A 12-tube rocket launcher.C.J. Chivers/The New York Times
Mao’s Rockets And The Eastern Afghan Border War, Part I -- New York Times
Traveling at Mach 1.1, a 107-millimeter rocket gives little time for those along its path to react. Even if a counterbattery radar picks up an incoming rocket in flight, the warning might sound only a moment before the arrival of the rocket itself, barely allowing time to flinch. By then the rocket has either passed by or it has struck, delivering its warhead’s explosive blast.
This year American and Afghan soldiers along one part of Afghanistan’s uncertain border with Pakistan have become expert at these sounds and familiar with their perils. The rate and the severity of rocket attacks against outposts in eastern Paktika Province have spiked since midspring, making 107-millimeter rocket attacks, once again part of the familiar fabric of the Afghan border war. Rockets had been fired at American outposts near the border for years, but during 2010 the attacks all but stopped. They spiked again this year.The data speaks for itself: During a roughly six-month period, May to October, in 2010, there were two rocket attacks from within Pakistan on three outposts near the border with Waziristan. This year, during the same months, there were 59. And there have been more than 100 attacks against the same base from rocket firing positions in Afghanistan but within a short distance of the border, compared with 13 such attacks in the same period last year.
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My Comment: If these rockets were effective, we would have heard scores of US casualty reports from their use. The fact is .... this weapon serves more as a terror instrument on urban centers than on military targets.
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