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Saker Message:
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Saker, forgive the off topic comment, but there has been a lot of talk about Israel’s accusation re: Syria delivering scuds to Hezbollah. We would love to read your technical perspective on the matter.
Many have pointed out the Scuds are to big and cumbersome to be of use to Hezb. But Nasrallah recently warned that they can, and will, strike Israeli strategic assets in retaliation for an attack on Lebanon. If you had to guess, what kind of weapons do you think Nasrallah was referring to? What rockets or missiles would be most effective in Hezbollah’s hands?
Thanx,
Lysander
@Lysander: the big advantage of the Scud for Hezbollah is range. But this is a large missile, difficult to hide. I suppose that Hezbollah could try to camouflage the Scud’s TEL into some civilian truck, but the MAZ-7310 does not look like your average veggie truck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAZ-543), so that might be rather difficult.
The other option I see is somehow hide a couple of Scuds in a fixed place. Still, we are talking about a 10m long missile, weighing something like 5 tons. Not easy to hide…
The Syrian version has a 300km range, a CEP of about 500m and a payload of 900kg. Good enough to hurt the Israelis for sure, and it could be hidden anywhere in Lebanon. 300km is about the distance from Baalbek to Tel-Aviv. So that would be a cheap and halfway decent weapon to strike back if the Zionists decide to flatten Beirut (as they have promised to do many times since 2006).
Iran, by the way, has the very same model even though it is very outdated by current Iranian missile standards. So I imagine that Hezbollah cadre could have travelled to Iran to get familiar with the system.
It would be far better if Hezbollah had more modern Russian systems like the Tochka or even Iskander, but that the Russian’s ain’t gonan give them, and neither will Syria (which has a Tochka brigade which it needs for itself).
Again, the big advantage of the Scud is that it can be deployed far away, further than the Tochkas for that matter. But other than that, the Scud is a pain: its liquid fuelled, big, a long launching sequence, etc. This is 1960s technology :-(
Bottom line: I hope that Hezbollah has those, but this might just be a rumor.
HTH
The Saker
@Lysander: one more thing. rumor has it that Hezbollah has some Iranian-made Fateh-110. Dunno if that is true, but that would be a far better option since it is a much more modern (solid fuel) missile. Here are two links for you on this topic:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164075.html
http://qifanabki.com/2010/04/22/scud-d-vs-fateh-110/
HTH!
Thanks a lot for the info, Saker.
South-African who can have her free-hand in things in the new S.A and want to do the same thing in Palestine. Bogots don’t change
I laughed when I see new immigrants from Zimbabwe or S.A. trying to practice their M.O in countries like Australia. Mauritius or Brazil and building their own ghettos in their new countries