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Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

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Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#391

Post by lo_zamoyski »

nullocator wrote: post #294
falcor84 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Yes, I believe that even if you as a civilian personally voted for someone who ended up being a horrible genocidal dictator, that doesn't make it ethical for the other side to target bombs at you; warfare should be directed at combatants, or at least at the industrial base rather than indiscriminately at civilians.

Ya let's only engage in war the 18 year olds sent to die, musnt engage in war against the senders. Voting for war should have consequences.

This is a gravely immoral and frankly psychopathic stance, as well as an incoherent one.

Or is also immoral to attack disarmed combatants who pose no threat. Civilians aren’t even combatants.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#392

Post by brigandish »

thrance wrote: post #376
brigandish wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A standard might be: uses suicide bombers. An even more radical form would be: uses child suicide bombers.

All in all, Israel is doing most of the killing here. They have access to more sophisticated weapon, but it's no less barbaric.

Using one's own children to suicide bomb is no less barbaric than firing a missile? That's not even true in a mathematical sense, let alone a moral one.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#393

Post by AbuAssar »

elcritch wrote: post #70

Personally 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…

you have the audacity to play the victim card for Israil after the whole world -including you- witnessed live and in HD for over two years what they have done to Gaza poeple?

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#394

Post by jvanderbot »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #292

Drone tech will adapt, as it has been in the russia/ukraine conflict. A small, fast, autonomous drone flying between trees and buildings, avoiding obstacles and not flying in a straight line could destroy such an expensive system with very little explosive. Or a cloud of such drones. Or launch your attack on a foggy/rainy day.

Its so fun to armchair general drones nowadays.

I think they're hoping this will be useful against long range cruise missile style drones, not hyper agile FPVs. Agile FPVs have not been a major threat from Iran vs Israel.

Does israel get a lot of fog and rain? Might this be part of a layered defense?

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#395

Post by lo_zamoyski »

goku12 wrote: post #295
michaelmrose wrote: post #260

[flagged]

What are you implying? That the civilians of Germany too were involved in the Holocaust under Nazism? Sure, they hated the 'other' groups. But the Nazis had to suspend the earlier Aktion T4 after it attracted a severe revolt from the public. Learning from that experience, the Nazis took enormous efforts to keep the Holocaust out of public sight. If the German civilians had known well about it, would the allied armies…

The evil of attacking civilians is not determined by their stance on genocide. Even disarmed combatants who pose no threat cannot be licitly attacked. Civilians cannot be legitimate direct and intentional targets, period.

> War is inherently immoral.

That’s not true. War as such is undesirable, but fighting one is not categorically immoral. Just war principles determine when it is morally acceptable or even a duty to wage war. Is it immoral to repel an invading army if you have a reasonable chance of success using licit means? No. Indeed, it might be immoral not to do so.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#396

Post by tremon »

XorNot wrote: post #280
recroad wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data says it’s the Palestinians that need defenses, not the ones doing 95% of the killing. https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties

Defensive weapons technology is how you get less conflict though. When some idiot in the ME decides to shoot something at Israel, the character of the response demanded by the population depends heavily on whether any Israelis die or property is destroyed. Israel didn't aggressively bomb Gaza till October 7 killed a lot of Israelis, even though they were regularly shooting down Hamas launched rockets with Iron Dome.…

> Defensive weapons technology is how you get less conflict though.

I'm not convinced. Responding purely defensively allows your attacker to systematically probe every weakness in your defenses without risk of harm to themselves (e.g. how Russia is playing cat&mouse with the EU).

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#397

Post by catlikesshrimp »

cenamus wrote: post #339
throw-12-16 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be vital tech after China swarms Taiwan with a massive drone invasion.

After??

Along the lines of Europe considering funding defence proportionally to the area of Ukraine chomped by Russia.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#398

Post by catlikesshrimp »

karim79 wrote: post #234
8note wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iran has a religious rule against making nukes, to the same extent that it has religious decrees calling for an end to israel. iranians arent gonna nuke anyone without first toppling their religious government

[flagged]

"Christian Zionism"?

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#399

Post by steveBK123 »

anovikov wrote: post #363
breppp wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually progressive until the people with guns are too afraid to shoot, as in the fall of USSR Although I will believe there are a few more iterations before this regime falls

In the fall of USSR, no one was "afraid to shoot". No one was motivated to do so. Or do anything for the completely failed system that no longer worked for anyone, inside or outside it. By 1991, no one cared for good ol' Union. That's the only reason it died so peacefully in its sleep with virtually no violence - it was so rotten, no one could care for its survival.

And indeed that is how the Shah fell in Iran - the regime was so rotten that even the military elite no longer saw it as worth defending. Will the current regime face the same eventually?

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#400

Post by thrance »

brigandish wrote: post #392
thrance wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All in all, Israel is doing most of the killing here. They have access to more sophisticated weapon, but it's no less barbaric.

Using one's own children to suicide bomb is no less barbaric than firing a missile? That's not even true in a mathematical sense, let alone a moral one.

Stop using your thought-terminating clichés about terrorism and look at actual stats:

> As of 19 November 2025, over 72,500 people (70,525 Palestinians and 2,109 Israelis) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 248 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 employees of UNRWA.

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

How is killing tens of thousands of people less barbaric than killing thousands of people? What kind of twisted morality do you use to excuse mass murder by missiles but not through suicide bombing?

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