Libyan Rebels Don’t Really Add Up to an Army

„Out on the battle lines near Brega in the afternoon, where spirits were high but fighting skills and ammunition were in short supply, the rebels were engaged in a contest for which they were clearly unprepared. One of their most fearsome weapons said much. It consisted of Grad rocket-launcher tubes, jury-rigged into pods of four. Each was then welded to heavy machine-gun mounts welded or bolted to the bed of a pickup truck. Car batteries provided the power to launch each barrage. The firing switch was a box holding four doorbells, one for each rocket.

As monuments to the rebels’ resourcefulness and determination, these homemade launchers were impressive. As instruments of war, they were not. To use them against the Qaddafi forces, the rebels sped forward with loaded tubes, stopped along the highway, and fired the rockets toward Brega. Each of the rockets, slightly more than nine feet long, climbed into the air with tremendous whooshes and long plumes of smoke. They accelerated out of sight.

No one knew for sure where they might land, and firing them this way exposed the rebels to charges that they are waging indiscriminate war. God is great! the rebels cheered. Then they pulled back quickly, before the Qaddafi forces fired back, and the highway was pounded with incoming fire, another of the daily exchanges of fire in a ground war bogged down.”