part seven, page nineteen

This strains my suspension of disbelief. Firing aircraft with a mortar? Granted, it is the most accurate 28th century artillery weapon, but these guys have never fired it at a flying object.

The mortar was a weapon used on stationary targets, and even then you needed several shits to find the correct fuse, loading and elevation. Now, this should be almost impossible. The carpet is moving and the fuzelength changes the explosion altitude a lot. It is not sufficient to find a length that allows the grenade to drop on the target before exploding. You must get it right by about 0.5 s to get the correct altitude, even if your grenade is exploding near the zenith of its flightpath.

A real-life AA battery, with altitude-triggered grenades, would need a calculation board to get the correct values to hit a target that just moves in straight line at a constant altitude. No one can do this in his head at the first try.

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