Seeking new ways to kill indiscriminately, Assad has imported the Iranian-designed rocket-propelled bomb:
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have added another improvised, indiscriminate weapon to their arsenal: "elephant rockets," named after the noise they make in flight. According to political activists, at least two dozen civilians were killed Tuesday in a Damascus suburb by the rockets. ...
Elephant rockets are also cheaply improvised weapons made by attaching rocket motors to large bombs. The range of the rockets is limited, but they have a similar double effect as barrel bombs. They can cause large explosions and terrorize populations.
I can't find posts on this, but I know I blogged about them when Iran deployed them against our troops in Iraq. But these have Iran's fingerprints all over them.
In Iraq we called them flying IEDs or IRAMs:
The U.S. military said Friday that militants who launched the Jan. 12 attack on a joint U.S.-Iraqi compound used an unusual weapon called an IRAM, for Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munition. Sometimes called "flying IEDs," IRAMs are a potentially deadlier incarnation of the garden-variety Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan — they're short-range projectiles that catapult toward unsuspecting targets.
Two IRAMs flew into the outpost in the city of Amarah in a puzzling reappearance of a weapon that's been used only 14 times since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, according to the U.S. military. Most of the earlier attacks occurred in eastern Baghdad more than 18 months ago, at the height of violence related to Shiite Muslim militias. The more recent attacks, however, were launched in southern Iraq's Maysan Province, which borders Iran.
As the article notes, the weapons are of Iranian origin. But now we have a new name.
Yet these are our proto-partners whose signature is coveted on a faux nuclear deal to get John Kerry a Nobel Peace Prize.
