Hezbollah’s Arsenal of Rockets Is Huge, But Each Launch Makes It Smaller

Half of Hezbollah’s 150,000 Rockets Are 1963 Soviet Grads.

Since the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah has been collecting rockets of almost every type that Iran was able to produce or obtain, and Iranian money could buy.

More than half of the rocket arsenal in southern Lebanon––an estimated 75,000 rockets––consists of Soviet Grad 122 mm multiple rocket launchers with an effective range of up to 32 miles. A Grad launcher typically has 40 barrels which must be reloaded after each volley.

 To quote the Kaveret band’s popular 1970s, this is where the dog is buried. Also, when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks at you.

Each time a volley of 40 Grads is released, its launcher and the nice terrorists schlepping the next load of rockets are exposed to Israeli drones that are hovering above south Lebanon and are capable of firing a devastating rocket to take out the whole thing. As in the video below, released last week by the IDF:

No one knows how many Grad launchers have been dispersed around south Lebanon, but the Grads are notoriously inaccurate. They are not intended to cause harm as to intimidate and spread fear. To that end, they must be fired in large, coordinated batches. Guess what: this can no longer be done. Not until Hezbollah finds a communication method that won’t be tapped by Israeli intelligence.

As a result, those 75,000 Grads will be fired sporadically and land mostly in open fields. It’s still not fun being blasted for a few days by the latest Soviet military technology of 1963, but expect low casualties on the Israeli side, God willing.

The next level is heavy rockets: the Iranian-made Fajer 5, which Hamas and the Islamic Jihad used to launch 175 kg warheads from Gaza. It has a range of up to 47 miles and is fired from a vehicle with four barrels. Once the four rockets have been launched, reloading is a lengthy process, and the drones should have little problem dispensing with the launcher and its crew.

In addition, Hezbollah operates Khaibar-1 launchers with a range of 100 km, firing 302 mm rockets with a 150 kg payload. It is launched from an apparatus designed by the Syrians, with six firing tubes.

Then there are the Iranian-made Zelzal-1, with an estimated range of 93 miles, Zelzal-2, with a 130-mile range, and Zelzal-3, with a 120-mile range. They are mounted on a single launcher and carry a 600 kg warhead.

At the top of Hezbollah’s rocket heap is the Fateh-110, which is a GPS-guided version of the Zelzal 2 rocket. It carries a 500 kg warhead.

Israel has found a way of neutralizing the GPS feature: it hampers the country’s GPS networks. This is the reason why motorists who go past Haifa must resort to good, old-fashioned maps because their Waze tells them they’re in Beirut International Airport, or in Amman International Airport, as the satellite signal hops to the nearest working GPS system.

Again, the bigger the rocket, the fewer the barrels of the launch pad or rack, and Hezbollah would have to deploy more launchers to fire a significant volley. Hezbollah knows that the IDF can pinpoint any launch the moment it is fired, and plant a bomb, a missile, or a shell there. This pushes Hezbollah’s crews into an extreme race to use it or lose it, and the more they fire, the fewer launchers they will have.

by David Israel JP