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Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
- xenospn 9mo agoJust in time for Iran 2.0
- underdeserver 9mo agoIn the war in June, Iran fired 500kg warhead ballistic missiles. These were the only lethal munition they used, killing a couple dozen civilians. The Iron Beam is not relevant against ballistic missiles.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> Iran fired 500kg warhead ballistic missiles Iran also fired “over 1,000 suicide drones” [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war
- fpoling 9mo agoShaheds are heavy and big and I doubt that the new laser system can damage them. An interceptor drone is much cheaper and effective against them. This is more like defense against smaller FPV drones targeting bigger anti-missile systems.
- LorenPechtel 9mo agoLots and lots of drones--it's just the drones were all picked off, the only things that got through were some of the ballistic missiles. Most of which were aimed at things that they shouldn't have been shooting at in the first place. And Iron Dome scored on the ballistic missiles, I would assume Iron Beam also could. When it's coming down on it's target it's slowed by the atmosphere and it has no defense other than being fast.
- condensedcrab 9mo agoFrom Rafael’s site: https://www.rafael.co.il/system/iron-beam/ 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.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cogman10 9mo agoIt's quiet the power requirement. I wonder how long it has to focus on a drone to eliminate it. Like how long is this thing consuming 100kW?
- jstummbillig 9mo agoHm, you think longer than the laser is firing? Could there be windup?
- cogman10 9mo agoI imagine there's some sort of storage system, like a huge bank of ultra-capacitors, that are constantly kept charged. The wind up would be if that bank is depleted and they need to recharge. Delivering 100kW for a short period of time is definitely a feat.
- jstummbillig 9mo agoAh, good point, that seems likely.
- amluto 9mo agoIf these things are even 50% efficient, then power delivery is really not a problem these days. Most EVs have no problem delivering 200kW for quite a few seconds at a time, limited mostly by components getting warm. Higher-end EVs are generally rated for 300-500kW. It would by amusing to see one of these lasers mounted on an EV, possibly with a small range extender to recharge it on the go.
- LightBug1 9mo ago[flagged]
- okokwhatever 9mo agoGood God...
- koakuma-chan 9mo ago[flagged]
- password54321 9mo ago[flagged]
- koakuma-chan 9mo agoI look like an average white male.
- password54321 9mo ago[flagged]
- ausbah 9mo ago[flagged]
- stronglikedan 9mo agoI don't see how that's relevant, considering we could already provide healthcare to all Americans simply by disbanding the corrupt Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies and recouping the administration fees. And then do the same with welfare so we can get UBI. Hell, we'd probably save money in both cases.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> we could already provide healthcare to all Americans simply by disbanding the corrupt Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies and recouping the administration fees Source for this estimate? > then do the same with welfare so we can get UBI This is nonsense. Federal welfare spending is about $20k per capita [1]. You could get that to $30k by co-opting all state spending [2]. (And only in Alaska, Oregon and Hawaii.) [1] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-money-does-the-government-spend-per-person/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-money-does-the-govern... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- _DeadFred_ 9mo ago'the jews are stealing our healthcare' seems to be a huge bot posting theme on Reddit the last week or so. Might be working and bleeding over into the zeitgeist.
- cmccand1 9mo agoResponse to “How much U.S. taxpayer money was spent on this?” - now flagged: $1.2B Source: https://defensescoop.com/2024/04/25/iron-beam-procurement-us-giving-israel-funding/ https://defensescoop.com/2024/04/25/iron-beam-procurement-us...
- jmyeet 9mo ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> To summarize, any technique or technology designed to subjugate colonial interests will ultimately be used the citizenry in the imperial core To emphasize, however, per your own source, this is a critical analytical tool and not a testable hypothesis nor even prediction about the world.
- oytis 9mo agoIsraeli police had to teach American one how to do violence? Come on
- EGreg 9mo agoJust recently, US has worked with Saudis and Ukrainians and others to supply heavy and novel weaponry to be deployed in eg Yemen, coordinating airstrikes, giving intel etc. to devastating effect and has done even more direct involvement in brutal wars, whether proxy wars of whatever. The PATRIOT act and subsequent militarization of police at home supports the GP’s statement about a boomerang. I don’t think GP meant to say it was only due to Israel or single out Israel as a source US of military cooperation and MIC job creation. But yes, some people will only care if they can find Jewish connections, eg Zelensky being partly Jewish or MBS or Al Sisi allegedly being partly Jewish due to their stances in opposition to Islamic extremism. There are people who blame influential Jews for everything, and they’ll go so far as to say that Ataturk was Jewish, in order to care about the Armenian genocide. But they won’t care about, say, the Hamidian massacres of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks that took place 20 years earlier because they can’t find any evidence that Sultan Hamid was Jewish. They blame Israel for Iraqi expulsion of Jews, until they find out the Farhud was 10 years before Israel was formed as a state. They even finally started to care about what’s happening in Sudan when they realized they can sort of draw a tenuous line between that and Israel through UAE. As long as influential Jews are involved they will deeply care about a conflict, eg 9/11 dancing Israelis or clean break memo of PNAC. They will ignore that presidents like W Bush called the Iraq invasion a “crusade” to “rid the world of evildoers”. They also do not like to go back further to, say, bombing of Laos and all throughout southeast Asia because, again, it is hard to blame any Jews for that. It’s almost as if they have an algorithm: 1) find Jews involved with thing they consider bad, 2) care about that issue but ONLY to the extent they can point out Jewish connections 3) cherrypick and compile lists of Jewish involvement to make it seem that all bad things done by states, corporations, or humanity, is due to Jews. Candace Owens for example recetly said that Stalin was Jewish and that the US slave trade was “not the white man but mostly Jewish”, and that Black lives now really matter to her after years of “White lives Matter” with Ye, now that she found out Jews were behind it.
- mcpar-land 9mo agoDon't Get Distracted https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
- endtime 9mo agoThis is designed to save people.
- cogman10 9mo agoCould definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane. That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
- jmyeet 9mo agoThere 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 Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
- oytis 9mo ago[flagged]
- computerthings 9mo ago[dead]
- kubb 9mo agoSettlements in West Bank are Israel’s great crime.
- yonisto 9mo agoIt is so sad the Humanity needs to develop weapons...
- geertj 9mo agoOn the last day of the year, I am taking a few minutes to linger on this. At face value, most would agree with this, myself included. But I think we can dive one layer deeper. There are different schools of thoughts whether mankind is inherently good or evil. Over the years, I have become pretty firm believer that every person has the innate capacity for both good and evil, and the outcome is determined by both character and circumstances. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote (quote by Gemini): "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil." If you subscribe to this, then a weapons system can also be a force for good, if used by an entity for the purpose of "peace through strength". The strength keeps our innate capability for evil in check, as the consequences for evil would be guaranteed. A case in point is the MAD doctrine for nuclear weapons which has prevented a world war for the last 80 years. I'd appreciate philosophical replies. Am I wrong, either in a detail or at the core of the argument? Are there additional layers? I would like to kindly ask to keep replies away from views on the specific players in this specific press release. We'd just be reiterating our positions without convincing anyone. (edit: grammar, slight rewording)
- yonisto 9mo agoI totally understand the need for weapons. It is just makes me sad. And I think Solzhenitsyn is wrong. There are psychopathic people that have no good in their hearts. Sure, with the right upbringing that could be kind and good but at a given moment they are what they are... psychopaths.
- solatic 9mo agoMore to the point, "technology is neither good, nor bad, nor neutral, it just exists". Ultimately all tools can be used for good or bad purposes and what matters is the people who wield them. This is separate from the argument over whether MAD is philosophically good. MAD is not an argument about technology. "Peace through strength" does indeed require the occasional display of strength, to maintain deterrence. Good and bad (morals) are not the right frame to understand deterrence, rather emotions: fear, confidence, and security. Solzhenitsyn can be read as either a humanist or an ethicist: either the bridgehead of good is sufficient to redeem everyone from war and morality demands pacifism, or all military doctrines must be submitted to independent review to check that we do not give the "unuprooted small corner of evil" oxygen. Crucially, these are both judgements about ourselves and not about the foes who seek to destroy us, who indeed consider themselves to have "the best of all hearts". In this sense, Solzhenitsyn contributes to the cycle of violence: if both sides are ethicists, and their ethical councils have different conclusions, the result is not just fundamentalism but a fundamentalism justified by ethical review. Fear, anger, disgust are the ultimate drivers of conflict. Can we conquer them? Of course not, they are the base emotions, part of being human. But can there be a better way of handling them in geopolitics? Yes - if leaders are focused on helping not just themselves feel safe, but their enemies as well. This is the higher level beyond MAD - not mutual fear, but mutual security. This is why USAID was great foreign policy and cheap for its benefits. This is why weapons are sold to allies despite the fact that their interests may not be fully aligned with ours. Weapons are fundamental to security, which at the end of the day is a feeling and not a guarantee against attack or repercussions from an attack, and these feelings of security are what reduces the incidence and frequence of war.
- judah 9mo agoIsrael 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.
- RegnisGnaw 9mo agoLets send some over to Ukraine.
- myth_drannon 9mo agoAnd Putin gives a nuke to Iranians then it's game over since Iranians don't care about MAD doctrine. Anyways the risk of the tech falling into Russia's hands is too high. Ukrainians have the smarts to develop it themselves now that it is proven as a viable tech.
- Sabinus 9mo agoWhy would Russia give nukes to Iran? The Russians themselves would be harmed by an open nuclear exchange. No, Putin's threats to Biden and Trump were more along the lines of, 'See the Houthis shooting shipping, imagine that capability spread to rebels and terrorists worldwide'
- 8note 9mo agoiran 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
- karim79 9mo ago[flagged]
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- jokoon 9mo agoI wish they would make a demonstration
- dontlaugh 9mo ago[flagged]
- 63282836292919 9mo ago[flagged]
- dontlaugh 9mo agoYes, that’s exactly the kind of language the Nazis used. You merely further prove my point.
- causal 9mo agoA lot of comments decrying new weapons tech, but I think drone defense tech is particularly critical right now and going to save a lot of lives. Put another way, I don't think we would be against new clothing that made bullets less effective, even if it remains terrible that such clothing is needed. Especially as AI becomes better and cheaper and suicide drones become more nimble and autonomous. If you have seen any of the horrifying footage out of Ukraine you will understand how badly we need more effective and cheaper drone defense as soon as possible.
- cogman10 9mo agoYeah, I see this as ultimately a wash. In Russia/Ukraine, drones have proven to be a very real threat to deal with (arguably also in Iraq). What this means is wealthy nations will snatch up or recreate this and deploy it. That will stop smaller resistance forces from either defending or attacking. Depending on the nation in question this could both good or bad. Just like drones, guns, or tanks. Effectively, this puts the status quo back to where it was before mass drone deployments.
- causal 9mo agoWhich, IMO, is better than having swarms of cheap bombs flying around. Taken to the extreme, I also prefer the current status quo vs. everyone having a nuclear-tipped ICBM, and would welcome a countermeasure if cheap ICBMs became a thing.
- TheOtherHobbes 9mo agoSome nuclear weapons are light enough to be delivered by drone. Drones could also be equipped with facial recognition and conventional weapons to support targeted removal of "undesirables." Very much a "Be careful what you wish for" tech.
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo agothis back and forth has been going on since the dawn of industrialized asymmetric warfare. There is no reason to think that this is the finish line in that race.
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoIron Dome, Iron Beam… what next, Iron Curtain?
- tguvot 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain_(countermeasure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain_(countermeasure)
- DANmode 9mo agoIron Sheik
- incompatible 9mo agoIron Wall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_barrier
- sc970 9mo ago2009 Egyptian steel wall
- seydor 9mo agoIron throne
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- elcritch 9mo agoPersonally 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. Perhaps Ukraine is an obvious one. We're seeing rises in conflicts across parts of Africa, Cambodia/Thailand, Pakistan/India. Many governments are looking into buying these to protect their countries. This technology hopefully can protect populations from destabilizing forces funded on the cheap by foreign powers. Machine guns changed warfare [2] and drones have been a similar massive change in warfare making it cheaper and easier to attack and destabalize regions. Though of course there's downsides as well [3]. 1: https://www.mideastjournal.org/post/how-many-rockets-fired-at-israel https://www.mideastjournal.org/post/how-many-rockets-fired-a... 2: https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/how-machine-gun-changed-combat-during-world-war-i https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/how... 3: https://claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com/p/iron-dome-part-one https://claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com/p/iron-dome-part...
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones One could also hope that e.g. Iran starts focusing its economy on the wellbeing of its people versus playing regional cop to America’s world police.
- xenospn 9mo agoThey haven't done so in decades. You think they'll start now?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> You think they'll start now? No. But I can hope.
- 9mo ago
- xg15 9mo agoSomeone should give people in Gaza or the West Bank or Lebanon the same tech.
- judah 9mo agoGaza (Hamas), the West Bank (Fatah), and Lebanon (Hezbollah) are the reason this technology is needed in the first place: violent religious fundamentalists firing cheap rockets at Jewish cities because of religious hatred. Over 16,000 rocket attacks on Israel last year alone. Thanks to the Iron Dome technology, nearly 90% of such attacks were intercepted, saving thousands of lives. This new Iron Beam technology is more precise and cheaper, and will likely save even more lives.
- xg15 9mo agoThat's not how it looks like though with the way Israel acts like the judge, jury and executioner of the region. You get the feeling that only Israeli lives count in the Middle East.
- solidsnack9000 9mo agoDoes a reference to "...the judge, jury and executioner..." really make sense in armed conflict? Is there really a judge or a jury? There isn't really even an executioner, in the sense of a lawful delegate tasked with carrying out the result of adjudication. One of the reasons armed conflict is bad is there is really no justice in it and no time for justice. Justice starts to be possible when security is established, and security is established through armed conflict or a strong norm not to get into it -- as we see presently in Europe, where many countries with meaningful territorial losses and weird borders (exclaves, &c) have elected to just never settle those things.
- LightBug1 9mo agoBack when decent civilization was a thing, there were rules of engagement, conduct, the pursuit of security, and strategic goals which didn't include active genocide of civilians. Now, granted, we've witnessed horrible things in wars that don't match up to order and clarity of my previous sentence. But there were end goals that made sense. Sorry, genocide, apartheid and the establishment of a religious-fascist state at the behest of Israeli ring-wing fascists that wouldn't put a foot wrong in Hitlers RKF, isn't an end goal I'd say justifies the means, ends or anything in between. The establishment of security to the denial of all else, isn't the only dish on the table.
- frnkng 9mo agoSomeone will find a reflexive material to put on the drone. Then you have a multi kw laser that hits randomly anywhere when intercepting drones. Also I wonder why it is not common to run interception drones that automatically fly towards incoming drones and captures them mid air. Like a wasp is capturing other insects. So pretty much like the iron dome but not with single use rockets but reusable drones instead.
- andy_ppp 9mo agoSo will we get drones coated in mirrors and temperature sensors that automatically move them away from these weapons quickly? Or is the laser just too powerful?
- karim79 9mo ago[flagged]
- megabless123 9mo agoholy shit thats fucked
- Alive-in-2025 9mo agoThat's really horrible
- s5300 9mo ago[dead]
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- ars 9mo ago[flagged]
- aerodog 9mo ago[flagged]
- yupyupyups 9mo ago[flagged]
- mrbluecoat 9mo agoProbably 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?
- SirIsaacGluten 9mo agoNo, but an AI drone like the one Turkey has can probably detect the source of the beam by hiding behind some sacrificial/decoy drones and watching them blow up then shooting a missile at the laser source. It's not like the laser is coming out of thin air.
- cwillu 9mo agoShooting down missiles is what this is for.
- tguvot 9mo agoactually it's for shooting anything that is close enough and can be intercepted. during the war with hezbollah (drones were issue due to topography) lower power version of iron beam was deployed on trial bases and scored around 40 intercepts
- SirIsaacGluten 9mo ago[dead]
- uf00lme 9mo agoMirrors are not effective enough. Shielding drones from energy weapons seems like a similar problem to entering Earth’s atmosphere, you want to shield it in a way that will blast away safely and ideally diffuse the laser, so the energy is spread over a larger space. I suspect larger lasers will likely aways win, since there is only so much shielding can do. At which point we could end up with transformers like drones that are built to be broken apart mid flight and yet still deliver damage. I feel like defending drones could become possible with energy weapons but only under ideal weather conditions.
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- penger774 9mo ago[flagged]
- ars 9mo agoDownvoted for not saying Apartheid in your buzzword bingo.
- karim79 9mo ago[flagged]
- xenospn 9mo ago[flagged]
- whatshisface 9mo agoI think everyone (myself included) has a right to actual self-defense, just not the false version we've been seeing. Here's my peace plan: Blow up or starve kids on the other side +1 sanctions. Intercept a drone or rocket +0 sanctions. Say you're sorry and reduce arms by 10% -1 sanctions. If the US alone did this they'd stop with all the murders in days to weeks. Of course the state of affairs where random online commenters can think of better answers than the individuals in charge is only due to a lack of a desire for peace at high levels! There is nothing complicated about it at all.
- woodruffw 9mo agoI think Israel has a right to defense qua state and Palestinians have a right to resist qua subjects of unjust rule. These aren’t really contradictory positions, and both are pretty standard from a “this is what the UN says” ground truth[1][2]. (This is distinct from a state’s “right to exist,” which is nonsense. But once a state does exist, it has the right to defend itself by definition.) [1]: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-7 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-7 [2]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_1514 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assemb...
- bethekidyouwant 9mo agoFlying disco balls when?
- PeterHolzwarth 9mo agoThey certainly have those for radars! Although the reason for using them is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector
- jmward01 9mo agoThe 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 that is new in the world and deeply scary. It isn't hard to imagine a scenario where person x is killed since they are marked as a 'bag guy' and as part of being marked every person they were next to for the last few days was also marked as likely enough to be bad guys to kill as well. All that has to be done is push a button. It is a scary, and unfortunately all to possible, future if not now.
- bawolff 9mo agoIt seems incredibly hard to imagine what else you would do with a ground based laser other than shoot at incoming projectiles. What exactly are you expecting the Israelis to do? Change the laws of physics?
- steve-atx-7600 9mo agoI think we’re already there. Sounds like Obama administration hit jobs.
- solidsnack9000 9mo agoIt's been possible for a long time. For antipersonnel use, guns are perfectly adequate and guns on tracking turrets have been widely deployed (for example, CIWS). The underlying technology is a ballistic calculator and a fast panning turret. Modern ballistic calculators, weather stations (a small device about the size of a cellphone), and good quality ammunition allows for incredible precision with small arms -- hitting something 25cm in diameter at 1000m is something people can do with these tools. A weapon like this can't really "mass kill" -- it is for point targets -- but we have long had tools that can automatically track and kill. Why don't we employ them to shoot at people? We have the tagging technology, &c, as you mention. One reason is that positive identification really does matter a lot when designing and developing weapon systems that automatically attack something. The anti-missile use case is one of the most widespread uses for automatically targeted weapons in part because a missile is easily distinguished from other things that should not be killed: it is small, extremely hot, moves extremely fast, generally up in the air and moves towards the defense system. It is not a bird, a person, or even a friendly aircraft. The worst mistake the targeting system can make is shooting down a friendly missile. If a friendly missile is coming at you, maybe you need to shoot it down anyways... Drones have a different signature from a missile and recognizing them in a way that doesn't confuse them with a bird, a balloon, &c, is different from recognizing missiles -- but here again, the worse thing that happens is you shoot down a friendly drone.
- petermcneeley 9mo agoThere isnt much information here. What is the total power per m^2 and what is the frequency (range). As we know the sun alone is 1kW/m^2 over quite a range.
- coppsilgold 9mo agoLaser weapons appear to be advancing rapidly. Once we get to the single digit MW power range, MAD will deteriorate as the ICBM becomes a non-viable nuclear delivery mechanism. What effect would that have? Will nukes start getting used in wars? Will we see deployment of multi ton NEFP[1] warheads that can strike targets with nuclear-propelled kinetics? [1] <https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.html https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.ht...>
- Waterluvian 9mo ago> Once we get to the single digit MW power range, MAD will deteriorate as the ICBM becomes a non-viable nuclear delivery mechanism. Requires a mountain of evidence and argument.
- coppsilgold 9mo agoThe best public arguments I have read: https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-part-i-megawatt.html https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-pa... https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-part-ii-ground-sea.html https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-pa...
- bawolff 9mo agoWe are nowhere near that point yet. Small rockets are totally different weapons then ICBM.
- tguvot 9mo agothere was interview with guy from rafael who was head of iron beam project. it looks like they have some plans for dealing with icbm. airborne if I understood correctly
- bawolff 9mo agoI guess airborne would be easier to intercept in their earlier phase before they go super fast, but then you have to have air assets in the right place at the right time. At their terminal phase icbms go at mach 25, which is pretty hard to shine a laser on for an extended period of time.
- 29athrowaway 9mo agoI guess they could use railguns too.
- throw2020 9mo agoPaid for by American taxpayers who don’t have universal healthcare. https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-transfers-to-israel-october-2023-september-2025/ https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-tr...
- nir 9mo agoA tiny fraction of the US budget which is almost entirely earmarked to be spent buying from US suppliers but sure, the Jews are the reason you have a malfunctioning health system.
- wildrhythms 9mo agoConflating the state of Israel with "the Jews" is antisemitic. Many Jews do not support the state of Israel whatsoever.
- tguvot 9mo agojust a random poll in canada: 94 per cent of the jewish community said they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state . Pretty sure you will get similar outcome anywhere else https://thecjn.ca/news/canadian-jews-overwhelmingly-support-israel-but-hesitate-to-call-themselves-zionists-a-new-study-explains-why/ https://thecjn.ca/news/canadian-jews-overwhelmingly-support-...
- FunnyUsername 9mo ago[dead]
- yoavm 9mo agoThere's a huge difference between not supporting the current Israeli government and not supporting Israel whatsoever. Many Jews relate with the former, but from my experience it's very few that relate with the latter.
- LorenPechtel 9mo ago
- michaelmrose 9mo ago[flagged]
- black_13 9mo ago[dead]
- falcor84 9mo agoI'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.
- nullocator 9mo agoYa 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.
- falcor84 9mo agoI'm not familiar with any place where civilians vote whether their country will go to war. Who here on this thread voted for the US to go to war against Venezuela?
- lo_zamoyski 9mo agoThis 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.
- michaelmrose 9mo agoWe should attach moral value to our enemies lives because we thereby retain our own decency.
- nickserv 9mo ago
- black_13 9mo ago[dead]
- CrzyLngPwd 9mo agoDrone 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.
- globalnode 9mo agoyeah no footage of the system in operation, no demo reel. seems like a feelgood measure. even if such footage existed and was real the things you mention would be cheap and easy.
- bouncycastle 9mo agodrones with mirrors?
- MomsAVoxell 9mo agoFirst wave of drones explode into clouds of chaff, second wave of drones penetrates the very expensive laser system…
- jvanderbot 9mo agoIts 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?
- tguvot 9mo agohttps://www.rafael.co.il/system/lite-beam/ https://www.rafael.co.il/system/lite-beam/
- llm_nerd 9mo agoThis system was originally built as a cheaper version of Iron Dome, useful against dumb, slow, predictable trajectory Hamas rockets. The new drone branding is a twist, but of course it's fully usable against things like the Iranian Shahed drones that are basically slow, prop driven cruise missiles. If someone got close enough that a normal FPV drone like what is seen in Ukraine was in play, I don't think these laser stations would survive for long. Nape of the Earth followed by a barrage of very inexpensive exploding drones.
- ngcazz 9mo ago[flagged]
- jimbohn 9mo agoYep
- skrebbel 9mo agoI can both dislike the Israeli government and want for the Israeli population to be protected against missile and drone attacks. I can both dislike Hamas and want for Palestine to be free. Is it that hard for you to imagine that people just want to be safe? This is not a football match where you pick a side and then hate on the other side! Stop doing that! These are real people. If groups shoot stuff at Israel of course they're going to try to shoot that stuff out of the sky.
- tdeck 9mo agoEveryone wants peace and safety on their own terms. It's not a virtue to remove all context from your analysis of the situation. The overwhelming majority of Isealis want to maintain a system of violent apartheid that benefits them explicitly based on their ethnicity, and be insulated from any consequences. Some of them might be sad about the war crimes their army commits in a daily basis, but almost none are doing anything about it. Their victims have been successfully isolated by the world's largest superpower and its network of corrupt client states. So yes, in that situation, "defensive" warfare technologies for Israel are clearly a bad thing.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ngcazz 9mo agoThe best, surest way to protect Israelis from resistance attacks is to end the reason for a resistance in the first place - the apartheid state. If you want Palestine to be free, this should be a no-brainer.
- 9mo ago
- c-c-c-c-c 9mo ago[flagged]
- Yasuraka 9mo ago[flagged]
- ThouYS 9mo agoI think systems like this will turn drones (or at least, drone swarms) into nothingburgers. We're just one layer deeper into rock paper scissors now
- mos87 9mo agoThe Chinese are most likely steaming ahead with the drone armies.
- MarkusWandel 9mo agoWhat I don't get about these laser defense systems: Doesn't the attacker just have to attack on a foggy day?
- FunnyUsername 9mo agoIt's absolutely an issue, although this is outside the visible spectrum and degradation may be a bit less severe compared to visible light.
- yoavm 9mo agoIf Hamas could only fire rockets on foggy days, Israel would have many more rockets-free days.
- greekrich92 9mo agoAll of the most reasonable and logical threads here have been nuked from orbit
- PaulHoule 9mo agoThe real advantage of laser weapons in this role is a very low consumables cost per shot. A few cents of electricity as opposed to an interceptor missile that could be $50k-$1M. Even shooting down missiles with bullets as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS can cost about $10k a shot because that thing shoots $30 bullets. That kind of laser can even shoot down artillery shells! The disadvantage is that the beam is disrupted by poor atmospheric conditions such as clouds and turbulence. If the enemy knows you are using it they will attack when conditions are unfavorable for it. It ought to be backed up by something like "Iron Dome". An airborne laser can fly above the clouds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 that one was not so practical because it was powered by mixing two kinds of bleach, which is bad enough when you do it on the ground, worse in the air. The targeting system worked great and I think the assumption was that it would come back when fiber lasers got good enough that it could be electrically powered.
- bethekidyouwant 9mo agoNot much here discussing the actual laser.. it seems to be vaporware? and only the 10 kW one is actually available.
- smashah 9mo agoHopefully the world's population of human beings can crowdfund this system to protect the survivors of Israel's Bloodthirsty Holocaust of Gaza.
- devJdeed 9mo agoThis technology will only yield escalations and human violence. Israel continues to build more of these technologies bringing only more violence more than what we saw in Gaza for 2 years straight. Everywhere where these technologies are being developed are contributing to this human disaster.
- theospeak 9mo ago[dead]
- metalman 9mo agodownvotes are exclusivly against any pro palistinian voices, and the eternal zionovictim anti muslim chant goes on and on and on, as the stage is set for the full resumption of the most violent public genocide in all of history.
- mabedan 9mo agoOr, stop starting wars