The rockets that the Palestinians fire into Israel from time to time are Qassam rockets, simple steel rockets developed by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas:
The aim of the Qassam rocket design appears to be ease and speed of manufacture, using common tools and components. To this end, the rockets are propelled by a solid mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, a widely available fertilizer. The warhead is filled with smuggled or scavenged TNT and urea nitrate, another common fertilizer.
The rocket consists of a steel cylinder, containing a rectangular block of the propellant. A steel plate which forms and supports the nozzles is spot-welded to the base of the cylinder. The warhead consists of a simple metal shell surrounding the explosives, and is triggered by a fuze constructed using a simple firearm cartridge, a spring and a nail.
While early designs used a single nozzle which screwed into the base, recent rockets use a seven-nozzle design, with the nozzles drilled directly into the rocket baseplate. This change both increases the tolerance of the rocket to small nozzle design defects, and eases manufacture by allowing the use of a drill rather than a lathe during manufacture due to the smaller nozzle size. Unlike many other rockets, the nozzles are not canted, which means the rocket does not spin about its longitudinal axis during flight. While this results in a significant decrease in accuracy, it greatly simplifies rocket manufacture and the launch systems required.
The propellant of Palestinian rockets is generallly made from fertilizer, and the TNT warhead is smuggled through the Rafah border tunnels into the Gaza Strip. The cost for the raw materials of a large rocket is up to €500.
Bombs? Bombs?!
Dude.
Why don’t they “just use Twitter”? That’s the way regimes are overthrown, war criminals exposed, dictators deposed, and revolutions started.
Or, at least, that’s what Hillary told me on the TV.
I guess the millions and millions of phone calls and emails and letters against the TARP were simply using the wrong technology, eh? And that’s why TARP passed; despite considerable popular will.
Yeah, it’s gotta be ‘cyber’, or it ain’t cool.
Where is Evgeny Morosov when we need him?