Dear Members
I find myself in the strange position of defending a groups use of a weapon who I despise and is the enemy of my country. To wit, the rockets Hezbollah is firing at northern Israel cities and towns.
When the WW1 German Gotha bombers were bombing London and everyone was yelling war crime and barbaric weapons, one member of the House of Lords got up and went against the pack and stated that London was the major center of UKs munition production, command and shipping center so London was a perfectly legal target. Needless to say he did not win the popular politician of the month award (Churchill was happy because at that time because of the failures of the Dardanelles campaign he was at the bottom of the popularity pile). Or those that defended the German Navy’s right to sink merchant ships without warning after the British Navy started using “Q-ships” (merchants fitted with hidden cannons which would fire on the German U-boats when they surfaced to tell the crew to abandon ships before they sunk it with a torpedo or more commonly cannon fire).
But to the issue of. Many have stated — along with everyone else and FOX especially — that Hezbollah was modifying its rockets by packing the warheads with ball bearings to increase the civilian casualties. Yes, the rockets have what everyone is calling ball bearings, but that is the way they very, very likely come from the factory. Ball Bearings in medium caliber artillery rocket warheads is the standard. Whether it be manufactured in Iran, China, Russia, India, France, South Africa or even Israel. Below is the wording of the description of the West German Army’s LARS, 36 round, 110mm artillery rocket which has a anti-material/personnel code named “Dragon Seder”. The description is from the 1970s in C. Foss’s ARTILLERY OF THE WORLD, but still applies till submunitions (explained later) became common for artillery rockets: “….this is said to have 5000 steel balls and is fitted with a proximity fuse.” A few years later this statement was found to be true. Although I believe Foss overestimated the number of ball bearings. Artillery rockets are no where near as accurate as standard artillery like the 155mm howitzer. Artillery rockets designed to use the “shotgun effect.” They are fired in massive salvos — but Hezbollah is forced to use single tube launchers due to Israelis ability to locate and fast bring down artillery fire on any launcher.
For example the 122mm rocket that is the most common used by Hezbollah and referred to as “katyushas” (a totally wrong name like the news media for years after the 1991 war referred to ever large ground to ground missile as a SCUD) are fired from the back of a truck mounting 40 tubes and usually 12 trucks to a battery, meaning 424 rockets are fired in one salvo. Heavy ball bearing type fragments are used, because they can carry much further than a plain HE blast would, and they have a better effect than the thin warhead casing of a standard HE would have against trucks, jeeps, helicopters on the ground. In addition they are effective is a close hit is against thin armored vehicles, like an APC (artillery rockets for reasons of cost are not fitted with heavy thick steel warheads as standard artillery rounds are — because of the forces they have to have heavy thin warheads so they normally do not use ball bearings because they have heavy thick walls to take the G forces and the ball bearing bearings would not disperse well through the thick shell’s walls on explosion.)
The reality is that those 122mm rockets would do far more damage in hitting a city or town if they were a fitted with a standard HE warhead (especially one with what is called a semi-armor piercing type) which would in the close quarters of buildings and streets would turn any building structure it hit into lethal high speed fragments. Also a 122mm HE warhead would pack almost twice the HE content as the standard anti-material/personnel 122mm warhead.
As to the submunitions I mentioned I would explain later. Some refer to them as cluster bombs. But that is an over statement. submunitions are about the size of small salt or pepper shaker (eg 40mm in diamter usually) and have a ribbon that streams out behind them. The artillery rocket warhead has a timer which explodes them high over the target dispersing them. Each submunition explodes on impact with the effect of hand grenade and it they impact the top of a vehicle they have a small armor piercing warhead. Instead of ball bearings artillery rocket manufacturers are packing them in rocket warheads. The US Army was the first to introduce submunitions artillery rockets with the MLRS (I wrote my only article that made the front cover of the magazine on the MLRS). Each 230mm caliber MLRS warhead carries 644 submunitions. One MLRS launcher of 12 rounds can put 7,728 submunitions over an area of 3000 square yards. The Iraqi soldiers in the 1991 war called it “The Steel Rain.” When the MLRS was used against surface to air units and artillery most Iraqi soldiers immediately abandon the area where their cannons were.
I am giving the info on the MLRS system because since it was introduced in the early other nations arms industry have introduced artillery rockets with submunitions down to 70mm rockets. If Iran was to — or has — supply Hezbollah with long range artillery rockets fitted with submunition warheads, Hezbollah can not only cause problems for civilians but the Israeli military. You ask any senior commander who was in the military during the Vietnam War and they will tell you that if the North Vietnamese had had submunition warheads on the 122mm rockets they were firing at US airfields they would have shut those airfields down and aircraft would have had to operate out of Thailand and the Philippines. And with the warhead of a 122mm rocket carrying 55 submunitions (I am using as example the South African ARMSCOR 122mm rocket with submunitions) exploding high over a city you can imagine the chaos. Especially if they are fitted with a delay of hours as many are designed to do deny an area to enemy personnel. So while the anti-material/personnel 122mm warheads are lethal, the HE or submunition would be far more lethal. And in no way shape or form are they an illegal weapon except for their targeting.
Finally, a tidbit I think you will find interesting. You know those so called “crude rockets” that Hamas in Gaza is firing into Israel. Many military experts are confused about them. You just don’t mix some black powder with alchol and pack it into a tube and a V chamber pressed into the rear of the black powder in the tube and them bolt some wings to the tube and have an artillery rocket. A black powder rocket would not fly far with black powder anyway. And Hamas rockets while crude have the range far beyon that of a black powder rocket. And the high explosive material that Hamas has access to is worthless as a rocket propellent (it would blow up on launch like a bomb). Rocket propellent requires a very sophisticated plant to manufacture and handle. So what gives? Many have saw some of the Hamas propaganda videos of the rocket firing. Instead of being fired like a standard rocket from a tube slanted and aimed towards the target, the Hamas rockets are fired vertically. Some have noted that the Hamas rockets look an awful lot like the design a small Italian firm had in the 1970s to design a super cheap and simple artillery rocket using pressurized liquids and an impulse rocket motor. The design was called “Samurai”. The liquids used are quite common (women use one to bleach hair). And the design was simple and require no careful machining or expensive parts. The project was abandon by the Italians after a few tests due to lack of funds, lack of accuracy and its ability to carry only a small warhead. But photos of the Hamas crude rockets and the “Samurai” are almost a dead ringer. Who knows what happened to the plans and drawings in Italy when they were put in storage?
Jack E. Hammond
By: jackehammond - 2nd August 2006 at 12:08
Dear Vaiar,
My most respectful apologizes. I had totally misunderstood your message at the end of your messages.
Btw, lovely people at that link. I mean lovely.
Jack E. Hammond
By: BayAreaFan - 1st August 2006 at 19:32
Dear Member,
BTW> The comments at the bottom of all your messages are pretty rude. It is sort of like eating free at a cafe then still eating free and saying the food s*cks and telling people where another better cafe is. And before you jump I have been on the forums on the internet for over 20 years (members, staff, sysops) and seen everything. But that takes the cake.
If you read the signature carefully you will notice that it is taking a jab at the other forum and not at KeyPub!
It says “but unfortunately you grew up in a cave and do not like the plural KeyPub-community“.
Click on the linked forum and you would understand why he says so 😉
By: nirav - 31st July 2006 at 04:09
Excellent site Sferrin (the 2nd one); must be a great help for militants all over the world constructing rockets. :dev2:
i had come across that site a couple years ago ……. its an awesome site ….. helped me make my own fuel for my model rocket ……
i had also downloaded the web site owners ( Richard Nakka’s ) thesis from that site….. made nice reading and also good understanding of the topic …..
the information can be pretty destructive tho if used by unscruplous elements 🙁
By: sferrin - 29th July 2006 at 14:20
Excellent site Sferrin (the 2nd one); must be a great help for militants all over the world constructing rockets. :dev2:
Nevertheless, militants could also simply order some of the wealth of information available to the public on rocket and engine construction from Amazon or other online vendors.
For example:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/093038704X/ref=pd_cp_b_title/102-7656869-5786521?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1553952081/ref=pd_sim_b_2/102-7656869-5786521?ie=UTF8
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412058104/ref=pd_sim_b_1/102-7656869-5786521?ie=UTF8
Of those links the first is pretty much just black powder motors. And I actually have the other two 🙂
Here’s a better one:
https://secure.consumersinterest.com/loki/store.asp?groupid=73020038305143
Or if you’d rather take classes there are places you can actually learn how to make solid propellant though it’s a pretty safe bet that by the time you’ve got to that level your name is on all kinds of lists 😉 When you get to the upper level of high powered rocketry the line between hobby and professional can really start to blur. There have been some LARGE rockets flown. One guy is working on a full scale Nike Ajax and a 3/4 scale Nike Hercules. I’ve seen a full scale Honest John and so forth. And then there’s the annual BALLS launch at Black Rock where they have clearance up to 100,000 feet. . . They regulate all of this pretty close and even if they made it illegal and put everybody out of business it wouldn’t make a difference because all it takes is a little bit of knowledge and motivation (and $$$) and you can make a rocket pretty easy.
By: Vaiar - 29th July 2006 at 13:10
Excellent site Sferrin (the 2nd one); must be a great help for militants all over the world constructing rockets. :dev2:
Nevertheless, militants could also simply order some of the wealth of information available to the public on rocket and engine construction from Amazon or other online vendors.
For example:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/093038704X/ref=pd_cp_b_title/102-7656869-5786521?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1553952081/ref=pd_sim_b_2/102-7656869-5786521?ie=UTF8
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412058104/ref=pd_sim_b_1/102-7656869-5786521?ie=UTF8
By: sferrin - 29th July 2006 at 12:09
(I wonder how many people thought I was kidding 🙂 )
http://www.trailertrashaerospace.com/
and for the more scientific minded:
By: Vaiar - 29th July 2006 at 11:55
Dear Member,
Do you have a source link for that information. Honestly, I am interested. Because the news reports that it is black powder or high explosive don’t make sense.
Jack E. Hammond
Black powder is a combination of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), charcoal and sulfur in a certain proportion to each other. The Palestinian terror organizations seem to use other sorts of propellants; many containing sugar. The best site (with extensive press sources) on Palestinian artillery rockets is this one:
http://www.weaponsurvey.com/missilesrockets.htm
If you want more information on rocket fuels which can be made with commonly available components, search and ask this google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.models.rockets?hl=en
Searching for “sugar” results in a lot of hits:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.models.rockets/search?group=rec.models.rockets&q=sugar&qt_g=1&searchnow=Search+this+group
See here for some general experimental rocket fuels (some using sugar) by a hobbyist (not a resistance fighter / terrorist):
http://www.thefintels.com/aer/experimentalpropellants.htm
By: Arabella-Cox - 29th July 2006 at 11:23
Most hand grenades are fitted with ball bearings. Notched wire, or a thicker shell casing with grooves cut into them to get a regular pattern of fragments are two other means of creating HE FRAG weapons. Has nothing to do with submunitions.
By: sferrin - 29th July 2006 at 11:04
They are not powered by black powder, but by a solid propellant manufactured from potassium nitrate fertilizer and powdered sugar.
See “Trailer Trash Rocketry” for the low down on how it’s made on the cheap.
By: proudfoot - 29th July 2006 at 04:34
Actually, they don’t use real ball bearings, as that would be too expensive. Round, metal, balls are probably the better term.
By: Devils Advocate - 28th July 2006 at 23:16
So why are they complaining about ball bearings? What do they expect? The warheads packed with nerf balls?
By: ELP - 28th July 2006 at 21:37
If submunitons land on a runway as a form of airfield denial, you use high pressure water from firetrucks to push them off quickly.
Just as an aside as most may know, dumb submunitions like M77
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/Gs01aa_1/tsld027.htm
or whatever it is in MLRS, just like dumb submunitions in CBUs etc have a high dud rate. Where you have lots of uxbs around in the area after a fire mission. They are cute and yellow and in the case of OIF, one of many events an Iraqi girl picked one up and took it over to two U.S. soldiers. It went off, killing her and injuring the soldiers. So when they are used, assume a high dud rate.
Smart submunitions like BLU-108B SFW ( CBU-105 etc ) for the most part don’t have a dud rate and are engineered in such a fashion as to leave a “clean battlefield” as it were. However they are expensive and are good only if you are going after known hard/soft vehicles en masse.
Seems the casualtie rate of dead civilians ( not counting soldiers or hez on either side ) is about 11:1 give or take with around 600 dead Lebonese civilians approx and around 50-60 dead Israelis. ) Don’t see ruining a whole country as a sound strategy to remove a small number of bad actors launching rockets.
By: jackehammond - 28th July 2006 at 21:22
currently on of the hotly debated topic is hizb. actually manufacturing these missiles in lebanon as the confict is ongoing? There already reports of missiles evolving in terms of range and warhead supporting this claim. Just a few mins ago afula was hit by new type of katyusha strengthening this theory.
Dear Member,
Maybe Hezbollah is manufacturing those missiles. But I find it very hard to believe. “It isn’t rocket science.” is used to mean something is not the complex because rockets are. especially the rocket motors. Most reports state that the FAJR-3/5 are Iranian manufactured version of this Chinese (mainland) rocket. Only they are fired from single tube launchers.
Jack E. Hammond
http://www.scaic.com.cn/indexE.asp?modelname=e_cpzxin00_nr_ws1
By: jackehammond - 28th July 2006 at 21:16
They are not powered by black powder, but by a solid propellant manufactured from potassium nitrate fertilizer and powdered sugar.
Dear Member,
Do you have a source link for that information. Honestly, I am interested. Because the news reports that it is black powder or high explosive don’t make sense.
Jack E. Hammond
BTW> The comments at the bottom of all your messages are pretty rude. It is sort of like eating free at a cafe then still eating free and saying the food s*cks and telling people where another better cafe is. And before you jump I have been on the forums on the internet for over 20 years (members, staff, sysops) and seen everything. But that takes the cake.
By: Vaiar - 28th July 2006 at 16:16
You know those so called “crude rockets” that Hamas in Gaza is firing into Israel. Many military experts are confused about them. You just don’t mix some black powder with alchol and pack it into a tube and a V chamber pressed into the rear of the black powder in the tube and them bolt some wings to the tube and have an artillery rocket. A black powder rocket would not fly far with black powder anyway. And Hamas rockets while crude have the range far beyon that of a black powder rocket.
They are not powered by black powder, but by a solid propellant manufactured from potassium nitrate fertilizer and powdered sugar.
By: JonS - 28th July 2006 at 15:24
currently on of the hotly debated topic is hizb. actually manufacturing these missiles in lebanon as the confict is ongoing? There already reports of missiles evolving in terms of range and warhead supporting this claim. Just a few mins ago afula was hit by new type of katyusha strengthening this theory.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153292020774&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
By: Grey Area - 28th July 2006 at 13:09
Moderator Comment
I think this thread really belongs in “Missiles And Munitions”.
I endorse Gollevainen’s comment about the quality of the original posting 100%, by the way.
GA
By: Gollevainen - 28th July 2006 at 09:11
Nice writting jack…I too find myself strage to speak about the brach that I love some much (artillery) in situation like this, but its a crazy world…
About those submutions, I heard about accusations of Israelian using normal 155mm submution rounds and in one fast news clip which showed some M109 SP systems had quite familiar rounds alongside it…I cannot be sure, but they looked afull lot similar to the ones we used back in the army days (We only trained once on these rounds and they were labeled very special and almoust secretive by our instructors) So in this case the Israelians are in no position to critizise Hizbollahs warhead types, becouse they are using them as well and I bet my as that Israeli artillery is about 110% more effective than Hizbollahs 😉
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July 28, 2006 at 8:53 am