Qassam rocket

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The remnants of Qassam rockets that were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel.

Graph showing the number of Qassam rockets fired from Gaza Strip by month according to Israeli Intelligence

The remnants of an exploded Qassam rocket

The Qassam rocket (Arabic: صاروخ القسام‎ Ṣārūkh al-Qassām; also Kassam) is a simple steel rocket filled with explosives, produced by Hamas. Three models have been used. They are all free-flying artillery rockets lacking any guidance system.

The rocket has gained significant notoriety through its development and deployment by Hamas against Israeli targets in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

[edit] History of the Qassam

A qassam hit in Sderot, May 2006

Qassam rockets are named after the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed branch of Hamas, itself named after an Islamic Mojahed Izz ad-Din al-Qassam who led a Palestinian group during the 1930s. According to Hamas, the Qassam rocket was first developed by Nidal Fat'hi Rabah Farahat and Mohamed Khaled and produced under the direction of Adnan al-Ghoul, the "Father of the Qassam", who died on October 22, 2004.

Qassams were first fired at Israeli civil areas in October 2001. The first Qassam to hit Israeli territory was launched on February 10, 2002. The first time an Israeli city was hit was on March 5, 2002, when two rockets struck Sderot. Some rockets have hit as far as the edge of Ashkelon. The total number of Qassam rockets launched exceeded 1,000 by June 9, 2006. During the year 2006 alone, more than 1,000 rockets were launched. In 2008, 1750 rockets were launched^[1]. By the end of December, 2008 a total of 15 people had been killed by Qassam rockets since attacks began in 2001^[2] (see: List of Qassam rocket attacks).

The introduction of the Qassam rocket took Israeli politicians and military experts by surprise,^[3] and reactions have been mixed.^[4] In 2006, the Israeli Ministry of Defense viewed the Qassams as "more a psychological than physical threat."^[5] The Israel Defence Force has reacted to the deployment of the Qassam rockets by deploying the Red Color early warning system in Sderot, Ashkelon and other at-risk targets. The system consists of an advanced radar that detects rockets as they are being launched, and loudspeakers warn civilians to take cover between 15 and 45 seconds before impact^[6] in an attempt to minimize the threat posed by the rockets. A system called Iron Dome, designed to intercept the rockets before they can hit their targets, is currently under development and is expected to be operational by 2010.

[edit] Rocket design and specifications

Remnants of several types of rockets

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 a widely available fertilizer, potassium nitrate. The warhead is filled with smuggled or scavenged TNT and another common fertilizer, urea nitrate.^[7]

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.^[7]

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 axis during flight. While this results in a significant decrease in accuracy, it greatly simplifies rocket manufacture and the launch systems required.^[7]

[edit] Similar rockets

See also: Palestinian domestic weapons production

Other Palestinian militant groups have also developed home-made rockets, but they are much less common than the Qassam as developed by Hamas. The media generally refer to all Palestinian high-trajectory rockets as "Qassam rockets" or "Qassam missiles", while they call most rockets fired from Lebanon "Katyushas", as a Katyusha is not a specific model but rather a generic class of rocket.

• Palestinian Islamic Jihad - Al Quds 101 & 2
• Popular Resistance Committees - al Nasser-3
• Tanzim - Saria-2
• Fatah - Kafah

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Hamas
• List of Qassam rocket attacks
• Adnan al-Ghoul
• Katyusha
• Grad

[edit] External links

• About the Qassam-sderotmedia
• GlobalSecurity.org - Qassam Rocket
• The Homemade Rocket That Could Change The Mideast – By Tony Karon, TIME Online Edition (10 February, 2002)
• Qassam-2 missile a wild card in Mideast conflict – CNN (March 5, 2002)
• Gaza rockets kill two in Israel, BBC article (June 28, 2004)
• Palestinian Weapons Production and Smuggling : Missiles & Rockets
• A Visit to a Gaza Rocket Factory, by Ulrike Putz, der Spiegel international (January 29, 2008, in English)
• Victims of Qassam rockets in Sderot
• Rocketboom visits Sderot
• Katyusha & Qassam Rockets on www.aerospaceweb.org
• Updates about rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel on twitter.com
• Photos: Qassam rockets in Sderot