Posted on 08/09/2006 3:28:11 PM PDT by tomzz
Israel has been getting plastered for the last month by what amount to low-tech weapons, mainly katyusha rockets and mortar bombs. Those things are WWII vintage weaponry and it's not as if countermeasures did not exist. Granted we don't quite have the laser weapons we'd like to have to shoot those weapons down, we DO have radar which can triangulate the location of anything which obeys ballistic laws, including both mortar bombs and katyusha rockets, and put munitions down on top of the shooters before the incoming projectile even lands.
Here's the question: Why is Israel not using this sort of thing? If they don't have it, we need to see that they do ASAP, but what I fear might be the case is that they have it but are not using it for reasons of political correctness and because such weapons clearly do not act to minimize collateral damage amongst civilians who might be close to the shooters.
If that's the case, then somebody needs to read some sort of a riot act to Ohlmert and/or whoever's responsible for such a policy.
Actually, given the primitive nature of the katusha, how could they be certain that it is actually following a true ballistic trajectory that would be traceable back to a point of origin with enough precision to avoid collateral damage?
If a katyusha is a primitive rocket, it can't help but follow a ballistic path.
If you get 3 paintings, you can redraw the parabola. If you get more than 3, you can use a more complex trajectory that would compensate for spin.
Baseball players, if they are good batters, try to pick up the ball off the pitchers hand, then sample 2 or 3 more locations. If they can get 3 more, for a total of 4, they can compensate for the ball's spin. If they only get 2 more, for a total of 3, they swing as for a fastball.
Modern radars get hundreds of paintings, but for ballistic targets, they use them to correct error and ambiguity, rather than to get a more complex model.
Upon triangulating the origin of fire, surround said town with artillery and send volleys until town is rubble. Search and mop-up, then onto next point of origin. It's what the Syrians did to defeat islamofascists. And it worked. Oh, and the media was not allowed in - had to rely on second hand information.
And if the Hizbollah cannot get close enough to Israel to launch a rocket, then Israel suffers no damage.
Sure, sure... it would involve tens of thousands of dead civilians.
BUT IT WOULD WORK!
And the Israeli government isn't in office to protect the Lebanese, it's in office to protect Israeli's.
I have been calling for heavy bombers... I think its time we "loaned" the IAF some heavy bombers B52 or B1B and take out SO Leb grid by grid. They seemed to work wonders on the ridge lines in Afganistan. USE 'em NOW!
My concern would be that physical asymmetries in missile shape, weight distribution, fuel burn pattern and the like would distort a simple ballistic trajectory, and cause a backward trace based on a few path points to indicate an erroneous launch point.
Maybe I'm wrong.
weight distribution doesnt do much. Thing flys like a sock with sand in the toe. If your radar paints are close to the launch point, there is not much error at all. If your radar paints are at the impact end of the flight path, you do get error from wind.
Katyushas are simple, solid rockets with fins. The fins are not on quite straight, so they rotate a bit to spread the error on all sides of the aim point. Straight ballistics is a pretty good match. It is not much more advanced than the Hale's or Congreve's rockets of 150 years ago.
You can program in a dogleg (down range turn) into US ATMS, but that is a guided missile.
Israel is a world pioneer in unmanned aircraft and remote sensors. They probably have them overhead, and the flash of a katyusha is visible from several counties away.
The big weakness of going after the launchers as a tactic is you can launch a katyusa with a frame about as complex as a set of bedsprings. The guy launching it can set it up, run a wire a few buildings away, and press the button from there. That is why it is particularly onerous that the rockets are launched from civilian houses or courtyards. The actual launch button can be in any of the surrounding houses.
Thanks, just asking.
No, he is a retread from that other DU -Designed Universe.
This was proven conclusively on another one of his vanity threads, Basic Evolutionist Time sandwich
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