Viral Footage of the U.S. Air Force Unleashing the ‘Angel of Death’ Sparks Twitter Outrage

“We call it the Angel of Death because it murders people! Ha ha!”

Maxim Staff

Mar 1, 2018

Her-cu-les, Her-cu-les!
You don’t want to be on the receiving end of this gunship, aka the Angel of Death. pic.twitter.com/r5sN6c7g4I

— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) February 28, 2018

This video of an Air Force AC-130 gunship releasing its “Angel of Death Flare” is objectively pretty badass. But after the U.S. Dept. of Defense posted it on Twitter, it was met with a decidedly mixed reaction.

First, what are you looking at? It’s anti-missile maneuver, a defensive tactic, not a weapon. It is meant to confuse heat-seeking missiles, as the flares burn at more than a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The flare looks so amazing, you can find multiple videos of it on Youtube, including this one that better demonstrates the “angel” shape.

While something about the flare looks kind of futuristic, AC-130s are pretty old planes, having been in use for the last 50 years.

Some social media users loved the video or tried to explain what was going on.

https://twitter.com/se1fc9ntrol/status/969193294180708352 https://twitter.com/Gary14Adams/status/968845075051528198

What you are watching is defensive flares which form a so called angel of death when deployed in the slipstream.

— baffled (@farrellbruce2) February 28, 2018

Others were downright angry, for several reasons.

We call it the Angel of Death because it murders people! Ha ha! pic.twitter.com/UBaWvpRZwe

— Ben Prunty (@benprunty) March 1, 2018

https://twitter.com/ZachJCarter/status/969051594720468993 https://twitter.com/BlkCarmenSDiego/status/969233649567784960

It’s an impressive move, no doubt, and it’s great that the USAF is still so proud of a dated plane. It’s also clear that some seem to find American military aggression a pretty sensitive subject.

If they seriously have a problem, they probably need to do more than just tweet. A need for military power is, after all, as necessary as it ever was.