re: Army releases soldier's own final photos of mortar explosion that killed her & 4 others

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Am I the only one that thinks these pictures look fake?

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Yep.

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I guess they think they were covering their ears because the explosion was coming/happening rather than that being part of their mortar procedure.

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No, that's SOP. Those motherfrickers, even the 60mm mortar, are so loud that if you don't have ear protection, you'd better cover your ears. Even with ear protection, there's a good chance that after enough rounds you'll experience pretty noticeable hearing loss and possibly ringing in your ears for a long time after or for life. I can't hear a damn thing anymore.

I told this story a few pages back. I was gunning one time (the gunner in the gun team is responsible for all the data that goes on the sight, making sure the system is level, and the person bracing the bipods, literally bending or laying flat on the ground and holding the bipods with your hands to make sure the legs don't kick out when the round comes out) doing a five round fire for effect. A fire for effect is essentially rapid fire for the mortar system, you're trying to put as many, or however many that mission calls for, rounds down range as quickly as possible.

Well, I'm bracing the bipods, and my ear protection falls out of my ear. We're shooting fairly close to maximum range for our system, so the barrel is very low to the ground and my head is probably six inches under the barrel.

So, my ear pro falls out and I can't take my hands off the bipods so I just sat there while we got this fire for effect done.

I couldn't hear shite the rest of the day, so I would've been a potential hazard to the entire range because I could've put the wrong data on the gun, they had to pull me off the firing line.

Those frickers are loud and will frick you up if you're not careful about even the smallest thing. They have an effective casualty radius of 30 meters so I'm honestly surprised more didn't get killed or injured.