From the first moment that the Qassam Brigades announced the new Storm Torpedo, a number of experts around the world were interested in examining the video clips to find out anything about this new mechanism. Among them was H.I. Stone, a journalist specializing in naval military vessels, who presented to us Important signals in this regard (1).
Water walks
Stone reported that the Asif torpedo, as appears from the videos released by Hamas, is an autonomous underwater vehicle (UUV), meaning that it is a drone but operates underwater (2). From that point of view, the Asif resembles suicide marches or perhaps an image. Initial ones, these marches usually work in a simple way. They take off into the sky to reach the target area, then hang around above the target for a period of time until orders reach them. Once they receive the order to strike, they transform themselves into a missile that hits the target from above.
Apply the same idea, but in the water. According to Stone’s analysis, it appears that the stormtrooper contains a guidance device at the top, and a small camera in the front. These tools help in communicating with the torpedo, which contains inside it an internal combustion engine that directs the torpedo through propellers in the background, and fins that help it float. And guidance.
Note also that the front of the torpedo contains a fuse, which, once activated by impact or remotely, subsequently activates an internal explosive charge, thus completing the idea of the march, where the torpedo is directed to a specific target in the water, then hovers around the target for a while, and at some point the operator gives it On the ground, the torpedo launches to hit the target and explode it with the maximum possible force.
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In fact, this type of waterborne suicide drones (torpedoes that operate as unmanned watercraft) is still being studied (3), and initial versions of it are being issued in a number of countries. In the end, it seems that the future is full of military uses for these water drones. Like drones, they began with a reconnaissance range, then over time became suicide marches, then fighter aircraft.
new world
Currently, two types of these unmanned vehicles are being developed: the first is remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROUVs), which are primarily intended to replace humans for underwater tasks in areas with difficult conditions, and are manually controlled by a human operator to perform tasks that include surveillance and patrolling. And repair and even educational tasks. The second is autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which can operate without a human operator, as they are programmed to operate automatically.
The navies of several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China, are building water drones for use in detecting and disposing of underwater mines. For example, there is REMUS, an autonomous vehicle about one meter long. Only, used to clear mines within one square mile within 16 hours. These unmanned vehicles provide wider coverage at a much lower cost compared to their manned counterparts, not to mention that the quality of data returned by unmanned marine vehicles is much higher than that of manned submarines.
These techniques began primarily for exploratory, scientific, and cinematic purposes, then developed for reconnaissance scopes and then into direct military action. The low cost of these mechanisms and their high human losses make them more widely used day after day.
The matter does not stop at the borders of torpedo marches such as Al-Asif. In fact, the US Navy aspires soon to develop the unmanned submarine “Orca” (ORCA), which is expected to operate in submerged and surface surveillance and combat as a regular submarine, but without a crew (4). With a length of 18 metres, “Orca” joins the category of Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. As for China, it has already begun developing complete submarines of this type, as some satellites recently monitored two submarines with a length of 16 meters and 18 metres, and it appears that They are a development of the Chinese HSU-001 submarine, which was smaller, only 5 meters long.
As for the Korean Hanwha Ocean Company, formerly known as Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, it recently announced (5) that it intends to develop an unmanned submarine that features two torpedo tubes, like the submarines developed by countries such as China and India. The submarine is 23 meters long and weighs 60 tons. The company also unveiled a scale model of a large unmanned systems “mothership” dubbed “Ghost Commander” that can deploy drones and up to two unmanned combat submarines.
To what extent will the Hamas torpedo affect?
According to the initial observation of the torpedo, it appears that the Storm is made of metal, and consequently its diving capabilities will be modest, especially since the vehicle does not have, as Stone points out in his analysis, an advanced buoyancy system, and it appears that it is made of local tools, such as compressed gas cylinders and divers’ propulsion vehicles, but not There is doubt that these torpedoes are truly dangerous and the occupation will be forced to take preventive measures.
But what is striking in this context is not only the amount of development that the resistance adds to its currently existing parts, such as missiles, but also the amount of diversity in these parts, as weapons appear covering different ranges, which may be preliminary and experimental at first, but that is the case with all development, and to understand what we mean. Consider the following with us:
We are now in the early millennium, and the Hamas movement was able to develop the “Qassam 1” missile with very modest capabilities. A steel cylinder with a weight of only 35 kilograms, a length of less than two meters, a warhead weight of 1.5 kilograms, and a range of up to two and a half kilometers, developed during the first launches into Israel to between 3-4.5 kilometers only. The missile was made of mostly completely local components; A solid mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, the latter a common fertilizer, in addition to TNT and urea nitrate in the warhead, the latter also another common fertilizer. The cost of building this missile was only about $800 at the time, which is a very low cost at this time. the range.
Now compare this to the “Ayyash 250” missile with which Hamas targeted “Ramon Airport” 220 kilometers away during the 2021 war. It is the missile with the longest range so far in Hamas’ arsenal (250 kilometers) and has the most powerful destructive effect on the ground. Contrary to what was not announced. Al-Qassam Brigades yet.
If you observe the chronology of the development of the resistance missiles, you will notice that what frightens the Israelis is not only the increase in range, but also the increase in accuracy, and the acceleration in development. The scale of the achievement achieved by the Palestinians in one year doubles in the following year, since “Qassam 2” in 2002 with a range of 9-12. km, to the “Qassam 3” in 2005, with a range of 15-17 km, to the “M75” in 2012, with a range of up to 80 km, to the Rantisi 160 in the same year, with a range of up to 160 km, and these are just examples.
Given these rates, as well as the maturity of unmanned systems as an opportunity for irregular forces to have technology that can balance forces with heavy armies, you can expect what Al-Asif could become in a few years.
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sources
1- Stone Analysis First Details Of Hamas’ New Submarine Drone Weapon
2- Unmanned underwater vehicles: defence and technology trends
3- Modeling of Torpedo-Shaped Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
4- Our First Glimpse Of The Navy’s Orca Unmanned Submarine At Sea
5- Hanwha Ocean to Develop Energy System for Unmanned Submarines
