon is a TOW. The Javelin is not.

--Outlaw.