I'm just an armchair tactician too. But just lobbing shells in the general direction of the enemy is regarded, I believe, in modern militaries as pointless. You shoot when you have a target; maybe you hit it, maybe you don't, but effectively random fire is worse than useless. Counter-battery fire - that is, firing at identified sources of fire, rocket launch sites, mortar fire sites - is a useful technique, made quite effective with specialised radar and aerial surveillance.
The tactical response by Hamas to counter-battery is twofold: mobile launch teams to their losses (deploy, fire, and amscray hopefully before the hard rain falls) and human shields to deter return fire and increase civilian casualties if fire is returned (they deploy and fire from a public building, roof of a house, or just some random street). Any report of civilians killed by the IDF fire is a media defeat for the IDF. If a Hamas member is killed, the body will likely to be identified as civilians by media stringers, medics and locals either supportive of Hamas or intimidated by Hamas. The IDF has no rebuttal to any false casualty claim other than "We don't know if we did it," which is the honest answer of the spokesperson for a large organisation. The results of the IDF investigation will be too late, go unreported, and be considered suspect by many who are either anti-IDF or consider each party as bad as the other.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-01-11 02:23 am (UTC)The tactical response by Hamas to counter-battery is twofold: mobile launch teams to their losses (deploy, fire, and amscray hopefully before the hard rain falls) and human shields to deter return fire and increase civilian casualties if fire is returned (they deploy and fire from a public building, roof of a house, or just some random street). Any report of civilians killed by the IDF fire is a media defeat for the IDF. If a Hamas member is killed, the body will likely to be identified as civilians by media stringers, medics and locals either supportive of Hamas or intimidated by Hamas. The IDF has no rebuttal to any false casualty claim other than "We don't know if we did it," which is the honest answer of the spokesperson for a large organisation. The results of the IDF investigation will be too late, go unreported, and be considered suspect by many who are either anti-IDF or consider each party as bad as the other.