Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
351–360 of 629 posts
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a genocide committed against Bangladeshi Hindus by Pakistan and another being done right now by Bangladeshi govt in power now. A genocide is being committed in Nigeria by boko haram. Another in Sudanese war committed and funded by uae and other Arab nations. But let me guess, the only genocide worth committing your verbiage is the one where a certain people belonging to the favorite religion is facing issue…
I love the whataboutery Hasbara angle. It never gets old.
> whataboutery Hasbara angle
What is this?
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#353Probably a dumb question, but could a ploy drone fitted with a directional mirror redirect the beam back to the source to damage or destroy it?
Likely cheaper to just coat the real drones in an aerogel or similar light weight, high thermal resistance material. It's an arms race still, but one with a reasonable amount of asymmetry in favour of an attacker.
> coat the real drones in an aerogel
You’d still have to deal with an asymmetric ablative jet.
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#354Israel saw over 16,000 rocket attacks last year from fundamentalist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen. The Iron Dome intercepted ~90% of them, resulting in thousands of lives saved. Iron Beam is the newer incarnation of this technology that uses lasers to intercept incoming rockets and drones with precision and much lower cost. Wonderful technology.
Hopefully victims of fundamentalist groups like Israel will get this kind of technology too.
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#355Personally I think that defensive technology like this is fantastic. It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones. Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1]. Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. P…
Except when the bombardment comes from space. Golden Dome is planning large constellations of lasers like this in constant orbit, as well as hypersonic warheads able to target any spot on Earth within 90 seconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s... It's explicitly an offensive technology (and of course Musk has been involved)
The only similarity between Golden Dome and Iron Beam is in their branding. An orbital conventional launch platform shares almost nothing with a land-based small-arms directed-energy one.
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
You'd be amazed at the amount of radicalization Israeli society gets if you'd bother to look with unbiased eyes. Attacking aid trucks? Spitting at Christians, even tourists? Stealing houses of West Bank people? (Oh must be for that Lebensraum) Maybe that's one goal you should add to your 2026 list...
[flagged]
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1]. There's a reason that's been happening, and it's not technical in nature. Technical solutions are thus unlikely to successfully address the root cause.
[flagged]
> Palestinian society is deeply propagandized and radicalized
What definition are you using that trips for Palestinians but not Israelis (or practically any other group in the Middle East outside e.g. cosmopolitan Gulf cities)?
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#358From Rafael’s site: https://www.rafael.co.il/system/iron-beam/ 100kW laser is nothing to joke about, but seems a good application for anti drone tasks. Fiber lasers are pretty snazzy.
from what I understand, problem with drones is first of all detection
> problem with drones is first of all detection
You’re right for ambush drones of the sort e.g. Hamas could launch. For the ones that would stream in from Iran, which Israel needed American help defending from last time, I’m not sure that’s the case.
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#359Personally I think that defensive technology like this is fantastic. It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones. Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1]. Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. P…
Except when the bombardment comes from space. Golden Dome is planning large constellations of lasers like this in constant orbit, as well as hypersonic warheads able to target any spot on Earth within 90 seconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s... It's explicitly an offensive technology (and of course Musk has been involved)
It's Trump's version of Reagan's Star Wars - it's all bluster that we will not see any result of, and it will be quietly shelved by future governments.
Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
#360The thing that worries me isn't the drone/anti-drone escalation. It is the fact that these weapons aren't actually limited to anti-drone use. Recently we have seen clear examples of countries, including Israel, that will use automatic id technology to mass tag a population. If you then have tools that can automatically track and mass kill, which this type of weapon represents, then we have reached a type of warfare t…
Truth is it's already happening, this is how "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy" were used to collectively punish entire families of what a poorly trained AI model thought may or may not be a Hamas fighter