Posted on 04/02/2008 10:25:47 PM PDT by jhpigott
A military correspondent for Israel's Channel Two News reported on Tuesday night that many of the mortar shells fired at southern Israel by Gaza-based Palestinian forces earlier in the day were Iranian-made 120mm shells.
The heavy mortar shells have far more destructive power than the locally-produced Kassam rockets, and have a range of up to 5 miles. The speed at which the shells travel also renders useless an early warning system installed in several southern Israel communities to give residents an opportunity to reach safety in the event of an attack.
The report also noted that structural reinforcements on public buildings in the hard-hit town of Sderot were designed to protect against the weaker and slower Kassam rockets, and will not hold up against the Iranian mortars.
ping
for later
things are sure getting interesting...
What is it going to take before the USA and/or Israel quit playing around with these 7th century savages and wipe them out?
Enough is enough - But by God this'll stop'em!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
What is it going to take before the USA and/or Israel quit playing around with these 7th century savages and wipe them out?Not going to happen. Israel isn't large enough or self-sufficient enough to survive on its own. It needs the goodwill of the industrialized world, including commie europe etc... That is why it always has to restrain itself to some extent.
Time for some counter-battery fire...;0)
Iran itself needs to be negated..
Thanks for the info.
In my day mortars were NOT renowned for their speed and systems were designed around their speed and trajectory.
Of course, it took a couple of rounds received before you had counter battery data...
(PS: My arty experience was mostly on the incoming end and the alert procedure was "Bang!...run and hide" but better stuff was being fielded over 30 years ago)
Israel has a system that fires tracked explosive rounds for RPGs, that basically causes the incoming to be knocked off target or detonated in flight. Our forces have just rolled out a portable close in weapons system in Iraq that uses rounds that pose minimal down range damage. As is the case of warfare one side makes a better gun, the other makes better armor, then the other side makes a gun to defeat the bettor armor etc and etc.Some day soon the rules of warfare are going to change dramatically and I am hoping it will be the doctrine of supremacy of retaliation, as I have heard from my Italian heritage if your enemy threatens you you are to break his arm, if he pulls a knife you cut off his manhood.
The middle billow has a nice clown face in it.
I’ve wondered about this for some time, and I guess Israel hasn’t gotten to the point where they are willing to send shells back against the source. Upon launch shouldn’t they have very good coordinates for counter-battery fire? It would be devastating but it would stop the shelling. How much time would the pali launchers have before Israel could bring enough metal into the box, and how big would the box have to be?
A 120mm mortar system can be concealed in a box truck or even a large SUV. It is easy to get off 3-4 rounds in the general direction of the target and scoot, even before the first round is 3/4 of the way thru its trajectory. AFAIK, no counterbattery system can process data and get a return round off that fast.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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IDF counter battery ping.
Maybe we have a retired former arty lifer lurking here that could clear up the idea of counter battery fire and why it does not work very well for high trajectory attacks featuring mortar bombs. I once heard a very good technical explaination on C-span of all places, but don’t recall the math. It’s why theres also no time for warnings.
“could clear up the idea of counter battery fire and why it does not work very well for high trajectory attacks featuring mortar bombs.”
In general, counter-batter fire utilizes radar to target -— tracking back the “arc”. The steeper the arc, the less change in angle in a given area and less presise the firing solution on the source. Wind and random drift complicates things.
Because the IDF is dealing with a more-or-less fixed “area” of mortor/ballistic missle sources, the IDF counter-battery fire has the luxury of using multiple precisely-fixed radar sources and mutliple wind monitoring stations. (Along with certain acoustic sensors and computers tying it all together.)
The result is that counter battery fire can theoretically occur before the projectile has reached the apex of the arc.
The problem with this is there can be false alarms, and if put on a hair trigger (e.g., firing before impact), we could be killing people randomly.
Knowing the Israelis will not willingly kill people randomly, the arabs do use “shoot and scoot,” generally on the second shoot, as confirmation of a live round has been confirmed (about 7-8 seconds).
More exciting (and this is not secret), is real time drone/GPS targeting that will permit “counter battery” fire as the arabs are setting up -— before they fire the first shot.
There are also anti-ballistic missle lasers (small scale) being implaced using the same targeting systems -— but on a hair trigger, as civilians do not fly through the air.
I predict lots of birds will be fried in mid-flight.
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