So Hamas is firing missiles from Gaza into Israel. Gaza is about 25 long and 6 miles wide. My understanding is the base range of 155mm Howitzer is about 15 miles.
Question:
We hear a lot about Iron Dome shielding the population based on tracking the impact point of rockets launched and taking them out with with interceptor missiles. Why do we not hear more about counter-battery fire where the RADAR the system looks not on where the rocket will impact, but where it was launched from then feeding that information to the Howitzer batteryās to take out the launchers?
Given the range of Howitzers, strategically placed counter-battery fire units outside the northern, mid, and southern boundaries of Gaza would cover the whole area and be able to destroy launch points in seconds.
Take out the launchers and you reduce the number of rockets lost. What am I not understanding?
WW
(This is intended more as a technical question not a political one.)
I believe its more a technical limitationā¦ the amount of sensors and units required to pick up the projectile, chart its current trajectory, then develop equations to determine its full trajectory prior to being observedā¦ thatās a lot of math that has to be really precise with only one iteration.
Not sure you could tell its launch point when the shell is in the air. Some times the shells are shot to a high elevation and then come relatively straight down. Other times the shell is fired on a consistent arc all the way to the target. Because you dont know the elevation that was fed into it, It would seem to me it would be easier to figure its target point than itās launch point if all you have to go by is what you are observing in the airā¦
Iād be surprised if there isnāt counter battery fire. My guess would be itās one of those things you donāt want to advertise to delay the opposition from figuring out a way around it.
I am guessing where WW is coming from is the other day I was watching Fox/CNN and both had a live shot from Gaza and you could see salvos of rockets being launched, and like him I was waiting on the counter battery fire to knock out the launchersā¦nothing. So I was actually wondering the same thing
Standard maximum range for a 155mm round approx 14 miles. A shell designed by Raytheon that also uses fins to navigate to its target, the Excalibur 155mm round, has a range of about 24 miles
I think they donāt use counter battery fire because of civilian casualties considerations. They would have drones and aircraft overhead using precision strikes. It would be hard to give prior warnings like they do now with counter battery fires.
If you are āseeingā a moment in time and a stationary object. True.
But counter-battery is about tracking the ballistic flight path of artillery, mortars, and rockets. The movement of the object over time and calculating the source path and therefore the launch point.
Thatās kind of my point. If you a launch rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations then I think you should lose the benefit of announced counter-battery fire.
Okay I have heard two things. One was that Hamas was using mobile rocket launchers. And the other was that for many months Israel has had drones over Gaza. So I am wondering if they could use the drones to pinpoint where the rocket launchers are being placed?
Maybe itās a shoot ānā scoot. Nothing in that picture looks irreplaceable. They could just set up the salvo, take cover a couple hundred feet away, and launch remotely.
A lot of the stuff Hamas fires is set and then remotely fired. It also isnāt guided stuff, so they are just aiming in a general direction. The other thing is they have a track record of using school yards and parks in residential areas as launching sites. They want counterbattery fire to land on those locations so they can produce pictures of dead children and damaged homes and schools.
That said, this Youtube video purports to show Hamas launching drones.
From the video, I cannot tell if the drones have a wing span of 13 inches or 13 feet, but either way they donāt leave any kind of signature that could be traced allowing the launch site to be precision targeted.
