| They're Not Katyushas! 2006-07-23 by: badanov Until hostilities between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Iranian supported terroists Hezbollah ends in in an acceptable way, with an Israeli military victory, you are likely to hear from our glorious news media about Katyusha rockets, the artillery rockets used by Hezbollah. The Russians stopped making Katyusha 50 years ago and they stopped making ammunition 30 years ago. The Katyusha is known as the BM13, a 132mm multiple rocket launcher (MRL) orginally deployed in the fall of 1939 and used in that version and other versions until the end of the war. As far as we know the Soviets have never manfactured a single rail launcher for the 132mm rocket. They have always been made to be mounted as multple launchers with between 14 and 48 rails per truck. It wasn't until the 1960s did the Soviets develop the 122mm rocket artillery system called the Grad. These systems were deployable either on large trucks or they had a single rail launcher, presumably to sell to third world militaries at a cheaper price. The Grad is deployed as the BM21 MRL with each truck mount having 40 tubes per truck. This variation also has a single rail which is the likely configuration Hezbollah now uses to terrorize Israeli citizens. The point is that the Katyusha is no longer in use since after the 1940s. -----------------------------------------COMMENTS---------------------------------------- |