Wednesday 12 June 2013

Munitions Used To Attack The Lebanese Town Of Arsal Identified

Earlier today there were reports that a Syrian air force helicopter fired 5 to 6 rockets into Arsal, in Lebanon, a Sunni majority town.  LBCI reported:
The Army Command issued a statement on Wednesday whereby it announced that a Syrian chopper violated Lebanon's airspace in the town of Arsal, launched 6 rockets toward the town's square, and injured one.        
In the details, citizen Mohammad Ahmad al-Breidi was wounded following a rocket attack by a Syrian military chopper on Arsal. The rockets reportedly hit the center of the town, right by the municipality, LBCI correspondent said.          
I've now been sent images from the scene of the remains of the rockets used




It's quite straight forward to ID the munitions used in this attack, especially as the first image provides some useful information.  The last line of text reads "V-5KP1" when converted from cyrillic, which refers to the type of fuze used, seen here.  These fuzes are used with S-5 and S-8 rockets, fired from rocket pods that can be mounted on both helicopters and jets.

In the second picture we get a clear shot of the rocket motor, which points to it almost certainly being the S-8 rocket.  The S-5 rocket motor has a totally different shape, as shown below


The third picture shows the partial remains of the warhead, with the explosive fill visible inside the fragmentation coil.  The fragmentation coil is visible of this image of the S-8 rocket


I also suspect the "K-O" on the first photograph indicates the specific type of S-8 rocket as the HEAT-Frag version, short for High Explosive Anti Tank Fragmentation.  More details of S-8 rocket can be found here.

Related Articles
A Syrian Smorgasbord Of IEDs And UXO
Evidence Of Iranian Arms Provided To Syria In The Past 18 Months
The Syrian Opposition's Latest Missiles and Rockets
New Anti-Tank Weapons From The Former-Czechoslovakia Appear In Syria
Evidence Of Jabhat al-Nusra With Croatian Weapons
Croatian Weapons Arrive In Homs

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

1 comment:

  1. Interesting, isn't this the first known use of the S-8 rockets by the SyAAF?

    I remember seeing remains of S-5's on photos or videos from Syria a couple of times, but never an identifiable S-8. Also, I see this is your first post under the 'S-8' tag :)

    ReplyDelete