Israel rolls out laser defense system | Hacker News Reader

Israel rolls out laser defense system

reuters.com

112 pointsAnonymous4272243 comments

I will believe it when I see it. Focusing that much light on a small moving object, through layered and moving air, with an intensity to burn through metal would be an achievement. Burning through enough of that metal to degrade a falling rocket (as opposed to during boost phase of flight) is even harder. For all the talk about cost reduction, have a look at what realworld laser armor costs. Painting the nosecone of a rocket white, or coating it with reflective foil costs next to nothing but is remarkably effective.

Better question: What would this do to a manned aircraft? There is a reason there are treaties against blinding weapons.

>I will believe it when I see it. Focusing that much light on a small moving object, through layered and moving air, with an intensity to burn through metal would be an achievement. Burning through enough of that metal to degrade a falling rocket (as opposed to during boost phase of flight) is even harder.

it's been working 20 years ago. it's just systems were too big. you needed 2-3 tracks to supply energy to laser system, and there were delays between shots.

>For all the talk about cost reduction, have a look at what realworld laser armor costs. Painting the nosecone of a rocket white, or coating it with reflective foil costs next to nothing but is remarkably effective.

doesn't work. nosecone it's small part of rocket, laser will target midsection probably. reflective foil won't help either as it needs to be designed to reflect specific wavelength of laser iirc

Any foil will do, just as the JWST's sunshield is effective against all the wavelengths coming off the sun. Gold or silver is best, but aluminum foil from the grocery store is extremely reflective across all wavelengths we would call laser. Just giving the metal rocket a good polish would make a significant difference.

there is some difference, but I guess all the companies that sank billions into directed energy weapons missed that aluminum foil from shop can negate all their efforts

I agree, as corrupt as some military industry can be, I highly doubt something dumb as aluminum foil can defeat the laser.

Aluminum foil reflects about 85% of visible light. Gold reflects 98% of visible light. Neither of these materials would be effective in protecting against a 100kW laser. That remaining 2% is 2kW of light energy directed at a small target. It’ll rapidly ablate the gold foil and then the target will begin to absorb the full power.

Wouldnt the rocket continue moving towards its target during the ablation?

The goal of the laser is to destroy the electronic detonator inside the warhead. If the detonator is destroyed then the potential damage from the missile is reduced from catastrophic to manageable. With a 100 kW laser I think the whole process could happen in less than a second.

At the current power level, this laser is mainly useful against drones.

There is a limit to how much laser power you can shoot through the air. When the threshold for breakdown is exceeded, a high density plasma is produced which is opaque to visible and infrared wavelengths and thus absorbs the laser radiation.

The moon does not have this laser power limit, but moving Tel Aviv to the moon would quite expensive and you would lose the mediterranean climate.

Sounds like that could be gotten around by using multiple lasers.

Multiple beams creates a different problem. Say your beam is 1cm across and you are aiming at a 30cm target. All your energy is in that 1cm. You don't much care where in that 30cm it hits so long as it burns through. But with two lasers, to be effective, each beam needs to hit the same sport on the target. Instead of a 30cm target, laser #2 now has to hit the 1cm beam of the first laser.

That, or also you get a shotgun effect with different damaged areas in a single target. Increasing the probability of destruction with less powerful lasers.

Those lasers do not burn through. #2 does not have to hit exactly the same place as #1 is heating up to boil electronics. No idea, what is meant under lasers in article, but what they were describing could be even be concentrated radio microwaves to fry electronics.

There is no need to use concentrated heat to heat up a tea - your target is making a tea, not making a hole in kettle.

This could be relevant for UAV's, but this system would defend against missiles that are purely ballistic -- no electronics to fry.

I assume that even if you don't burn through a descending missile, merely deforming the nose cone can still cause it to go off course.

These are unguided rockets used as terror weapons against civilian targets. They're not very accurate in the first place, so even if a defense system deflects a rocket slightly it can still land in a populated area. I suspect what they're actually trying to do is cause enough airframe damage to make the rocket break up in flight.

If there are electronics, the sort of electronics that run inside missiles arent the sort to be boiled. Its a pretty harsh environment. And with unguided rockets, most of the stuff fired as isreal, there simply arent any electronics.

Israel is very concerned with the guided stuff that Hezbollah backed by Iran has been amassing the last decade.

They also need to be in phase

Set to funk funk

Aren't there wavelengths available that wouldn't superheat air, but would be absorbed by a missile?

THEL was shooting down mortars, shells and rockets at early 2000s

> moving Tel Aviv to the moon would quite expensive and you would lose the mediterranean climate

Might make rent just a little bit cheaper though.

Yeah, but there's no "atmosphere" any more...

tel-aviv famously lives in bubble anyway

Way, way, way before a laser runs into any sort of hard stop regarding atmospheric effects, it crosses the line into military power and can vaporize anything it wants.

Also your statement seems incorrect to me, there is no hard stop for lasers in regards to atmospheric effects. Air is not some sort of invincible laser armor, there is definitely loss, but air does not magically ramp up it's ability to diffuse or diffract laser light without limit. If you shot a terawatt laser at earth from orbit, it would definitely hit earth and obliterate whatever it hits (it would also do horrible things to the air on it's way down that would be like a long linear nuclear bomb). I'm not suggesting one needs anything close to a terawatt laser to have an effective military power laser, either, just giving an example of why the above statement is incorrect.

> but moving Tel Aviv to the moon would quite expensive and you would lose the mediterranean climate

On the flip side, you'd be really far away from Iran.

Now that you mention it, having people able to flee to moon/space pods/mars changes the "Mutually Assured Destruction" math.

Pretty sure we quickly would build IPBM and nuke every planet in the solar system just for good measure.

Maybe not so much. Until an outsider in the belt doesn't care about their people and decides to attack with asteroids lol. I miss the expanse.

Couldn't you start of with a larger (meter wide) lens and focusing mechanism, so that it narrows down at the target? Then you aren't heating up most of the air between. Also what about high output short pulsed lasers? Couldn't you get much higher output for a brief enough duration that it wouldn't heat up the air?

They would have a space laser though.

It would need to pack the energy of a stick of dynamite (1 lb explosive weight) into a short burst of light.

Would it? If the laser is able to focus on the rocket for multiple seconds. Then it'd just need to pack a fraction of that energy over a sustained duration. Which sounds reasonable.

The rocket is moving at perhaps mach 4+. The laser has to strike a singular spot. So holding focus for multuple seconds is an as-yet-unsolved problem. Of course, hitting an incoming missile at all is at the edge of current capability.

I was interested in validating or invalidating the mach 4 number. I guess it depends on the specific rocket, but the 122 mm M-21OF-M Rocket, sometimes referred to as Katyusha (although that was the name of a specific launcher, not the rocket [0]) is 660 m/s or about mach 2 [1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha_rocket_launcher

1. https://kintex.bg/product-4-77

That's a good example of the problem. That's about 660 meters per second. Instead of "multiple seconds", the laser has about 1/100 second to penetrate the skin. Of a missile that's shaking, twisting, rocking.

Most likely, a missile will be rotating about its axis of symmetry making illuminating a single spot possible only in a short pulse mode.

Indeed, most people are very surprised that a stick of dynamite has just the energy equivalent of a Snickers bar. Spread the energy release over more than just a few microseconds and you have a very different profile.

Indeed, and going the other way, a snickers bar will get you surprising far across the English Channel in a rowing boat.

It’ll take you to Cardiff on a bicycle!

Ill never forget when the Iron Dome was first rolling out, this rocket researcher on the internet said it couldn't be done. He explained it pretty well, and I was convinced. Search google for Iron dome doesn't work (looking back to 2010-14) And yet, it does work (mostly).

So basically what I'm saying, this stuff is hard, and few people in the world can even verify your claim, never mind have access to the tech or AI behind it. But i'd bet with the Israelis.

Here is the article: https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/07/15/172055/an-explan...

Again, not sure if this turned out to be correct; but from reading reports on the ground and the lives Israel claimed it saved (and building more of them,) it seems evident he was in fact wrong.

He seems to be just a theoretic, not an actual military nor weapons manufacturer. From the start his pondering about unimportance of hitting engine instead of warhead is already very wrong and very theoretic. It is also very theoretic wish to hit the rocket frontally, I mean it would be great, it is a wet dream of any air defense, yet on practice hitting sideway chasing from behind is more realistic and still works great usually.

This article has a video of similar system from Lockheed Martin in 2013 demonstrating successful destruction of missile https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/iron-beam-iron-dome-and-lase...

The capability for lasers to counter rockets has been demonstrated over and over in the past 20-25 years. The problem has always been making the systems practical, but I guess they are getting there now.

AFAIK far enough infrared is not very efficiently reflected by white paint or by metallic foil. If you can lower the efficiency of the cover layer from 99.9% to, say, 80%, this may be enough to degrade the mirror layer, create a dark spot or a cloud of plasma. After that most of the radiant energy will be consumed by that spot, it will overheat and degrade everything around it, while also changing the aerodynamics of the object enough to veer it way off course.

My understanding is this will be used right next to the Gaza border meaning it will get the rockets during boost phase. Iron Dome will still exist at the other end of the course to shoot down the remaining rockets.

Initially maybe but the goal is to have protection for Israel's north and center from Iranian/Hezbollah missiles. Hamas isn't perceived as a major threat.

> Painting the nosecone of a rocket white, or coating it with reflective foil costs next to nothing but is remarkably effective.

What information are you basing this statement on?

the enemy might even shoot mirrored rockets just to reflect the beam and scorch what's below ...

Theoretically, the laser doesn't need to "burn" through the metal, i.e melting it. it only needs to heat it beyond or close to the detonation temperature of the fuel that powers the rocket.

...and then what. What will they do when the rockets get faster, shinier, more erratic in flight...or any of the other things mentioned on this thread? I'm not going to pretend I have the solutions to the Arab Isreali conflict, but this is at best temporary. My best guess is the long term solution (if there is ever one attempted) will be more related to why people are motivated to launch rockets at their neighbours.

welcome to the concept of Escalation Dominance in the field of arms tech.

These "advanced" rockets will be more costly, which means your more limited on how many you can afford to fire. Thus Israel can intercept these "advanced" rockets with other solutions: Iron Dome, Arrow 2, Arrow 3, and David's Sling.

The Iron Beam is the low cost per intercept solution, meant to intercept cheap unguided ballistic rockets.

Other people on here have suggested that tin foil will do as protection, or metal polish for that matter. Im guessing this will make no difference in the number of rockets at all

Random commenters on HN are not smarter than the Palestinians nor the Israelis involved in this conflict. I am sure that 'tin foil' (by which I believe you mean aluminum foil) will not work.

What you say is true but we dont know how much marketing fluff we’re dealing with in this press release, either.

It's not just Israel building laser interceptors, it's also the U.S. In fact the U.S has been researching this for decades. I find it hard to believe no one has thought of the aluminum foil measure, but I'm willing to entertain the idea since army people are army people.

Other people on here have no experience with high energy lasers. Thermal shock will burn right through the metal foil or polish. We're not talking about a toy laser pointer.

You must really wrap that foil hard for it not to fall off with the missile flying at Mach 4. They'd probably need to use a bunch of duck tape to secure the foil, and with inflation making duck tape more expensive it will hurt their economies. Win for Israel.

IIRC (based on hard SF laser defece discussions) there is no perfect mirror, so pump enough MW/GW into it, even just for a short burst and the thing will start to melt or outright vaporize from the bit that it will always absorb.

Then it won't be so shiny anymore, absorbing even more energy and so on, until it stops being a solid object.

As for erratic flight paths - a physical object can't aim to match the beam steering capabilities of a group based stationary laser, given any realistic currently available propulsion or steering technology. It would need to do crazy high g & high energy manufacturing yet from the PoV of the laser its moving just a couple degrees if at all. As unlike a physical interceptor the laser beam moves at the speed of light and thud the point of aim can more more or less instantaneously.

Its more a range issue. Irom Beam has a like a 7 km or mile (I forgot) range. Whereas other like Arrow 2, Arrow 3, or David's Sling has like 100km+ range.

Iron Beam is all about cost per interception.

at a 50x reduction in cost per interception than can probably afford to produce a lot more of them in the long run.

The best initial solution I believe is for the world to protect Palestine from the rockets fired from the Israel side - that way any retaliations to the small group of people firing rockets at Israel don't kill civilians or damage their infrastructure; e.g. put an Iron Dome or better system on the Palestinian side.

>" My best guess is the long term solution (if there is ever one attempted) will be more related to why people are motivated to launch rockets at their neighbours."

The problem is that the Palestinians are a heterogeneous group. Even if the Palestinian government makes a 'peace' deal with the Israelis, other Palestinians opposed to the deal can 'break' it by shooting off a few cheap rockets. Further complicating the issue, there are outside parties (such as the Iranians) who have a vested interest in preventing a lasting peace (in order to preserve their influence both in Palestine and in Lebanon).

> other Palestinians opposed to the deal can 'break' it

Only if Isreal reacts by declaring the peace deal with one group dead because another group fired rockets. It takes two to tango, as they say.

If a gunman from Canada fired into the USA, the USA is unlikely to consider it a declaration of war and start nuking Canada!

There never been a common Palestinian leadership or universally accepted institutes, and this only became worse since 2006 Gaza withdrawal by Israel.

>"Only if Isreal reacts by declaring the peace deal with one group dead because another group fired rockets. It takes two to tango, as they say."

This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it could be that the Palestinian government was actually responsible for shooting off the rockets, but were scapegoating someone else for political reasons (the internal and external messaging are very different things, and it's hard to figure out the truth). Second, 'authority' is not unified in Palestine, and a government may be composed of groups which only agree on some policies, and have members have differing objectives and strategies.

Overall, if the Palestinians fail to stop rocket and mortar attacks, the only logical response for Israel is to blame their government. If Canadians were attacking the USA repeatedly and it seemed likely that the attacks were being organized by a political party which was a member of the governing coalition, I think the USA would have no option but to blame the government.

> attacks were being organized by a political party which was a member of the governing coalition, I think the USA would have no option but to blame the government.

This is not the same as the point i was replying to. That point was that even if Israel made peace with the government a seperatist entity could still fire rockets. So no we are not talking about the governing coalition.

The governing authority is unimportant in this situation. The IDF is not going to be happy with splinter groups of any size shooting weapons either. Would they not react similar to how they have?

> If a gunman from Canada fired into the USA, the USA is unlikely to consider it a declaration of war and start nuking Canada!

If the gunman had ties to the de-facto government and the government was unwilling/unable to arrest the gunman, i think it is likely they would.

After all, wasn't that what happened with 9/11?

A US border patrol agent fired into Mexico and killed a child. The US protected the agent, and Mexico responded with a strongly worded letter[0]. I don't see any reason to believe the US would have responded with more than that either if the roles had been reversed. Most governments are perfectly capable of avoiding escalations that will lead to wars they don't want. The wars following 9/11 were wars the US government wanted and would have gotten with or without 9/11.

[0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-51643636

As the other comment responded to you, I'll add on. That isn't what happened with 9/11. We didn't touch Saudi Arabia or any Al Qaeda strongholds. We went after Afghanistan and the Taliban. Soon after, Iraq. During that mid 00s time period, polls showed a strong minority if not majority of Americans believed Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

These rockets are low tech. They only get through because of sheer numbers. Using lasers makes it harder to overwhelm with numbers.

An arms race generally benefits the side with more money.

> My best guess is the long term solution (if there is ever one attempted) will be more related to why people are motivated to launch rockets at their neighbours.

There's been plenty of attempts to have peace conferences and what not. There's a wide gap between attempting and actually getting something to stick.

Almost all rocket attacks come from Gaza. The remaining ones are from Syria (actually Iranian Al Quds units stationed there) and Lebanon (the Palestinian Iranian-funded Hizbollah).

The option is there to conquer and reoccupy Gaza. It would be terribly expensive in terms of human lives and the occupation will be very difficult to keep, but it would solve the problem of the rockets.

Ditto for Lebanon and Syria. From the 2006 war, often considered a failure for Israel, there were nonetheless very very few rocket attacks from Lebanon.

So defensive weapons could also be a perverse incentive, since they discourage military action that is more direct and more effective for the long term.

It's a very difficult problem. People are motivated to launch rockets because of grievances and because they see an advantage to do so. Israel has rewarded these kinds of attacks more then one time (e.g. loosening the blockade on Gaza) and the world has become quite convinced with the Palestinian narrative.

Israel's options are limited to defensive weapons (with a lot of problems long-term) and offensive ones (very expensive in terms of lives, government popularity, PR, etc..)

Or maybe stop starving and killing the children living in Gaza who will then make proud soldiers of the Hamas when they grow up, repeating the endless circle of violence?

And maybe stop encouraging Qatar to fund Hamas[1]? Yes, you read that right, and the source is a reputable Israeli newspaper. Hamas is a really convenient opponent for the Israeli government: they are evil, corrupt and basically harmless, but they are a great excuse for everything else (“we are at war, stop asking questions”).

[1]: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-netanyahu-...

Haaretz isn't a *reputable* Israeli newspaper.

The children of Gaza die because Hamas wants that to happen. And look at the demographics of those "children"--most are 16 and 17. And the only one starving children of Gaza is Hamas.

Most children who die by Israeli retaliation being of a certain age does not mean all. Normally, if not always, it's considered a tremendous tragedy when you have dozens and dozens if not more pre-teen and younger children innocently dying over a conflict in this century.

Hamas is evil. Sure they want to happen. Children being murdered is still happening though!

The Zionist occupation is a murderous regime, don't give me those fake excuses.

It's not so simple. There is a layer of power between Israel and the children of Gaza Israel is not in control of (that's Hamas). It's also not about starving, nobody is starving, but for sure there are electricity blackouts, and a poor life quality in the strip. In fact Israel provides Gaza with food and electricity. And there are wealthy Gazans with super villas, luxurious cars and diamond covered iPhones (powerful people and cronies)

As I wrote Israel could reconquer the strip and remove this layer, but that's very difficult to do.

Qatar money transfers (yes, everybody minimally informed knows about that, it's not a secret) are in my opinion harmful errors on Israel's part. It's basically protection money, it makes Hamas stronger. But that's an understandable error, considering the few options Israel has. The short term solution is to pay for quiet, politicians love that.

And Hamas is not harmless by any means. It has a big rocket arsenal, contacts with Iran, it has showed it can instigate civil unrest inside Israel, it kidnapped in the past civilians and soldiers, it has a good defense force (Israelis had great difficulties entering the strip in 2014), it launched tens of thousands of rockets and thousands of incendiary payloads causing life losses and fires, it has drones, earth to air missiles, it penetrated Israel borders a few times. And it's growing more powerful. No it's not harmless (and that's even not considering their soft power in terms of propaganda and controlling news sources)

> And Hamas is not harmless by any means. It has a big rocket arsenal, contacts with Iran, it has showed it can instigate civil unrest inside Israel, it kidnapped in the past civilians and soldiers, it has a good defense force (Israelis had great difficulties entering the strip in 2014), it launched tens of thousands of rockets and thousands of incendiary payloads causing life losses and fires, it has drones, earth to air missiles, it penetrated Israel borders a few times. And it's growing more powerful. No it's not harmless (and that's even not considering their soft power in terms of propaganda and controlling news sources)

Oh yeah, like when Saddam had the strongest army in the world and mass destruction weapons…

Regarding Rockets: last time Hamas sent all their rockets accumulated for the past few years, they have killed 13 people! That's not bad for a lone wolf acting on behalf of ISIS or the like, but for an organized force, that's ridiculous.

> it has a good defense force (Israelis had great difficulties entering the strip in 2014)

A mere 67 soldiers died in a month and a half of operations… That's not what it likes to fight against a “good defense force”.

You're just being brainwashed by war propaganda.

I will gloss over the way you speak about Israeli losses. I am pretty sure you wouldn't speak like that ("only 13+67 dead, oh the pity!") if it were your country.

But logically this way of measuring harmfulness is idiotic. Hamas couldn't make more victims precisely because Israel had a lot of defensive and offensive systems to prevent that. All those systems are expensive financially, militarily, from a PR perspective, in term of personnel. It's like arguing guns are not dangerous since the usual targets wear a bulletproof vest anyway. A single Iron Dome counter missile costs 40000-100000 USD, for example. Hamas has tens of thousands of rockets which cost 1000 USD at best each.

> I will gloss over the way you speak about Israeli losses. I am pretty sure you wouldn't speak like that ("only 13+67 dead, oh the pity!") if it were your country.

Of course I would! We (France) have lost more military than this (and a much much higher ratio among involved soldiers) in extra territorial operations in the past few years and we don't make a big deal about how powerful the African armed groups are… They aren't, the fight are almost always one-sided, but you can't wage war without losing men.

Dozens of soldiers dying is nothing when talking about countries doing large-scale military operations. Of course, at the individual level it means 80 individual tragedies, with children losing parents, parents losing children, wifes losing husbands and so on. But on the military level, it reveals a highly asymmetric fight where you didn't really encountered resistance. Really far from your “Hamas is a powerful military” propaganda.

> But logically this way of measuring harmfulness is idiotic

Not if you actually tried to understand my point. Which I would rephrase for you: Tsahal is so dominant in this conflict it could get rid of Hamas military capabilities forever, with ease. They could completely remove the threat they cause to Israel, like how the Fatah on the West Bank is completely helpless today. But they do not do that, and it's on purpose: to wage war, you need an opponent, and nobody neither in the military, nor in the far-right in charge in the government, wants to end up without an enemy.

The former because it would means budget cut (peacetime budget vs wartime budget), the later because they would have no scapegoat to justify their racist and expansionist policy.

Now I can understand what you are saying. There is definitely something in your point. But it's more complex than that.

See, the Palestinian leadership needs to have an enemy too. And you say of the far-right in Israel they are "expansionist and racist", well Hamas/Fatah are arguably worse.

And it's not like there would be no enemies and no need for a powerful military once Gaza is conquered and Hamas neutered (Iran? Hezbollah?).

There are powerful interests in the Israeli side wanting to keep Hamas a menace, but there are also big interests on the Palestinian side too to keep the war going.

> See, the Palestinian leadership needs to have an enemy too. And you say of the far-right in Israel they are "expansionist and racist", well Hamas/Fatah are arguably worse.

I'm not discussing that. But only one side has the power of destroying the other and is instead keeping it alive on purpose. That's why I blame the Isreali government: Hamas is an evil terror group, and they deserve to die.

> And it's not like there would be no enemies and no need for a powerful military once Gaza is conquered and Hamas neutered (Iran? Hezbollah?).

The more enemies an army have, the better for their budget (the US DoD is really good at keeping multiple enemies relevant at the same time). Also, the other actors you mentioned are threats, but Israel is arguably not at war with them right now, which reduces their impact.

And the army is only one side of the coin, the other is the far-right politicians, who really need Hamas to justify everything they do to other Palestinians inside Israel or in the West Bank, neither Iran nor Hezbollah makes good excuse for destroying Palestinians homes for instance.

There’s hardly an Israeli Arab conflict any more. Peace was achieved in large through force projection and mutual interests; these technologies are an important part of both.

Which shows you're missing the fundamental problem. There can be no peace with the Palestinians because it's not the Palestinians that Israel is actually at war with in the first place. Rather, they are pawns of their backers--if you somehow make peace with a pawn another simply steps up. Any peace agreement that actually worked would have to be with those backers--and they have never even been at the negotiating table.

Look at the conflicts of the world. Pawns don't get defeated. Most of the time the other side decides the situation isn't worth it and leaves, but in this case that's not an option because the other side has no possible retreat.

Note that a pawn can lose it's backing which in effects promotes it to being a king--and kings can be defeated.

Additionally those backers are in power because of the conflict. Why would they want to end it? For their power to hold they need the animosity towards Israel.

Hamas can't get rockets that nice.

people here consider israel an occupation power remnant from the past century, not a neighbour

Iran doesn't want peace with Israel, Iran wants Israel dismantled as a Jewish state. There is no negotiating with this.

Lots of news about Israel today. Amnesty International just released a new report condemning Israel as an apartheid state.[1]

1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...

What a great way to start an off topic flame war...

By the way, you could have shown Israel's response to this report as well:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/lapid-attacks-delusional-amnes...

Hopefully people here can do better than get into a flame war when provided with context for weapons technology news and if they can't then they should be down-voted and possibly flagged.

I believe he was complaining about the lack of context you provided. The dropping of the typical (and false) apartheid accusation without providing the response.

Another comment responded to that:

_"Do you also post Russian or North Korean responses when discussions involving these countries occur?"_

I'd extend that to America or basically any country. I can't imagine it being considered the start to a flame war if some one presents a report by a large organization with some level of reputation without providing the state's response.

If there is a report by Amnesty condemning a major issue like the amount of cronyism in all higher levels of the West and America. Or of how lobbying in the US is effectively legalized corruption. Or how [Super] PACs hurt the sanctity of democracy...for any of these things, the official US response or response from any high level of the US government is not that important.

I have a hard time imagining being told not including the official western state response is a great way to start a flame war.

Do you also post Russian or North Korean responses when discussions involving these countries occur?

Israel is currently governed by a bunch of corrupt jerks motivated by a racist ideology, their officials response don't deserve more credit than Kim Jong-Un's.

It's not a problem with Israel or the Israeli people (most of whom just wish they could live their life in peace in the country they are born in, bearing no responsibility for the troubled times during and following the creation of Israel), but there is a big problem with those politicians benefiting the state of permanent war they are themselves creating to push a colonialist agenda.

Israel was attacked pretty quickly after its founding.

It's way more complicated than that, but anyway for the past 30 years Israel has been at peace with their neighboring countries and isn't realistically being threatened (yes I know Iran talks a lot, but in practice they are completely unable to strike Israel, while the opposite isn't true, so it's not really as if the threat was meaningful).

All that remains is a colonial war against Palestinian people to put hold on the entire region, based on a supremacist vision of what Zionism should be (and it's not what the founders of Israel had in mind when the country was formed). The Palestinians from the West bank are completely unable to defend themselves from the rampant colonization and Gaza is conveniently left unchecked in the hands of a terror group, who albeit causing little practical damage[1] exert enough terror[2] to keep the Israeli population in a mind-state of perpetual war. This is 1984 taken as an instruction manual.

Honestly, it deeply saddens me that the Jewish people, after suffering two crimes against humanity in the twentieth century (the holocaust, then the mass deportation of Jewish people living in the Arab world, after the creation of Israel) are now involved a third time, now as the tormentor.

[1]: a war in which you lose no military, nor infrastructure and only a handful of civilians isn't a war.

[2]: hundreds of flying rockets that can blow up your house and will kill a dozen of your citizen is a powerful terror attack.

I disagree profoundly. You say that it wasn't a war because Israel didn't lose too many people? Perhaps the aggressor should have thought about that before starting a war. Israel put a lot of effort in defending itself, so your premise isn't even correct. It is a perverse rationalization that doesn't even warrant a serious response.

Frame it as colonial as you wish, the fact is a systematic prosecution of Jews in almost all surrounding countries. That was never caught up upon. Maybe start now. It would have been better to start yesterday, but it is never too late.

> I disagree profoundly. You say that it wasn't a war because Israel didn't lose too many people? Perhaps the aggressor should have thought about that before starting a war.

Its not a war, there is no state involved, just a terror group in Gaza, conveniently left in charge there, while curiously Tsahal is perfectly capable of shutting down any uprising in the territory they want to annex (the West bank), intriguing isn't it? Gaza isn't any harder to occupy than the West bank, but having Hamas as an enemy is just too convenient. (So convenient it would be too bad if Hamas collapsed [1]).

> Frame it as colonial as you wish, the fact is a systematic prosecution of Jews in almost all surrounding countries.

There's two different things:

- The currently Israeli government is currently pushing a colonization project in the west bank (and it's not even hidden).

- Jews living in the Arab world for centuries have been persecuted by Arabs in (in “retaliation to Israel's activity” as if those people had anything to do with any of it…). Sadly enough since those Mizrahi Jews fled to Israel, they have been discriminated against and are still somewhat treated as second-class citizens[2].

[1]: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-netanyahu-...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Sephardim_and...

I agree that settling in the west bank is illegal, but hearing excuses for the prosecution doesn't lead to any fruitful discussion. If you think it justified, why should the settlers see it differently? If you are incapable of self-reflection there is no road to any peace. And of course there were states involved...

There were states involved. But there has not been for more than 30 years now!

Yet the current Israeli government wants his population to believe that they are still at war, still threatened but an outnumbering army of Arab people on the verge of slaughtering them all. It was the case for a good 40 years after the creation of Israel, but now it isn't.

But the military-industrial complex and the far-right extremists won too much from the situation to let it go. No wonder Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated…

The war is no more, but they want the citizens to feel as if it was still ongoing, as it is a great way to keep people under control, and to push their supremacist agenda. And leaving Hamas doing a bit of terror from time to time is a really efficient way to do so.

When you mention the murderous violence that drove Mizrahi Jews into Israel in the same paragraph where you mention the snobbery they faced in Israel, you're not doing much for your credibility.

Can you explain why? Especially if you are to take their comment in good faith? They lamented on the abuse they faced in the Arab world. The overall discussion is about Palestine, with side discussions on the Arab world, Israel against them, et al.

This harms the credibility of Amnesty International. There are many criticisms you can lay against Israel regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but "apartheid" doesn't pass the laugh test.

They've destroyed their own credibility long ago.

This isn't true. There have been numerous organizations of all ranges reporting similar views.

This illogical pattern of assuming a word or concept does not evolve is far too common. The world and people learn from history. Apartheids now and in the future will usually not be the way America was 70 years ago or South Africa 35 years ago. Apartheid may be too serious and specific of a word. We don't have another word to go to besides apartheid. Were the Jim Crow laws and behavior of America from Reconstruction through 1960s not apartheid? Technically not. They didn't go far enough. However, it's reductionist to say it's not apartheid but then not provide a label to practices that are cruel and inhumane and overlap with a majority of apartheid.

If Amnesty International or another organization referred to it as analogous or incredibly similar to Jim Crow Law days. That's hard to do. I don't know expect any one outside the US to know what that is. "apartheid" on the other hand is a world wide known term. So, yeah, this all feels reductionist.

Similarly, tech companies learned from IBM and Microsoft's bullying and monopolistic practices of the 80s and 90s. All the same underlying principles of bullying, EEE, and so much more have been able to evolve and become more subtle with the new current tech giants (including Microsoft ).

Sad to see Amnesty weaponized like that.

I saw this post was marked dead/flagged. I "vouched" for it. Something i haven't done in so long I can only remember commenting about it. I hope it worked. I do agree with the other comments that a bit more writing on your end could have helped. However if we are having a good faith discussion, coupled with your reply to yuvalr, I do not see how your comment can be seen as bad faith.

> "If we can intercept a missile or rocket with an electrical pulse that costs a few dollars, we will essentially neutralize the ring of fire that Iran has set up ... This new generation of air defence can also serve our friends in the region, who are also exposed to grave threats from Iran and its proxies.

This is admirable. Instead of playing the typical offense-first arms race, they are in a defense-first technology race. Its non-violent and the technology and skills will benefit the entire country. I hope they eventually win the war just by building a far better country that people want to immigrate into instead of attack.

I don’t think people want to immigrate to the Gaza Strip. Under any conditions.

Or if Gaza is not Israel to you. I think many people in Gaza would love to immigrate to Israel.

The Israeli Defense Forces use bulldozers, assault rifles, sniper rifles, white phosphorous, shells, missiles, attack helicopters, cluster bombs, and massive bunker buster bombs. The fact that they have so conclusively won the offensive/violent weapon arms race is readily apparent in the casualty statistics.

>This new generation of air defence can also serve our friends in the region, who are also exposed to grave threats from Iran and its proxies.

Interestingly enough this system will be available to all those neighborly enough to join Israel against all the Iranian-backed adversaries. It sounds like sales of technology from the NSO group was a real foot-in-the-door for Israel for forging of new, previously unlikely alliances.

Once you get all these rich petro-states hooked on the products that you can peddle then maybe the overall security situation in that region changes dramatically. For one, it becomes more likely that one of these operators could act unilaterally and thus could kick off a war that no one else wanted when other options were still on the table.

Interesting development overall.

>"It sounds like sales of technology from the NSO group was a real foot-in-the-door for Israel for forging of new, previously unlikely alliances."

Israel has had 'secret' alliances with some supposedly 'antagonistic' states for a long time. These are all just extensions of those previously hidden relationships.

I'm curious where the tipping point is, where the military response exceeds the financial cost of a political response. It's one thing to have tensions simmering on both sides of a border, it's another that one side feels wronged and is lobbing bombs over the fence.

The fact that they're having to develop a laser defense system to defend against lobbed bombs seems like it's time to reevaluate political solutions.

There are really only three solutions. One, Israel annexes Palestine in its current form, and ceases to be a Jewish state. Two, Israel annexes Palestine after removing its current inhabitants. Three, Israel stays in a state of low-grade warfare while carving out the most desireable bits of Palestine for its settlers as its population grows.

One is untenable for obvious reasons. Two is untenable until memories of the holocaust cease being a formative experience for Israel, so essentially untenable for the rest of our natural lives. Three is not only the only option available, it's actually not that bad a situation while Israel can maintain its military dominance.

I think a big mistake we in the west make when thinking about 'solutions' to the conflict is assuming both sides want peace. That's not been my impression on hearing anyone from either side talk, peace activists from the region but unconnected to the ruling structure notwithstanding.

Israel would like peace, but they know it's not feasible. Peace will only come about either with the at a minimum extirpation of Jews from the area, or with the backers deciding they don't want to support the war anymore--and that would require at a minimum a serious threat of Israel going nuclear, probably actually nuking somebody's capital.

Hence the low-level conflict is the least bad choice.

In first solution - it depends. There is also option, that Islam ceases to exist(all according to islamic scriptures). Palestinian Arabs in that situation can convert to Judaism or whatever and anyone who would be able to find Jewish ancestry who were converted can probably easily find those roots. Though in that case, borders of Israel would include more than Palestine.

The conflict from Islam POV is about which religion is better. That is biggest weakness of Islam in the region, where Jews were living in Medina and Mecca long before Islam was arisen and where majority of Arabs were Christians up till Middle Ages. So, even if it takes another 1000 years, I would put money on that Jews will survive, while Islam will be long forgotten history.

> I think a big mistake we in the west make when thinking about 'solutions' to the conflict is assuming both sides want peace. That's not been my impression on hearing anyone from either side talk

Israel has everything to gain by a true peace deal with Palestine. Palestinians though have everything to lose - their entire identity is intertwined with returning to their old homes from 1948. I don't think there is symmetry; one side basically "won" and would really like to live in peace if it was possible (barring a few religious Jewish settlers), but the meaning of peace for the other side is basically letting go of its identity and admit defeat.

Palestinians can't let go of what happened in 48, it's as foundational for them as Zionism is for Israelis. A lot of people miss this subtle point but if you really listen to Palestinians it's all there.

While if you really listen to (most) Israelis - its mostly about security. Most Israelis don't give much of a hoot about the settlements.

The use of the present tense is factually wrong. TFA says "Within a year already the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will bring into action ..."

Will they start shooting rockets when it gets foggy ouside now?

Historically they've not done that because they know the IDF's response is proportional to the civilian casualties on the Israeli side. Better to wait for clear weather when iron dome is maximally effective.

This doesn't make any sense. The whole point is to get a bigger IDF response, bloodier palestinian casualties, louder western media coverage and larger help packages to pocket.

No. Hamas doesn't want too much Israeli response--Israel is too good at targeting the higher-up people. They want to provoke some shooting but they don't want Israel to be serious enough about it that Hamas' human shields aren't enough protection.

Yes. Which is so tragic. Perhaps I'm not aware of what is a Pro-Israel source or not, but when googling "mowing the grass" as the IDF's tactic against Gaza. It appeared as if most political sides agreed that is the tactic being taken. Different political sides viewed the morality and usefulness of that differently. But they all appeared to agree.

Hamas isn't "mowing the grass". The IDF is.

I'm not sure what a solution could actually be. However mowing the grass has clearly shown it benefits the evils of Hamas and other higher ups in Gaza. It keeps the current status quo in tact which gives Israel some benefits too.

Let's (I am using "let us" as an American whose country is allied with Israel and as someone who supports Israel's right to their land and do not want innocent people to die) not "mow the grass" any more.

If you want to stay in the news, cost the Israeli army money on Iron Dome rockets, rattle Israeli nerves but not watch Gaza get steamrolled yet again, you send the rockets on a clear day when Iron Dome can intercept them with ease.

If you do want yet another IDF counterassault, then yes, launch in foggy weather.

Hamas mostly takes the first option.

I do not believe this is entirely accurate. Some truths there, but a healthy lack of nuance. I always steelman a fellow web citizen's comments. However, I am finding it difficult to do here with the lack of civility, courtesy, & respect onto others.

The last time I saw Israel doing something like this it was an infrared laser, each laser used a massive "chemical reaction battery" to power the laser. But each burst of shots used a big sea container looking battery that churned out some truly hideous chemical waste.

I wonder how they plan on powering this new system.

you are probably talking about THEL from 20 years ago. those "batteries" were reason that it never became operational: too risky to be around them in case they blow up. new one are fiber optic lasers i think

"If we can intercept a missile or rocket with an electrical pulse that costs a few dollars, we will essentially neutralize the ring of fire that Iran has set up"

This sets up a steampunk scenario where the missile must be controlled by a mechanical gyroscopic guidance system, immune from electrical pulses.

This system isn't an EMP system. It heats the target until it disintegrates.

I think the rockets it has to defend against are already as low-tech as possible, too.

"Electrical pulse" as in using some electricity rather than using a missile. Iron Dome missiles are cheap as SAMs go--they're short range and don't have to cope with countermeasures, but electricity is far cheaper. Iron Beam costs will basically be manning and wear rather than expended ammo.

With rockets I'm guessing that thermal signatures are used to home in on the projectile being destroyed. But I'm wondering what's being used here to keep the laser locked onto the target projectile. It's definitely an impressive technological feat.

The arrow missile system uses the Israeli green pine radar for acquisition and tracking while the arrow interceptor has both passive ir and active radar tracking.

My (completely unsubstantiated) guess is that a targeting IR laser is used for the required granularity of target correction.

Typically you'd use radar to detect incoming projectiles, using multiple detections over time to determine the trajectory of an incoming missile (they are usually unguided and will thus follow a predictable ballistic trajectory).

But would it not be possible to build missiles that can intelligently alter route upon detecting detection ? I recall once working on a auto guided industrial machine based on Motorola 68000 microprocessor that could figure out how to route itself to its destination. So unless you can detect and eliminate the missile almost simultaneously, an intelligent missile could throttle it's velocity etc. to avoid predictable trajectory.

Edit: some typos

while missiles can be built to have irregular routes, this is more important for missile-based defense. there, with the distances and speeds involved it will cause the interceptor to need to counter the irregularities, which will make it need to also be much more advanced. small changes in thrust however (at a later time - and thus higher speed) can cause only so much of a change.

but more importantly - light-based interception can be re-pointed much faster then a missile can change it's own course.

A missile design may evolve to have the original missile to intelligently decompose,upon detection, into multiple smaller missiles each with a randomized target and path. The parent missile could focus on reaching as close as possible to target rich area with stealth and upon inevitable detection, unleash smaller missiles with randomized paths. If the cost of missiles keep going down, I can see aggressors firing several of these to maximize their probability of a successful hit.

That's been around for quite a long time, at least the late 1960's.

> A multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) is an exoatmospheric ballistic missile payload containing several warheads, each capable of being aimed to hit a different target. The concept is almost invariably associated with intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads, even if not strictly being limited to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...

These are more expensive to build though. At some point, more far-ranging and guided systems can be used to snipe it before it is anywhere close from splitting apart. And Iron Beam will still be cheaper to deal with any warheads that manage to split off.

This is again a money play here, after all everything is a money play.

Iron Beam (this system) is designed to intercept simple rockets, artillery, and etc for cheap. The total cost per shot is estimated at 2000USD overall (including life cycle of the parts, laser, etc) compared to 100000USD for Iron Dome missile alone. It is even more for more advanced stuff like Arrow 2, Arrow 3, or David's Sling (all, including Irom Dome, of which have greater range and capability than the Iron Beam).

The issue with your system is cost.

The rockets that Iran is supplying are unguided ballistic rockets. Artillery is also unguided and ballistic. These are super cheap so its easy and economical to fire a lot of them. This is why Israel wants Iron Beam cause its much cheaper then Iron Dome.

Now lets focus on your solution. The missiles now will need advanced guidance system, maneuvering capabilities (mid course correction, path adjustment), radar and IR warning receivers, and other advanced electronics. None of which are cheap. These components also add weight to the missile, which means bigger missile and more fuel, which adds to the cost of the missile. The need to carry fuel for mid flight adjustment also means heavier missile, which means bigger missile, which means more expensive missile. So your cost per missiles goes up hell of a lot. So now you are limited to the number you can field against Israel. Now its worth it to throw up an Iron Dome against you or possibly an Arrow 2, both which are guided missiles interceptors.

EDIT: Example of the rockets that the Iron Beam is designed to intercept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajr-5

Automated counter-battery in addition to AD would be an interesting extra layer of deterrence.

And a PR nightmare. Shoot a missile from a school or a hospital, then afterwards the newspaper articles write themselves when the automated system retaliates. Radar data showing it was a missile launch site will always lose to pictures of mothers holding dead children.

Counter battery is also of questionable effectiveness when most launch sites are used only once.

> And a PR nightmare. Shoot a missile from a school or a hospital, then afterwards the newspaper articles write themselves when the automated system retaliates.

There's nothing new about Hamas firing rockets from schools and hospitals and Israel responding. It's difficult to exaggerate how dirty the conflict is, and in many respects always has been. It's a positive feedback look because these activities only further dehumanize one from the other's perspective, and it's compounded by people on both sides who capitalize on this dynamic for their own gain.

I have a neighbor who grew up in Israel in the 50s and 60s. If you even mention the words "Arab" or "Palestinian" she'll get visibly angry and bitter. I'm sure the feeling is mutual for many on the other side.

Israel doesn't do counter-battery.

1) Very often the launcher is unattended at the time of launch. You wouldn't get anything but an empty weapon.

2) You can be sure that the counter-battery fire would hit a lot of human shields. Hamas *loves* human shields.

1/ not always, and it limits salvo size, lots of the launchers are multi rocket, so if you can take out the launcher while it still has munitions, you stop rockets, destroy the launcher, damage the site which may be connected to tunnels and maybe people.

2/ like AD you can have red/green zones for pre-authorized counter-battery

Is there a consensus on whether a nuclear missile shield would be feasible, regardless the technology?

Basically, if the US invested 1% of the GDP into developing a missile shield, could it achieve let's say a 98% success rate against incoming missiles?

The issue is global conflicts have a lot of missiles. Your 98% success rate probably still means most Americans are dead. IIRC Russia's ICBMs are measured in tens of thousands, and each one could take out a major US city (until we ran out)

Russia has only about 1600 operational nuclear warheads on a much smaller number of ICBMS. It's not tens of thousands.

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021-03/nuclear-notebook-rus...

But even with that lower number you're correct that we have no hope of defending against a major strike.

Ah, I had thought 1600 missiles x MIRV multiples of at least 12. But thanks for the correction. I'm sure people in Nampa, Idaho will sleep safer.

That would suggest they’ve made a significant breakthrough. Especially that comment about a couple dollars.

From what I can tell all the existing tech is still reasonably niche and expensive.

Could you make the missile really really shiny so that it reflects the laser away?

Industrial lasers use water cooled copper mirrors to avoid overheating and destroying the mirror. Keeping them clean is a big issue. Seems it would be quite hard to make a missile sufficiently reflective that a mirror coating wouldn’t quickly degrade.

The space lasers were real /s

(in reference to the Republican congresswoman who blamed the California wildfires on Jewish space lasers: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylor-gree...)

It really surprises me that so many people who have seen UFO reports all their lives cite this as nothing but humorous stupidity from a politician. People who follow satellite data in order to understand global patterns of earthquakes and weather saw what looks like beams from unknown sources hitting areas that then caught fire. As with anything else this is very likely to be some kind of sensor or transmission glitch that simply needs to be analyzed in detail to find some mundane explanation, but it is worth acknowledging that the whole business emerged not from the political foolishness that got attached to it later but from hobbyists trying to explain genuinely peculiar data. Even when people talk about UFOs or space lasers it is worth taking in and trying to explain the actual data.

> People who follow satellite data in order to understand global patterns of earthquakes and weather saw what looks like beams from unknown sources hitting areas that then caught fire.

What? Is there a link to any of this or is it just standard internet BS?

I've heard of earthquake lights and there may be something to that. Never heard of anything focused on places that later caught fire. The fires that I am aware of were mostly blamed on poor maintenance of electrical utility infrastructure or on arsonists or fools doing stupid stuff like "gender reveals".

Enlighten me, but not with one of them space lasers, just about them.

At the time I saw the videos on YouTube postings from "dutchsinse". Why is it my job to do your research? Videos of what appear to be moving globs get people yelling about UFOs and now videos of what appear to be beams just before fires get people yelling about space lasers. Do you really think that being sloppy and full of emotion and attitude somehow makes you superior and on top of all of this? If you actually dared to read my post I posited that these were probably the usual misinterpretation of sensory or transmission glitches, but you are too scared to even look up what this is about in order to give some kind of meaningful and informed reply. All you care about is a political wingnut.

Somewhere in the space between the period at the end of your first sentence and the capital W it looks like your meds failed you. Are you manic depressive? Do you spend your days locked away from real people to the point that you feel attacked whenever someone responds to one of your posts?

You should spend some time watching network TV. I'm sure somewhere in the drivel you can find a pharmaceutical commercial for a product that will help you repair your problems relating to people.

Your reply after the first sentence is a steadily deteriorating jumble of accusations and assumptions. You must have me confused with someone else or your reading comprehension skills are terrible.

> Why is it my job to do your research?

Standard forum etiquette for a long time has been to include sources for claims if those sources were requested. This helps to educate readers and to identify sources of misinformation thus keeping BS out of the stream, kind of like a mollusk, filtering all that water as it passes.

If you had not indicated some familiarity with the subject matter then I would not have asked to see the source material. If being asked for source material is somehow embarrassing to you then that is a different issue.

Your assumptions are all way off of the mark.

"...sloppy and full of emotion attitude..." Wow, I really think you have me mixed up with someone else.

>If you dared to read my post...

The fact is that I did read your post and, as noted above, that is the reason that I requested a source. You set yourself out as someone who was familiar with and potentially in agreement with the data and I wanted to see the same data so that I could draw my own conclusions.

>you are too scared...

Again, you suggested that you had seen some of the space laser evidence and I requested a source. It has been "Tits or GTFO", "Pics or it didn't happen", etc forever online. What is your problem?

>All you care about is a political wingnut.

What? Your train of rational thought derailed several sentences back. With all the high-tech monitoring tools available to railroads, the wide adoption of cell phones with cameras, and the cancer of social media to help relay that information, I'm sure someone will be along directly to help you get back on track.

This tech will be the end of MAD and the start of WW3. The only thing holding back current super powers from direct confrontation are ICBMs and MAD. Once they can be reliably shot down via lasers, then full scale war is much more likely. I understand the current tech is for much slower, much lower rockets and cruise missiles. But the tech will evolve and get better. Israel is the current test bed for high tech defense, so expect further improvements over the next decade. We have seen a century of relative peace, enjoy it while it lasts.

As long as EMPs are viable MAD is still in effect.

An emp would knock out electrical grids.... sure...

But that isn't annihilation...

Say russia installed this in major cities (rural is acceptable loss), then manufactured super sonic nukes that could deliver a strike in under 5 mins... or even a minute... they could strike many of our nuke sites (not all because of subs) but our major military operation bases, then we strike back from subs, but these take them all out, there's some fallout from atmospheric explosions which may be as bad, but maybe they hoist huge fans to blow it south to the Ukraine or another enemy state...

I don't think EMP's really would deter this sort of outcome... MAD is becoming less and less a thing, super-sonic weapons are the real clencher, because with those it's simply whoever strikes first - if they strike hard enough can disable just about any enemy... so the trick will be not getting to the point of first strike... which...I don't think we can really prevent, not w/ water wars/climate resources diminishing, etc....

The worst war ever will come, we thought globalization could keep people sane but threats to supply chains, and resources, and the existence of the earth itself turn people into desperate people. Desperate people don't always do what's considered 'sane'.

What we'd deem an evil dictator might try and nuke 80% of the population to save the climate, and it probably would succeed but most sane people would say the cost is too great for that ...and they'd be right too.... I mean Thanos had good intentions but horrible means towards them...

A madman who gets elected or inherits the button to the nations military arsenal could decide to burn it all down like Nero...

Even with somewhat assured first strike outcomes I still don't see a rational reason for a nuclear power to go ahead with it. What are they going to do afterwards, conquer territory? It's not going to work because nuclear strikes won't magically disappear the (now really angry) population. So what would be the point? And now you lose all the fruits of trade and punish your own people.

Re: an insane leader ordering a strike just for fun, I have faith I guess in the staff who would be actually pushing the buttons. It has happened before.

> Say russia installed this in major cities (rural is acceptable loss)

You mean like the Russian's existing system is designed? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s...

>there's some fallout from atmospheric explosions which may be as bad, but maybe they hoist huge fans to blow it south to the Ukraine or another enemy state...

This was in fact precisely Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s idea in 1991 to stop the Baltics from seceding

Nerd Alert: Thanos's motivations in the comics were definitely not "good". However, in the softened MCU version his motivations while hilariously dumb, could be considered "good".

To elaborate, some sources put the death rate in an industrialized nation at 90% at 1 year after initial strike.

We would simply starve.

It is delayed annihilation, and would be returned in kind.

No system, even THAAD is 100% reliable. And nothing ever has been tested in the battlefield. Statistical significance of extreme levels is needed to eliminate MAD. Also, we shouldn’t be too reliant on MAD theory to avoid developing defense tech. If we don’t, it’s a guaranteed SAD (Self-assured destruction :-) ).

>This tech will be the end of MAD and the start of WW3.

AFAIK shooting down warheads will always be harder than launching them. Unless your system is really reliable, it can be bypassed by simply launching more missiles.

MAD was a dumb idea in the first place. Everybody has known, since the first world war, that a major power confrontation is very likely to end your nation, even if you win. The French were so demographically destroyed they literally could not raise an army to fight in the second world war. The British were so broke their empire collapsed. The Russian empire, the Austrian empire, the Ottoman empires all collapsed into splinters.

Rational people would not want to be on either side of such a conflict. Except, international relations is fraught with pathological incentives, so peer conflicts happen nonetheless, and less than twenty years after the first world war ended, everybody was gearing up for a second.

The cold war didn't go hot because we were lucky, not because MAD changed the basic dynamics of total war.

Rational people aren’t the ones who start wars. People who grab and claw for power and climbed their way into leadership start wars. I wish the world was lead by rational people, but I don’t think it is.

The difference being that with nuclear mutually assured destruction, the actual leaders are assured of their own personal destruction.

Are they? Who has the best bunkers? Who has dedicated aircraft you can live in permanently?

>Who has dedicated aircraft you can live in permanently?

permanently? Probably impossible with current technology. Your best bet is still an underground bunker. If it has to be moving you'll need something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer_(TV_series)#Premis...

I am assuming landing and refueling is allowed, you can choose a non nuked place for that.

They aren't, that's why they have shelters and contingency plans for themselves and their families.

If life were fair, they shouldn't be allowed to survive a nuclear war that they start, but life is rarely fair.

The universe is a collection of chemical and physical reactions. Fairness is a value judgement that is sometimes passed from inside our heads over the rest of the universe.

> he French were so demographically destroyed they literally could not raise an army to fight in the second world war.

This isn't true at all. The French army at the start of WWII was over 5 million men, one of the largest in the world. It suffered from bad luck and being led by morons, but it certainly existed.

Per your other point, WWII made the US and the USSR global superpowers for half a century, and the US especially sacrificed far less than anyone else to get it. War is sadly not always a losing proposition, even total war.

I don't know about the demographic claim but definitely the French could not imagine _fighting_ another war and so their preparations were poor. They built the Maginot Line as a way of avoiding having to fight again. And I believe the political culture in the country and army all rotated around the idea that they never wanted to fight Germany again. This also extended to the Treat of Versailles were they tried to cripple Germany's ability to raise an army again. I don't know about the demographic claim, but he is sort of right that WW1 wrecked Frances fighting spirit.

Oh, I actually totally disagree with the original commenter's statement "The cold war didn't go hot because we were lucky, not because MAD changed the basic dynamics of total war." Erm. No. MAD definitely did change the basic dynamics.

I was exaggerating, but the demographic slump that happened as a result of WW1 was a problem for french military planners, which is why a large portion of their army were reservists or badly trained.

Per your other point, you're shifting the terrain of the discussion. WW1 was almost a pure losers war, and yet, most of the same states engaged in WW2. That's the crazy decision. WW2, on the other hand, had relative winners (although I think the US would have done well regardless, and the USSR got to be a global superpower (which it was already) at an appalling cost).

Another thing that bothers me about the whole 'MAD prevented the cold war from going hot' is that none of the generals at the time thought like that. People didn't really start thinking about nuclear weapons as anything other than just big bombs until well into the cold war. That's why MacArthur advocated their use in China.

> The only thing holding back current super powers from direct confrontation are ICBMs and MAD.

"Trade interests"

Shooting down a rocket going Mach 3 is different from an ICBM going Mach 25.

ICBM research seems to be further along in the US, Russia and India than in Israel. Israel has a fairly accurate, but expensive, missile defense system already.

I very much doubt this is effective against ICBMs. It'll be a ground-based system. ICBMs are just too far away, too much air in between. It's not a question of technology. It simply cannot be done from the ground.

You’d probably be trying to catch those in space. Predictable trajectory and no atmosphere.

It's got nothing to do with MAD. Lasers can't affect MIRV re-entry vehicles in the first place. They're already designed to glow white hot during re-entry, a bit of laser energy on top of that is negligible.

8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27173138

This will do great work for their apartheid state!

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apart...

That propaganda was already spammed and flagged in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30170308

Propaganda is a strong word for truth

Truth is a strong word for propaganda. Saying nonsensical responses like that is easy.

In the thread I linked there is a rebuttal of Amnesty's propaganda:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/lapid-attacks-delusional-amnes...

One of the most common tactics is for Jews to point the finger at “Gentile anti-Semitism” rather than acknowledge actual Jewish behavior.

Coming from a person who lived for a while in South Africa as a refugee as well as worked in Israel, Israel is simply not an apartheid state. It’s more arguable that the situation in the West Bank bears some similarity, but it lacks the critical features of apartheid such as lack of governmental representation, lack of the right to vote based on race, massively disparate funding enshrined in law according to race, denial of public services due to race, etc. None of these are found in Israel, and some of them are found to a certain extent in the West Bank, but not all of them and not entirely. It’s a hip buzzword though that gets people’s attention, which is why it’s used by Palestinian activists.

No one accused you of antisemitism either, and what I always find rather curious are those who almost always pre-empt their responses saying that someone will baselessly accuse them of antisemitism, when no one in fact actually does. Way to figure out how to blame Jews anyhow even when they don’t do anything.

What’s more, there are literally hundreds of thousands of Jews who are ambivalent about Israel and criticise it daily, and yet you seem to put all Jews into a single monolith and claim that it’s a ‘tactic’ of theirs. Sounds eerily like Nazi era propaganda of accusing them of ‘Jewish trickery’.

>the critical features of apartheid such as lack of governmental representation, lack of the right to vote based on race, massively disparate funding enshrined in law according to race, denial of public services due to race, etc. None of these are found in Israel

I found compelling evidence of these in the amnesty international report.

>No one accused you of antisemitism either

The link provided above shows the headline as "Israel blasts Amnesty UK for ‘antisemitic’ report accusing it of apartheid"

>Sounds eerily like Nazi era propaganda of accusing them of ‘Jewish trickery’

I don't care what it sounds like - this is literally what it is. Imagine for a moment bringing up "blood libel" in a report on documented israeli abuse of Palestinians. It's just disgusting and zionists have gotten away with it for too long.The zionist state needs widespread condemnation and dismantling for its crimes against humanity.

Note Israeli PM Bennet is currently facing a lot of media and public attention to large price hikes of different consumer goods, electricity and gasoline. Just saying.

(PS - Also, scrutiny about Israeli soldiers having bound and gagged an 80-yro Palestinian man, leaving him on the floor in some abandoned building after having stopped him in an illegal roadblock, with him eventually dying. Israelis wouldn't need a distraction from that kind of stuff happening, though; we/they are already trained to filter that out.)

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