These offices, set up over the past 15 years, deploy artillery, rocket-launchers and aeroplanes to seed clouds with chemicals (usually silver iodide) that encourage droplets to form and fall where needed, or prevent the formation of destructive hailstones.

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Seeing his carefully nurtured negotiations melt into the hell of rocket and artillery barrages, then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher flew to Damascus to mediate a ceasefire.

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The Army's C-RAM (Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar) system, for example, which is used to protect American bases in Afghanistan, can fire on its own, using its six-barrel gun to blow up incoming mortars.

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In the exchange the skies filled with the smoke of multiple rocket launchers, artillery and antiaircraft fire.

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Ironically, Israel has tapped air power more frequently in recent weeks, in part because it's seen as a more pinpoint or precise way of killing rocket-launch teams than artillery fire, which sprays shrapnel over a wide area.

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