Watch a Daring Truck Driver Escape This Anti-Tank Missile in Syria
It's pretty harrowing.
In war zones, a certain level of cunning can mean escape from certain death. And because this is 2015, the world can watch video of it.
This harrowing battlefront escape was uploaded to YouTube on Monday: A truck, ostensibly driven by a Hezbollah fighter in Syria, narrowly avoid an anti-tank missile that was sure to reap its demise.
Watch it below, and wait for the subtle detail at the end:
You’ll see that the missile, a BGM-71 TOW (that’s American made), was trained on the driver’s location the moment it launched from a clandestine locale. The driver waited and waited, obviously staring down the missile’s bright orange glow, but moved ever-so-slightly out of harm’s way at exactly the right moment.
It’s absolutely insane, but then again, so is war.
The BGM-71 TOW missile in question has been widely used in pretty much all modern conflicts and foreign interventions in the Middle East from 1970 onward. The United States military has supplied the missiles to many Syrian rebel groups combating the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Islamic State terror and other associations like Hezbollah.
Here’s its launcher:
The BGM-71 TOW, variant M220, SABER. U.S. Army PFC David Mitchell scans the landscape surrounding Vehicle Patrol Base Badel at the mouth of the Narang Valley in Konar province, Afghanistan, May 9, 2009. Mitchell is assigned to the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment. The base has closed down enemy activity in the valley and in Narang, Chowkay and Nurgal districts.
According to the Carter Center, 23 groups associated with different factions of the Free Syrian Army have used the TOW missiles, and were supplied by the United States military.
