I imagine one worry is also that it might tip out and fall straight down onto the fuse cap any second now that it lost pretty much all of its propulsion and is sitting 2/3 out of the tube with most of the weight on the front. Idk if mortars have distance arming or any other user safety tech like that, though (I know a lot of modern explosive munitions do nowadays, so it's possible).
It depends. Some mortars require a certain amount of force and sustained air flow to arm the fuse which means if it doesn’t launch neither or only one of those mechanisms should be triggered. If it doesn’t leave the barrel there probably isn’t enough g force for the first half to work and there definitely won’t be enough air flow. https://arcus.bg/proximity-fuze-ar-787-for-mortar-ammunition/ this data sheet specifies that it needs a 400g acceleration for at least one second and 30m/s of air speed to arm in the first place. Some mortars probably do just use a fuse but that probably has a very high chance of killing your soldiers on a misfire.
Not sure if they have a g force activated arming mechanism, but radar based proximity fuzes on artillery shells have an interesting and clever mechanism.
They need a battery with a long shelf life, so the liquid for the battery is kept separate from the metal plates in a glass container. When the shell is fired, the glass container breaks and the spin of the shell puts all the liquid into the plates around the outside of the battery.
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u/TurkeySauce_ 2d ago
It wouldnt go off/boom. But I understand the need to run. Better safe than sorry.