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Missile Warfare: A Realistic Assessment

(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Haim Rosenberg - The argument that land and terrain are unimportant in the missile age is a dangerous fallacy. No war in which missiles were employed - from the Iran-Iraq War to the Second Lebanon War - has ever been won without the additional use of maneuvering ground forces. Missiles have limitations that prevent them from becoming a decisive weapon, primarily their inaccuracy, as most are only capable of landing hundreds of meters off-target. This makes the chance of a precise and direct hit very low. For example, an air-launched bomb weighing one ton will destroy a building if it hits it directly, while at 60 meters off-target the damage will most likely be very limited. The writer is the former head of long-term planning at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.
2012-01-26 00:00:00
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