A Hezbollah rocket struck a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the Golan Heights, killing at least 10 children, and injuring 24, the IDF reported on Saturday.
I didn’t think they were able to aim those rockets beyond a general direction. Has that changed?
About 20 years ago Hezbollah first started using guided anti-tank missiles. In some cases they are steering the missile all the way until impact. I’m sure details will come out soon, but you don’t just randomly hit the field/playground in the middle of town by accident without trying at least a little bit.
I think you are overestimating the precision of unguided rockets. Lets eyeball this:
Lets assume the rocket flies ten kilometers, which is on the short end of things. As it is subsonic, it at best could reach a speed of 300m/s (hypersonic is above 343 m/s). Since we are looking at an arc for the shape, lets assume a launch angle of 30°, making it a fairly flat arc. So the speed in ground direction then only is 86% which is cos 30° or in total 260m/s. So that rocket has to fly at least 38 seconds.
Taking just a sideways wind, assuming a gentle breeze on the beaufort scale, at about 4.5 m/s, that would result in a deviation of 171m over the 38 seconds. But now you get wind from the back or the front, which gives the rocket upwards or downwards drift. Or the wind isn’t perfectly sideways, so it actually changes the direction the propulsion is pushing too. Over such a range you also get changing wind speeds and directions…
You face the same thing with artillery. Which is why it is usually used in batteries and to cover an area, rather than hit a specific target. Although Artillery is easier in the sense, that the propulsion happens right in the beginning and is aimed correctly.
If we are talking guided missiles, it is a very different story, although i would be suprised if Hezbollah had access to GPS guiding or similiar high precision tools.
Depends. I’ve heard of rockets being launched at Israel on the news consistently, for decades. I rarely hear about more than a few casualties, and even more rarely of deaths. When hundreds are launched every year you would a few to randomly hit a populated area.
Either this is an outlier with a dumb rocket, or the average rocket launched is dumb but this one was not. Either way, innocents die because the people and powers that be haven’t learned how to not be violent assholes to each other.
