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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

#491

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…

Your version is plenty uncut and soggy as well. A significant amount of land buys involved evictions of peasants. There was plenty of violence in the arab revolts against British rule, when Jewish militia acted as British auxiliaries. Pogroms were very rare in pre-modern Arab lands, and usually related to factional politics, since jews often had significant political rights and power. The British suck. Most MENA Jews…

And if a land buy evicts peasants that is illegal how?

You can sell your property, the lease goes along with it but the new owner has no obligation to renew the lease when it's up.

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as captured by their slogan, "from the river to the sea Palestinians will be free" The mental gymnastics required to make a call for freedom into a call for war are astounding. If i say “free tibet” does that mean i want war with china? What part of “free” is a threat to the people of israel? > despite that they launched the war first every single time This is such weird playground-like defense - “They started it!!…

I assume that you are engaging in good faith, therefore I will respond. On the meaning of Palestine will be free, don't westplain the Palestinians by reading your interpretation into their mind. Instead, listen to what they actually said. https://youtu.be/w4iGFT9Yl9o?si=oWKWAUzlMSec4n67 A lot of misunderstanding about Israel stems from people not reading the situation as it is, ie: listening to what both sides actual…

I’ve encountered online MANY israelis calling for gaza and the west bank to be destroyed and every palestinian to be killed or kicked out. Does that mean every israeli believes that? Knowing what everyone believes takes more than cherry picking the worst beliefs.

Source for the thousands of palestinians held without charges before oct 7th: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians_in_Israeli_custod...

> In April 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons – including 160 children, 32 women, and over 1,000 "administrative detainees" (indefinitely incarcerated without charge)

Source for the data cited in wikipedia: https://www.btselem.org/statistics/detainees_and_prisoners

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

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ongoing conflict is the result of: - Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state - Arab /Muslim nations forcibly ejecting their Jews to Israel in the 50s-70s (ashekenazi Jews are a minority in Israel, most are from Arab counties and Iran), thus fueling the Jewish population there. I can't think…

> Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state I don't think there was any aspirations to form a state in 1880-1900 or at least I haven't seen it.

Yeah, "form a state" isn't relevant. It's the remains of the Ottoman Empire. People were reorganizing into new countries but the Palestinians were in no way a separate population.

After 1948 Egypt and Jordan stepped in and annexed Gaza and the West Bank specifically to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state.

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

#494

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?

What you don't understand is the carnage in Gaza is self-inflicted. Hamas attacked knowing what would happen. And knowing that every dead Palestinian was a weapon to use against Israel in the propaganda war. Thus they did everything they could get away with to maximize dead Palestinians.

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

#495
post #40

Israel 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.

Disagree--most rockets are determined to fall into unimportant locations and are not engaged. Israel only shoots at the ones that are going to fall on something.

(Although, notably, Israel destroyed one that was going to fall on The Dome, the very location that Islam is supposedly trying to protect from the Jews.)

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, why would they bother when there’s cheaper and easier ways to do it? A high tech laser system is great for shooting stuff down because it replaces missile systems that cost even more. If you want to cripple people, why would you use it instead of a cheap gun or baton? “It could be used to hurt people” doesn’t mean much. You at least need “it could be used to hurt people, and it’s better at it in at leas…

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Quit listening to the propaganda, listen to the actual claims.

We have one clear noncombatant child death--killed by the device aimed at her father (who was a valid target). We have a handful of people who are underage, but no details about them. Plenty about the one innocent, nothing about the rest. Are they truly that inept, or would looking into the rest reveal they weren't non-combatants?

The fact that they only managed to find one case to parade in front of the cameras says a lot. The beeper attack is probably the best special operations move pulled off in recent times.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither of those are enough calories.

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

#498

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Absolutely. The mass bombings of German cities during WW2 would be considered a war crime today.

If nothing may be obtained by consenting to quiet our conscience and murder enemy civilians all should call it criminal but wherein we can purchase victory or save the lives of our civilians and soldiers there is an exchange rate between sin and gain that virtually all will agree to pay.

I do not hold that the firebombing of German cities was an acceptable trade but that there is a point for most people where they will pay the cost.

Extremists count the blood of the enemy as meaningless and see no sin in spilling it and will do any amount of harm without qualm for instance see the words of an extremist after the death of a terrorist

> Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, in paying homage to Goldstein, told mourners that even 1 million Arabs “are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” And angry voices in the congregation shouted, “We are all Goldsteins!” and “Arabs out of Israel!”

Whereas Perrin's doesn't speak for most Israelis the actions of his entire government and society suggest either agreement or willingness to look the other way whilst someone else pays the price in sin and indeed the attitude far from being historically abhorrent it is fairly normal for all societies to account the blood of the enemy civilian or not fairly cheap or valueless.

Looking at the modern genocide in Gaza and our half assed responses to it makes one wonder if the world has really made any progress whatsoever or if our morality is confined almost exclusively to historical analysis and hand wringing that has virtually no impact on current or future actions.

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

#499

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.

We should attach moral value to our enemies lives because we thereby retain our own decency.

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

#500

From 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.

Easily defeated with clouds of aluminum chaff? First wave of drones get targeted, explode into clouds of chaff, second wave of drones penetrates the de-focused laser system.

You are describing salvage fusing.

When you're playing with nukes it actually is rather effective, not from a standpoint of chaff (you don't bring it) but the ionization of the nuke makes a radar blocked zone and the following missile is going very, very fast--makes a bunch of progress while the defenders are blind. It's also why we don't like nuclear anti-sub weapons--the dead zone lasts for hours, there's no way to know if you actually got the target.

But a drone is small and slow. You'll need an awful lot of drones to punch through defenses this way and the whole thing goes out the window when the laser pops drones farther back in line. And chaff only denies a small area and for a short time.

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