Thursday Night MLRS

Are troops in the cab of that thing when it fires?

No, the troops stay safely away from it while it's launching. I think ours is set up to have the troops stay in the thing, but it's got an armored cab as well.

What I've never actually seen, and would be interested in, is footage of the impact area when all those rockets hit.

Ah, my mistake - according to the Wikipedia entry, it can be fired from the cab.

I suspect it's not a popular option though.

I remember those, 'raketnye sistemy zalpovogo ognya', the reports on the impact area were gruesome, with all the details of the dead animals, ugh... obviously, no animals were used for the real-life army exercises, could not have all those conscripts puking their guts out...

From the video it almost looks like the boys drive it up, point it in a direction, set a fuse and run. Which looks like a pretty reasonable idea, it's not exactly all that robust looking.