It’s in the Way that You Use It

Many in the media claim the Katyusha has no military value because, well, it is inaccurate. That would have been news to the Soviet army, which demonstrated as far back as 1941 that truck-mounted Katyushas could saturate a target area with salvo fire and then quickly drive off. Used correctly, this multiple-launch weapon (referred to by the Germans as Stalin’s organ for its rumbling booms) caused extensive casualties and shock.

Today, however, the various small, unguided rockets the media calls Katyushas have been adapted by guerilla groups for single-launch use, in Hezbollah's case to avoid rapid and punishing Israeli counter-battery fire. This has stripped the rocket of its military value, leading some to call it a “terror weapon,” as though it were a sort of poor man’s V-2. Yet even with Hezbollah’s profligate use (4,000 and counting) a single Katyusha incoming is more annoying than terrifying, especially for civilians who have moved beyond its short range. What, then, is it good for?

Andrew McGregor, writing in Jamestown’s Terrorism Monitor, argues that Hezbollah’s use of the rocket “signals its mastery of media warfare.” I think he’s exactly right. For low self-esteem television audiences in the Muslim world accustomed to folding Arab armies, watching a ghost town like Kiryat Shemona (population: three jumpy alley cats) get pounded must seem like cause to throw candy. And given its recruitment and propaganda function, Hezbollah terrorists probably don’t lose too much sleep over the Katyusha’s inaccuracy.