mb- agreed in that, for any long-range missiles. see www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hizballah-rockets.htm

haaretz: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html
As the Israel() Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

the article focuses on the larger missiles, which were the acknowledged target in the early IDF stmts, as they claimed to be trying to neutralize points of attack on israeli population ctrs.

the rockets that are aimed toward israel() are one thing. then there are the shoulder-fired missiles, which can take out ground & air vehicles and have a range up to around 5,500 meters. i've read where some poli's have expressed concern that iranian-made versions of the SA-7 and QW-1, or chinese MANPADS have made their way to hez, though i haven't come across any confirmation nor dug deep enough to find out. also, seeing as how the u.s. is the world's largest weapons dealer & given the incredible scope & scale of the black market economy, it wouldn't be surprising for some of their arms to show up by whatever route, as well. and russian weapons, etc.

i would assume that shoulder-fired missiles are discharged from w/i such structures, though i am basing this on superficial investigation & no specific knowledge base in this area. the HN-5 is shown mounted indoors here www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/images/hn-5_1.jpg

guardian: Computerised weaponry and high morale
)/Story/0,,1842276,00.html">www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1842276,00.html

Hizbullah's older anti-tank weapons have been effective against armoured personnel carriers and buildings used by soldiers for shelters. Its newer weapons such as the Russian Kornet and US TOW missiles have been highly effective succeeded in piercing the armour of Israel's main battle tank, the Merkava, reputedly one of the best-defended tanks in the world.

call it irony or whatever, but some of those tow's are no doubt part of the arms package that israel delivered to iran in july 1985.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW

30 Tanks Wiped Out in Lebanon()
www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3

(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials admit that the biggest surprise of the ongoing war against Hizbullah is the ease by which terrorists have destroyed IDF tanks.

At least 30 tanks have been totally destroyed or seriously damaged in bomb and anti-tank rocket attacks involving state-of-the-art Russian anti-tank rockets.

About one-half of the military personnel killed in southern Lebanon were inside tanks.

The Missiles of August
[excerpt]

In sum, Hezbullah's arsenal includes the following missiles:

122mm Katyushas: range 13 miles, warhead 6 kg,:

122mm improved Katyushas: range 19 miles, warhead, 6 kg;

220mm Syrian rockets: range 43 miles, warhead 40 kg;

240mm rockets: range 6 miles, warhead 18kg;

240mm Iranian Fajr 3: range 26 miles, warhead 50 kg;

333mm Iranian Fajr 5: range 46 miles, warhead 90 kg;

302mm Iranian Khaibar-1: range 100 miles, warhead 100 kg;

610mm Iranian ZelZal-2: range 130 miles, warhead 400 kg.

Significantly, according to claims by both Hezbollah and Israel(), Hezbollah has held in reserve all of its 200-odd Zelzal-2 missiles, which have a range of up to 200 kilometers — capable of reaching Tel Aviv. The Zelzal missiles are road-mobile, solid-propellant systems, about which little is known. They are most likely unguided or use a rudimentary inertial system; when properly launched, such rockets would be accurate to within several kilometers of their target, enough to hit a city like Tel Aviv.

Given all that, it's a reasonable supposition that Sheikh Nasrullah and Hezbollah were ordered by their Iranian backers to keep in reserve the Zelzals, as well as a significant number of the Iranian Fajr-5 missiles (of which the Khaibar-1 is believed by many analysts to be a modified variant).

Hezbollah's Katyushas are the furthest thing from the latest designs. Predating venerable weapon systems such as the AK-47 assault rifle and B-52 bomber, these generic short-range rockets were given their name by the Soviet troops who first fired them at German forces during World War II.

For all the Katyusha's vintage provenance, however, it has defeated futuristic attempts at missile defense like the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), a U.S.-Israeli attempt to create a high-energy chemical laser that could detonate the missiles in midflight. In fact, it's indicative of the difficulties of short-range missile defense that the THEL prototype was approximately the size of six city buses; according to Subrata Ghoshroy, a military analyst at MIT who studied the project in 1996, not only would the system have been "a sitting duck" on a battlefield, but also any fractures of its fuel tanks would have released potentially deadly gas over its crew and bystanders. Although in 2000 the THEL was able to shoot down two Katyushas simultaneously during tests when no cloud cover impeded it, Katyusha rockets were designed to be fired from truck-mounted launchers in barrages of up to 50.

[/excerpt]

whoops. link is www.counterpunch.org/williams08162006.html

ze'ev schiff in ha'aretz: The war's surprises
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/751958.html

[excerpt]

Anti-tank weapons caused most of the IDF casualties in the war - nearly all the Armored Corps' casualties and many from the infantry units. More infantry soldiers were killed by anti-tank weapons than in hand-to-hand combat. Many of the infantry soldiers who lost their lives because of anti-tank weapons entered houses in the villages; the rockets penetrated the walls, killing them.

…

Hezbollah used seven different types of rockets in the war - four of them the most advanced available and all produced by Russia and sold to Syria. The most advanced rockets can penetrate steel armor of 70-centimeter to 1.2-meter thickness. After the armor has been pierced, a second warhead explodes inside the tank. MI acquired one of these rockets and understood that Hezbollah was positioning anti-tank units. However, the IDF was inadequately prepared for this development.

Four Israeli tanks hit large landmines. Three of the tanks, which lacked underbelly protective armor, lost all 12 crew members. The fourth had underbelly protective armor; of its six crew members, only one died.

Anti-tank missiles hit 46 tanks and 14 other armored vehicles. In all these attacks, the tanks sustained only 15 armor penetrations while the other armored vehicles sustained five, with 20 soldiers killed, 15 of them tank crew members. Another two Armored Corps soldiers, whose bodies were exposed, were killed. In another location, Wadi Salouki, Hezbollah carried out a successful anti-tank ambush, hitting 11 tanks. Missiles penetrated the armor of three tanks; in two of them, seven Armored Corps soldiers were killed. Two of the other tanks were immobilized.

[/excerpt]

4 +
46 +
14 +
11 +
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75