Syrian rebels using Apple ipads to fire rockets
Sep 19, 2013
Rebels in Jobar have been pictured using an iPad to aim shells. Troops from the same area were filmed using a map application to guide shells onto regime forces three months ago.
Rebels in Jobar have been pictured using an iPad to aim shells. Troops from the same area were filmed using a map application to guide shells onto regime forces three months ago.
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention and need is never greater than at a time of war.
So that may account for the unconventional method being used by these Syrian rebels to aim mortar shells.
Members of the 'Ansar Dimachk' Brigade, which operates under the Free Syrian Army, were snapped on September 15 using the tablet computer to help fire a homemade mortar towards a battlefront in Jobar, a suburb of Damascus.
Twitter speculation suggests that the soldiers might be using a spirit level application to determine the angle of fire, a key measurement which affects how far the shell will travel.
In June, more tech-savvy troops from the same area were also filmed using maps on an iPad to aim weapons at Assad's forces.
In the video soldiers can be seen setting up a mortar before turning on the Apple tablet in order to guide the ordinance to its chosen target.
A British-based weapons analyst, Eliot Higgins said that the rebels have been using the gadget for a while and some are also using smartphones.