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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

#481

Post by _DeadFred_ »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #469
kennywinker wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away. > The US also gives similar levels of military aid to Egypt as well. The EU and US give billions to Ukraine. Yes, the US uses defense aid to further their own agenda internationally, and funnel public dollars into private hands. > Gaza also receives billions in aid Food, medical, and inf…

They want you to think that. There is no way any group other than Hamas could be operating at that scale. It's Hams taking the aid to use it to control the population. It's not like they were actually starving--Hamas never managed to find a legitimately starving person to point a camera at. Every single person they paraded in front of the cameras had medical issues that were the cause of their problems. Just go look…

Reminder the UN said it could feed the millions in Gaza more than the 1200+ calories per person Israel was letting in. The UN at the same time only fed the 400,000 Sudan refugees 400 calories per person per day.

Lots of politics at play.

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

#482

Post by LorenPechtel »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #357
scottoreily wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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)?

It's normally easy to tell apart war and terrorism.

Look at the person who selects the target. What do they believe is at that point? Civilian--it's terrorism. Military/government, it's war or insurgency. Look at the pattern--taking out a guard post to get to the civilians behind does not make it legitimate.

Note that you need to look at the person who selects the target--a soldier in the field often knows little of what they're shooting at. And what do they *believe* is there? When we hit that Chinese embassy it was an intel failure, not terrorism--the bomb was dropped on what used to be in the building. Being wrong doesn't make it terrorism. Missing doesn't make it terrorism.

But when Iran drops a missile on an Israeli hospital and claims they were shooting at a "nearby" (no, there was nothing military within many CEPs of the impact point) military facility it's either terrorism, or since they are state actors, a Geneva violation. Especially as they did not apologize, nor even admit the hospital was hit.

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

#483

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #403
elcritch wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zionist settlement started in the 1870’s on legally purchased land. Most of that land was uninhabited. Tel Aviv was founded on literal sand dunes in 1908 and is Israel’s most populated area. Jaffa was the closest Arab city which is still predominately Arab. Northern Israel become majority Jewish without military force under the Ottomans and then British empires. However even then there were regular pogroms and killin…

Perhaps not, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who was vaguely favourable towards Israel before the invasion, and now, having watched what's been done in the name of "safety" with horror, considers the country a rogue far-right state run by corrupt criminals guilty of a very long list of crimes, just one of which was the creation of one of the most organised sex trafficking and sex abuse networks in recent history. Q…

[deleted]

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

#484

Post by LorenPechtel »

brigandish wrote: post #366
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

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

Suicide bombers don't make it terrorism.

Were the Japanese Kamikaze pilots terrorists? No--their targets were clearly military in nature. Likewise, was the US pilot that kamikaed a terrorist? No. (His plane had no hope of making it back to the carrier, he could have bailed out but the only possible rescue would be from the very fleet he was attacking. No path with a meaningful chance of survival, as soldiers in hopeless situations often do he chose to take as many enemies with him as he could.)

Terrorism is about the target, not the means.

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

#485

Post by FrinkleFrankle »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #467
recroad wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. But everyone somehow seems to conveniently forget that part. Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below. The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on com…

[flagged]

You know, both sides can be bad. They're both led by bad people who do bad things and some good things. I've watched the Oct 10th attack videos. They're horrific. I've also watched the videos of civilian buildings in Palestine being have their roofs "knocked on" by a missile, followed shortly after by demolition by additional missiles.. And the Israeli solders dropping grenades on tents.. And the firsthand accounts of doctors talking of children and infants being shot through the head with sniper rounds.

Both country's governments are in the wrong and their civilians are suffering because of it.

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

#486

Post by kennywinker »

FunnyUsername wrote: post #318
kennywinker wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, th…

Gaza's "air defense" is hundreds of miles of tunnels, civilians just aren't allowed to shelter in them. Hamas having better technology wouldn't change the fact that they're not interested in protecting civilians.

I’m not going to defend hamas’ choices, but i think it’s disingenuous to say that they have the ability to protect the people of gaza. A few thousand fighters in tunnels is possible, but millions of civilians? And wouldn’t that be more of this “using human shields” stuff people like to point out so often?

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

#487

Post by recroad »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #468
recroad wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. But everyone somehow seems to conveniently forget that part. Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below. The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on com…

You don't get to "resist" your neighbors existence because you want to claim their territory for yourself.

Start with the Wikipedia entry on the subject and then make your way down slowly to what Israeli historians have to say on the subject.

Ilan Pappé

Avi Shlaim

Simha Flapan

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

#488

Post by _DeadFred_ »

belorn wrote: post #101
jmyeet wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a defensive weapon. You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Ir…

If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue.

America's school lunch program was created so that it would have healthier soldiers. We better stop feeding children.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Prog...

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

#489

Post by LorenPechtel »

thrance wrote: post #400
brigandish wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some facts about that number:

1) It's the total death toll from all causes, including natural causes.

2) The majority of those "journalists and media workers" were Hamas propaganda people.

3) UNRWA had a higher proportion of it's people identified as terrorists than the population at large.

4) It's what Hamas claimed, without any means of verification. Israel showed about 4k were unquestionably false. Hamas also claimed 10,000 buried in the rubble--which never changed. Then when they started digging after the war only some hundreds were found--and Israel caught them planting bodies to be found.

And, fundamentally, the death toll proves nothing. Blame war on the side that chooses to fight, not on the side that is successful at fighting. Typically they are one in the same as most countries will not launch a war they don't expect to win. But when a little guy goes and tries to beat up a big guy and gets pounded it's still the guy who started it that's in the wrong.

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

#490

Post by belter »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #442
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

The defenses they need are against Hamas. Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones. And let's take a critical eye to that data you linked. I'm having a hard time with the filters but we can see enough without: The fatalities are nearly 90% male. That implies that probably 80% are in some fashion combatants or combatant-adjacent. And note that the death toll for the recent war includes…

>> Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones.

"Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...

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