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by mrguyorama
851 days ago
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This is just "rocket candy" right? My friend made this stuff a whole bunch when we were teens. Once during a summer break from college, we lit up a watermelon sized chunk of the stuff, producing a house sized plume of white smoke and a mild explosion. It's pretty fun! Maybe don't build missiles with it and attempt to kill your neighbor with it though, seems like the least fun possible use for it. |
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It's also opportunistic exploitation of supplies which would be likely to pass through an imports blockade, as has been the case in Gaza.
Both sugar and fertiliser are basic-needs goods, with obvious nonmilitary applications. The fact that they can be combined (with other dual-purpose and low-cost materials, such as steel piping) to create ballistic weapons with ranges (and accuracies) of tens of kilometres is useful to Hamas and of course highly problematic for Israel.
What the source I'd linked noted was that though the rockets are individually highly inaccurate, en mass they become effective area denial weapons (effectively aerial mines), and a highly-asymmetric cost advantage over Israel's Iron Dome ballistic missile defence systems. A Qassam rocket costs less than $1,000, whilst a single shot by Iron Dome is on the order of $100,000, for a 100:1 cost advantage to the attacker. Even given Israel's vastly greater economic capacity over Hamas, that stings.