COBI M270 MLRS Set 2636

COBI's M270 MLRS is a 1:35 model of the tracked American multiple rocket launcher, built from 868 blocks under license from Lockheed Martin, with one figure and a buildable rocket in flight.

The rockets Europe stopped firing

The M270 entered service in 1983, and the first unit went to West Germany that same year. It was built for one Cold War task: to fire twelve rockets in under a minute and drive away before enemy artillery could answer. Each standard M26 rocket scattered 644 small bomblets, and a single launcher emptying its pods could saturate an area of about a square kilometer — which earned the system the British nickname “grid square removal system”.

Those bomblets did not all go off, and the ones that did not stayed in the ground for years. When most European NATO members signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008, their M270s had to change. Germany's MARS II and the other European versions received a new fire-control system that will not fire submunition rockets at all, and they now use single-warhead guided rockets instead. The launcher stayed the same; what it is allowed to shoot did not.

In the COBI range

The M142 HIMARS (2626) is the wheeled, six-rocket derivative of this launcher, also at 1:35.

Specifications

Pieces: 868 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:35 · Licensed by Lockheed Martin