5 ms·

In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

133 points by bookofjoe 3mo ago

bookofjoe 3mo ago
https://archive.ph/d7dLv https://archive.ph/d7dLv
pseudohadamard 3mo ago
If you want an interesting related story that's so incredible people wouldn't believe if it was a film plot, look up Otrag. Not the Wikipedia page, that only tells a fraction of the full story. There's a documentary floating around somewhere about their work in Zaire under Mobutu before they started building ballistic missiles for Gaddafi.
- flohofwoe 2mo ago
  Both cases remind me of Project Harp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP). After the project was shut down by the US and Canada, the engineer behind it (Gerald Bull) decided to work for Saddam Hussein to build a "Babylon Cannon" which then caused Mossad to 'intervene' in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull I wonder how many similar but unknown cases there are involving former Soviet scientists and engineers trying their luck with 3rd world despots after the Soviet Union collapsed. PS: just remembered that Willy Messerschmitt also ended up building a jet fighter for Egypt after the project was abandondend by Spain. Egypt then also eventually cancelled the project in 1969 though and instead decided to become close buddies with the Soviet Union - I wonder if that decision saved Messerschmitt from the same fate as Krug and Bull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300
  - megous 2mo ago
    "caused" it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act
    - flohofwoe 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - fn-mote 2mo ago
        A more honest phrasing: “Bull was assassinated by Mossad to stop his work.” > action by Bull that 'caused' a reaction by Mossad" I object to the total abdication of responsibility for the “reaction”.
        jamiek88 2mo ago
        Murder. He was murdered. Let’s stop using nice words for it. It wasn’t a president.
    - mdp2021 2mo ago
      > it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act And what is the difference? It seems the same ("A got dangerous, causing B to act" vs "A got dangerous, having B decide to act").
      - megous 2mo ago
        Jews caused Nazies to kill them. See it?
  - Lumich 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - flohofwoe 2mo ago
      My choice of words doesn't imply that only the 3rd world had despots, that's just what you want to read into it. Back in the Cold War the 'division' of the world into power blocs was quite simple: - 1st world: countries aligned with the USA - 2nd world: countries aligned with the USSR - 3rd world: independent countries that were neither aligned with the US nor USSR E.g. in its actual meaning, 3rd world doesn't say anything about how rich or poor a country is, or about its form of government.
      - Lumich 2mo ago
        « what you want to read into it » I wanted to provide a counter point, or rather, a more balanced and self-conscious vision. As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it (but I grew up in West Germany, and the GDR may have defined terms differently). The "third world", according to the Western definition, definitely were those countries that were poor (and also perceived as primitive and culturally backwards, so the term eventually came to be seen as stigmatizing, at least with left-leaning people). What you're referring to, the unaligned countries/states, were called "blockfreie Staaten", and they were not "promoted" in Western propaganda as featuring "despots", but still could end up being bombed (democratically), like founder state Yugoslaviya. But it is also true that many "third world" countries joined the block-free group, so there is considerable overlap.
        flohofwoe 2mo ago
        It's quite literally the "western definition" of Third World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Do you think the Soviets would have called the US aligned countries "First World"? ;) The more 'correct' term for that modern/popular meaning of 3rd world is 'developing countries' (or in German "Entwicklungslaender"). But tbh, I have no idea when, how and why the transition from 'politically unaligned country' to 'underdeveloped country' happened in the modern popular opinion - the Wikipedia article has some ideas though - but tbh I would never have considered Cold Ware era Cuba or Vietnam to be "3rd world countries", and after 1990 the whole idea behind those "three worlds" has lost all meaning anyway, and especially after China had entered the chat. Yugoslavia and Albania are more interesting cases though indeed, at least Yugoslavia tried to play both sides during the cold war, while Albania started as a very close Soviet ally but then moved towards China and then eventually ending up as completely isolationist. Also as a clear example for a '2nd world despot' look at Romania's Ceausescu, and for examples of '1st world despots' look at Spain under Franco (easy to forget that Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s), or Chile under Pinochet.
  - pseudohadamard 2mo ago
    And Kurt Tank, father of the FW190 among other things, built the Pulqui for Argentina until it was nixed by a combination of the fall of Perón and heavy US pressure to make sure Argentina never developed a domestic fighter industry, after which he went to India and create the Marut. He could have been building them for the UK but they turned down one of the world's foremost aircraft designers because they couldn't see a need for him.
  - iririririr 2mo ago
    the fact you all dropping one operation after another, and the top HN story now about Ai just being better at remembering... kinda explains why Tata, and it's reboot, grok, went Mecha Hitler.
  - Sabinus 2mo ago
    This is also why the USA was funding biolabs in Ukraine. After the Soviet breakup they didn't want people with suddenly no income and dangerous skills offering them to despotic governments, or the labs deteriorating and legitimate knowledge lost. Around 2022 it was briefly trotted out as an excuse for the Russian invasion.
- vrganj 2mo ago
  This one? https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY
  - flohofwoe 2mo ago
    Funny enough the uploader has made that video unavailable in Germany (OTRAG was a German company, the first private/commercial aerospace company about 3 decades before SpaceX). Scott Manley has a video about them, and that's also available in Germany ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU PS: GP probably meant this one (this is just the trailer of a German documentary from 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc
    - vjvjvjvjghv 2mo ago
      Kind of sad that they didn’t work out. I really wish German industry had a little more willpower to get things done instead of giving up so easily. That’s one strength of the US. They just keep marching forward and have enough investors that are willing to take the risk.
      - flohofwoe 2mo ago
        The US didn't have a (successful) private aerospace company in the 1970s either (AFAIK). The whole thing was simply too early to be a realistic business. It's not that the private sector gave up entirely though (e.g. see https://isaraerospace.com/ https://isaraerospace.com/), but of course it's incredibly hard to enter a market that's dominated by a handful heavily subsidized and state/military-sponsored companies (and that includes SpaceX). But I have a feeling that at least the braindrain from Europe towards the US will not be quite as extreme in the future as it was in the last 90 years. Also: > I really wish German industry had a little more willpower I think it's less about company willpower but about (investment) money, and of course every idea must make business sense. That whole balancing act between 'must quickly become a viable business' versus 'how much investment money is available to burn on failed experiments' happens on a much smaller scale in Europe compared to the US (and a lot of European investment money is being burned in the US instead of Europe, and this clearly would need to change first).
Lucasoato 2mo ago
[flagged]
- buran77 2mo ago
  > hunting its top scientists [...] this discourages other scientists from following that career path I take it you mean this literally (assassinations) rather than figuratively (getting hired by the competition). > In recent years US has been hit so hard Any evidence of this? Other than the storm in a cup that was the recent news of "dead scientists" that turned out to be a nothingburger. The idea sounds very plausible and it happens again and again elsewhere (e.g. Israel keeps taking out Iranian scientists). But I haven't heard anything major from the US, and I doubt the US would take it lightly and keep everything quiet, especially with the current admin who would kill for more media distractions for the people.
  - kingkawn 2mo ago
    Don’t need to harm US scientists when the federal govt is so committed to harming US science
  - tyingq 2mo ago
    They could just mean that foreign enrollment in US postgrad programs is down significantly, or other forms of specialized visas, etc.
  - mytailorisrich 2mo ago
    You don't normally hear about these things if/when they happen, there is no official reaction, and you don't normally hear about the retaliation, either. That being said: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-scientists-investigation https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-...
    - xtracto 2mo ago
      Love it. Im not American nor have my country any interest in this, but definitely promoting the webz narrative that this is nothing, storm in a teacup, nothing to see here , move along while keeping wacking key figures, would be a plausible plan. Fortunately governments dont care about reddit sentiment and they seem to be looking, per the CNN article.
doughnutstracks 2mo ago
Lots of shady missile deals went down in West Asia/North Africa in the 60/70s. Somewhat related: Israel was collaborating with Iran on missile projects but allegedly planned to deceive them by providing outdated missiles while using Iranian funds to develop superior versions for themselves [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower
- breppp 2mo ago
  Where's the part about deceiving in the link? Aren't you conflating Iran-Contra that happened after the revolution?
  - doughnutstracks 2mo ago
    It's in the last paragraph. >While Pahlavi's authorities were happy with this project and its advancement away from the eyes of the US in their view, Israel had carefully duped Pahlavi to secure its interests. According to Israel's plan, during this project, contrary to what Iran's top officials think, Iran would only achieve obsolete technology. and in the original source [0]: >A very senior source in the Israeli Ministry of Defense reveals that the weapons deal with Iran was fraudulent. With each of the six joint proj-ects, the Israelis planned to deceive the Iranians by providing them only an outdated version of the weapon in question, while using Iranian money to build a new generation for Israel's exclusive use. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=NkxZcHL1xdYC&pg=PA6&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=NkxZcHL1xdYC&pg=PA6&redir_...
    - goodluckchuck 2mo ago
      When I buy a laptop from Apple, they used my money to build the next generation of laptops… which inevitably come out within a year. I wouldn’t necessarily believe Iran was deceived without more.
      - shdwslrkr 2mo ago
fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
[flagged]
- tremon 2mo ago
  Make Europe Nationalistic Again?
  - dredmorbius 2mo ago
    National- yes. Socialistic German Worker's Party, would be the following terms, though. There's another N-term which is more familiar.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- tomhow 2mo ago
  We've banned this account.
metalman 2mo ago
[flagged]
- pipe2devnull 2mo ago
  As far as I’m aware if you are talking about the Kinzhal it’s a quasi-ballistic missile not really a true hypersonic missile so it’s easy to intercept. They also claim a range of 2000km but that includes the airplane’s range.
  - pepperoni_pizza 2mo ago
    Yes, the Kinzhal is a second stage of Iskander launched from a special Mig-31. It is not necessarily a bad weapon but the key innovation was to save money by using the Mig as reusable first stage. Pretending it is in the same class as true hypersonic glide vehicles was just PR. Russia is now giving up on it because it didn't work out for some reason, maybe the Migs are more expensive to operate than planned or the weapon has no element if surprise be if the special Mig starts you know the missiles are coming?
- robbiep 2mo ago
  What is going on with your account? Years of barely posting, and now lots of poor English highly controversial posts. Is this a sock puppet account?
  - firefax 2mo ago
    And why is it never like, a lovable German weirdo? Why is it always tankies?
  - throw16180339 2mo ago
    It was probably compromised by credential stuffing.
somat 2mo ago
Related? the Helwan HA-300. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 Summary: Egypt was going to develop an indigenous fighter in the 1960's based off of a mostly finished Spanish design by a post WWII otherwise unemployed Willy Messerschmitt. I First heard of the project via a pretty good youtube documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ Messerschmitt's Remarkably Good Supersonic Fighter (Not A Pound For Air To Ground)
tzury 2mo ago
Use Google Translate or llm to translate the content in this url https://www.intelligence.org.il/?module=articles&item_id=16&article_id=31&art_category_id=7 https://www.intelligence.org.il/?module=articles&item_id=16&...
- firefax 2mo ago
  I've been enjoying the Firefox translate, but for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it, and I have to fall back to running things through duck.ai Too shy to file a formal bug or let the cloud know what I'm OSINTing :-)
  - snthd 2mo ago
    >for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it The language detection definitely isn't 100%. On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu. On Android it's in the 3 dot menu, hidden behind "More".
    - firefax 2mo ago
      >On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu. Thanks, maybe I didn't look hard enough last time.
firefax 2mo ago
It's easy to throw stones, but who among us hasn't lost a key missile scientist at some point or another?
- mdp2021 2mo ago
  Or key industrialists.
matcha_latte 2mo ago
[dead]
WhereIsTheTruth 2mo ago
[flagged]
r721 2mo ago
Reminded me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Alexandrov#Disappearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Alexandrov#Disappeara...
ecshafer 2mo ago
The wonderful book "Rise and Kill First" is a history of Israeli assassinations, with their policy of going after the "head of the snake". There are some interesting sections on how Israel used assassination to inhibit missile programs in the Middle East, including Egypt. Its a pretty easy read despite being long.
- TitaRusell 2mo ago
  Not much of an achievement when you can't hit back without the Western world responding. Not many people know this but it was not Cuba, Korea, Vietnam or Berlin that got NATO closest to WW3. It was Israel. For the USSR the Jews in the desert were just another proxy war sideshow for Europe it was non negotiable.
  - monideas 2mo ago
    The historical record shows that Arab war planners consistently depended on the West stepping in to restrain Israel. This was something that Nasser and the other Arab states in the 67 and 73 war explicitly talked about. This remains a core consideration of Arab actors in the region in their prosecutions of various hostilities against Israel.
    - throwawayqqq11 2mo ago
      And here comes trump, getting duped by israel over and over again. Very fitting explanation of the middle east.
  - preisschild 2mo ago
    On the other hand, the USSR was literally deployed on the ground during the war of attrition and shot at Israelis. So you can also blame Egypt/the USSR
- bigyabai 2mo ago
  More wonderful yet is Seymour Hersh's Samson Option, outlining how Israeli spies hijacked America's intelligence agencies to support this double-standard. Those agents provided the necessary diplomatic cover for Israel to make their initial incursions into satellite intelligence and nuclear weaponry, which started the strategic imbalance that would endanger civilians in the Levant for decades to come. You can see shadows of the same US/Israel relationship in the China/Iran axis, wherein China's intelligence agencies successfully launder support for humanitarian crises like Gaza, while strategically bolstering Iran with air defenses and satellite intelligence. Hersh's best work since unveiling Abu Ghraib. Highly recommend it over the super-spy biographies, especially since Hersh didn't have to go through Israel's Military Censor like Bergman did.
monster_truck 2mo ago
A concerning number of stateside scientists working on hypersonics have died or vanished under questionable circumstances in a rather short timeframe recently. It's probably nothing, I wouldn't look into it
- WalterGR 2mo ago
  You're referring to this conspiracy theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_...
- afpx 2mo ago
  It just may be that they've been pulled from duty. I haven't looked into those scientists in particular, but a few years ago I did some OSINT on others that had funerals. I was surprised to find a couple of them living in other countries with different identities. The social media posts on their funerals were rich sources of data. So, I think some don't have funerals anymore because of the PII leakage. If any of you were in gifted programs during the 70s and 80s, you may have experienced being scouted by intelligence agencies or at least witnessing others being scouted. I suspect the gifted program was largely created for that purpose. So, at least some exceptional scientists who grew up in that era have connections with intel.
expedition32 2mo ago
If your program has a key scientist it is a pretty bad program.
bensons1 2mo ago
Interesting Heinz Krugs last traces are a car in Solln, which is very close to Pullach, the headquarter of former Gehlen Organisation now home of the German secret service. If there is a good place to vanish, then it's probably there.
elzbardico 2mo ago
It is almost as if there's a country that since its foundation always find perfectly reasonable to kidnap or murder potential enemies in other jurisdictions, ignoring blatantly the sovereignty even of allied or friendly countries, without any restrictions, or respect for international law.
- mdp2021 2mo ago
  What is the value in reminding the readers? Is there anybody who does not know at that level? Avoidable also in view of the following: have you noticed in the past years a surge of indoctrinated that, at every misdeed from some part P immediately note how some other part S championed it? Judge: "Have you committed rape?" Defendant: "What about all the other rapists?". It's not even a bad argument, it's gut diversion - it's for the distraction of animals.
  - elzbardico 2mo ago
    I was talking about exactly the same country referenced in the TFA.
whearyou 2mo ago
I recall reading the Arab world was a major refuge for escaping Nazis. Egypt had WW2 Nazi aces flying against Israel unless I'm mistaken? I wonder if the Arabs got nearly as much milage out of Nazi scientists as the Americans or Soviets got.

133 points by bookofjoe 3mo ago

https://archive.ph/d7dLv https://archive.ph/d7dLv

If you want an interesting related story that's so incredible people wouldn't believe if it was a film plot, look up Otrag. Not the Wikipedia page, that only tells a fraction of the full story. There's a documentary floating around somewhere about their work in Zaire under Mobutu before they started building ballistic missiles for Gaddafi.

flohofwoe 2mo ago
Both cases remind me of Project Harp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP). After the project was shut down by the US and Canada, the engineer behind it (Gerald Bull) decided to work for Saddam Hussein to build a "Babylon Cannon" which then caused Mossad to 'intervene' in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull I wonder how many similar but unknown cases there are involving former Soviet scientists and engineers trying their luck with 3rd world despots after the Soviet Union collapsed. PS: just remembered that Willy Messerschmitt also ended up building a jet fighter for Egypt after the project was abandondend by Spain. Egypt then also eventually cancelled the project in 1969 though and instead decided to become close buddies with the Soviet Union - I wonder if that decision saved Messerschmitt from the same fate as Krug and Bull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300
- megous 2mo ago
  "caused" it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act
  - flohofwoe 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - fn-mote 2mo ago
      A more honest phrasing: “Bull was assassinated by Mossad to stop his work.” > action by Bull that 'caused' a reaction by Mossad" I object to the total abdication of responsibility for the “reaction”.
      - jamiek88 2mo ago
        Murder. He was murdered. Let’s stop using nice words for it. It wasn’t a president.
  - mdp2021 2mo ago
    > it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act And what is the difference? It seems the same ("A got dangerous, causing B to act" vs "A got dangerous, having B decide to act").
    - megous 2mo ago
      Jews caused Nazies to kill them. See it?
- Lumich 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - flohofwoe 2mo ago
    My choice of words doesn't imply that only the 3rd world had despots, that's just what you want to read into it. Back in the Cold War the 'division' of the world into power blocs was quite simple: - 1st world: countries aligned with the USA - 2nd world: countries aligned with the USSR - 3rd world: independent countries that were neither aligned with the US nor USSR E.g. in its actual meaning, 3rd world doesn't say anything about how rich or poor a country is, or about its form of government.
    - Lumich 2mo ago
      « what you want to read into it » I wanted to provide a counter point, or rather, a more balanced and self-conscious vision. As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it (but I grew up in West Germany, and the GDR may have defined terms differently). The "third world", according to the Western definition, definitely were those countries that were poor (and also perceived as primitive and culturally backwards, so the term eventually came to be seen as stigmatizing, at least with left-leaning people). What you're referring to, the unaligned countries/states, were called "blockfreie Staaten", and they were not "promoted" in Western propaganda as featuring "despots", but still could end up being bombed (democratically), like founder state Yugoslaviya. But it is also true that many "third world" countries joined the block-free group, so there is considerable overlap.
      - flohofwoe 2mo ago
        It's quite literally the "western definition" of Third World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Do you think the Soviets would have called the US aligned countries "First World"? ;) The more 'correct' term for that modern/popular meaning of 3rd world is 'developing countries' (or in German "Entwicklungslaender"). But tbh, I have no idea when, how and why the transition from 'politically unaligned country' to 'underdeveloped country' happened in the modern popular opinion - the Wikipedia article has some ideas though - but tbh I would never have considered Cold Ware era Cuba or Vietnam to be "3rd world countries", and after 1990 the whole idea behind those "three worlds" has lost all meaning anyway, and especially after China had entered the chat. Yugoslavia and Albania are more interesting cases though indeed, at least Yugoslavia tried to play both sides during the cold war, while Albania started as a very close Soviet ally but then moved towards China and then eventually ending up as completely isolationist. Also as a clear example for a '2nd world despot' look at Romania's Ceausescu, and for examples of '1st world despots' look at Spain under Franco (easy to forget that Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s), or Chile under Pinochet.
- pseudohadamard 2mo ago
  And Kurt Tank, father of the FW190 among other things, built the Pulqui for Argentina until it was nixed by a combination of the fall of Perón and heavy US pressure to make sure Argentina never developed a domestic fighter industry, after which he went to India and create the Marut. He could have been building them for the UK but they turned down one of the world's foremost aircraft designers because they couldn't see a need for him.
- iririririr 2mo ago
  the fact you all dropping one operation after another, and the top HN story now about Ai just being better at remembering... kinda explains why Tata, and it's reboot, grok, went Mecha Hitler.
- Sabinus 2mo ago
  This is also why the USA was funding biolabs in Ukraine. After the Soviet breakup they didn't want people with suddenly no income and dangerous skills offering them to despotic governments, or the labs deteriorating and legitimate knowledge lost. Around 2022 it was briefly trotted out as an excuse for the Russian invasion.
vrganj 2mo ago
This one? https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY
- flohofwoe 2mo ago
  Funny enough the uploader has made that video unavailable in Germany (OTRAG was a German company, the first private/commercial aerospace company about 3 decades before SpaceX). Scott Manley has a video about them, and that's also available in Germany ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU PS: GP probably meant this one (this is just the trailer of a German documentary from 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc
  - vjvjvjvjghv 2mo ago
    Kind of sad that they didn’t work out. I really wish German industry had a little more willpower to get things done instead of giving up so easily. That’s one strength of the US. They just keep marching forward and have enough investors that are willing to take the risk.
    - flohofwoe 2mo ago
      The US didn't have a (successful) private aerospace company in the 1970s either (AFAIK). The whole thing was simply too early to be a realistic business. It's not that the private sector gave up entirely though (e.g. see https://isaraerospace.com/ https://isaraerospace.com/), but of course it's incredibly hard to enter a market that's dominated by a handful heavily subsidized and state/military-sponsored companies (and that includes SpaceX). But I have a feeling that at least the braindrain from Europe towards the US will not be quite as extreme in the future as it was in the last 90 years. Also: > I really wish German industry had a little more willpower I think it's less about company willpower but about (investment) money, and of course every idea must make business sense. That whole balancing act between 'must quickly become a viable business' versus 'how much investment money is available to burn on failed experiments' happens on a much smaller scale in Europe compared to the US (and a lot of European investment money is being burned in the US instead of Europe, and this clearly would need to change first).

Lucasoato 2mo ago

[flagged]

buran77 2mo ago
> hunting its top scientists [...] this discourages other scientists from following that career path I take it you mean this literally (assassinations) rather than figuratively (getting hired by the competition). > In recent years US has been hit so hard Any evidence of this? Other than the storm in a cup that was the recent news of "dead scientists" that turned out to be a nothingburger. The idea sounds very plausible and it happens again and again elsewhere (e.g. Israel keeps taking out Iranian scientists). But I haven't heard anything major from the US, and I doubt the US would take it lightly and keep everything quiet, especially with the current admin who would kill for more media distractions for the people.
- kingkawn 2mo ago
  Don’t need to harm US scientists when the federal govt is so committed to harming US science
- tyingq 2mo ago
  They could just mean that foreign enrollment in US postgrad programs is down significantly, or other forms of specialized visas, etc.
- mytailorisrich 2mo ago
  You don't normally hear about these things if/when they happen, there is no official reaction, and you don't normally hear about the retaliation, either. That being said: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-scientists-investigation https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-...
  - xtracto 2mo ago
    Love it. Im not American nor have my country any interest in this, but definitely promoting the webz narrative that this is nothing, storm in a teacup, nothing to see here , move along while keeping wacking key figures, would be a plausible plan. Fortunately governments dont care about reddit sentiment and they seem to be looking, per the CNN article.

doughnutstracks 2mo ago

Lots of shady missile deals went down in West Asia/North Africa in the 60/70s. Somewhat related: Israel was collaborating with Iran on missile projects but allegedly planned to deceive them by providing outdated missiles while using Iranian funds to develop superior versions for themselves [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower

breppp 2mo ago
Where's the part about deceiving in the link? Aren't you conflating Iran-Contra that happened after the revolution?
- doughnutstracks 2mo ago
  It's in the last paragraph. >While Pahlavi's authorities were happy with this project and its advancement away from the eyes of the US in their view, Israel had carefully duped Pahlavi to secure its interests. According to Israel's plan, during this project, contrary to what Iran's top officials think, Iran would only achieve obsolete technology. and in the original source [0]: >A very senior source in the Israeli Ministry of Defense reveals that the weapons deal with Iran was fraudulent. With each of the six joint proj-ects, the Israelis planned to deceive the Iranians by providing them only an outdated version of the weapon in question, while using Iranian money to build a new generation for Israel's exclusive use. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=NkxZcHL1xdYC&pg=PA6&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=NkxZcHL1xdYC&pg=PA6&redir_...
  - goodluckchuck 2mo ago
    When I buy a laptop from Apple, they used my money to build the next generation of laptops… which inevitably come out within a year. I wouldn’t necessarily believe Iran was deceived without more.
    - shdwslrkr 2mo ago

fryanyway_swe 2mo ago

[flagged]

tremon 2mo ago
Make Europe Nationalistic Again?
- dredmorbius 2mo ago
  National- yes. Socialistic German Worker's Party, would be the following terms, though. There's another N-term which is more familiar.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
tomhow 2mo ago
We've banned this account.

metalman 2mo ago

[flagged]

pipe2devnull 2mo ago
As far as I’m aware if you are talking about the Kinzhal it’s a quasi-ballistic missile not really a true hypersonic missile so it’s easy to intercept. They also claim a range of 2000km but that includes the airplane’s range.
- pepperoni_pizza 2mo ago
  Yes, the Kinzhal is a second stage of Iskander launched from a special Mig-31. It is not necessarily a bad weapon but the key innovation was to save money by using the Mig as reusable first stage. Pretending it is in the same class as true hypersonic glide vehicles was just PR. Russia is now giving up on it because it didn't work out for some reason, maybe the Migs are more expensive to operate than planned or the weapon has no element if surprise be if the special Mig starts you know the missiles are coming?
robbiep 2mo ago
What is going on with your account? Years of barely posting, and now lots of poor English highly controversial posts. Is this a sock puppet account?
- firefax 2mo ago
  And why is it never like, a lovable German weirdo? Why is it always tankies?
- throw16180339 2mo ago
  It was probably compromised by credential stuffing.

somat 2mo ago

Related? the Helwan HA-300. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 Summary: Egypt was going to develop an indigenous fighter in the 1960's based off of a mostly finished Spanish design by a post WWII otherwise unemployed Willy Messerschmitt. I First heard of the project via a pretty good youtube documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ Messerschmitt's Remarkably Good Supersonic Fighter (Not A Pound For Air To Ground)

tzury 2mo ago

Use Google Translate or llm to translate the content in this url https://www.intelligence.org.il/?module=articles&item_id=16&article_id=31&art_category_id=7 https://www.intelligence.org.il/?module=articles&item_id=16&...

firefax 2mo ago
I've been enjoying the Firefox translate, but for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it, and I have to fall back to running things through duck.ai Too shy to file a formal bug or let the cloud know what I'm OSINTing :-)
- snthd 2mo ago
  >for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it The language detection definitely isn't 100%. On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu. On Android it's in the 3 dot menu, hidden behind "More".
  - firefax 2mo ago
    >On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu. Thanks, maybe I didn't look hard enough last time.

firefax 2mo ago

It's easy to throw stones, but who among us hasn't lost a key missile scientist at some point or another?

mdp2021 2mo ago
Or key industrialists.

matcha_latte 2mo ago

[dead]

WhereIsTheTruth 2mo ago

[flagged]

r721 2mo ago

Reminded me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Alexandrov#Disappearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Alexandrov#Disappeara...

ecshafer 2mo ago

The wonderful book "Rise and Kill First" is a history of Israeli assassinations, with their policy of going after the "head of the snake". There are some interesting sections on how Israel used assassination to inhibit missile programs in the Middle East, including Egypt. Its a pretty easy read despite being long.

TitaRusell 2mo ago
Not much of an achievement when you can't hit back without the Western world responding. Not many people know this but it was not Cuba, Korea, Vietnam or Berlin that got NATO closest to WW3. It was Israel. For the USSR the Jews in the desert were just another proxy war sideshow for Europe it was non negotiable.
- monideas 2mo ago
  The historical record shows that Arab war planners consistently depended on the West stepping in to restrain Israel. This was something that Nasser and the other Arab states in the 67 and 73 war explicitly talked about. This remains a core consideration of Arab actors in the region in their prosecutions of various hostilities against Israel.
  - throwawayqqq11 2mo ago
    And here comes trump, getting duped by israel over and over again. Very fitting explanation of the middle east.
- preisschild 2mo ago
  On the other hand, the USSR was literally deployed on the ground during the war of attrition and shot at Israelis. So you can also blame Egypt/the USSR
bigyabai 2mo ago
More wonderful yet is Seymour Hersh's Samson Option, outlining how Israeli spies hijacked America's intelligence agencies to support this double-standard. Those agents provided the necessary diplomatic cover for Israel to make their initial incursions into satellite intelligence and nuclear weaponry, which started the strategic imbalance that would endanger civilians in the Levant for decades to come. You can see shadows of the same US/Israel relationship in the China/Iran axis, wherein China's intelligence agencies successfully launder support for humanitarian crises like Gaza, while strategically bolstering Iran with air defenses and satellite intelligence. Hersh's best work since unveiling Abu Ghraib. Highly recommend it over the super-spy biographies, especially since Hersh didn't have to go through Israel's Military Censor like Bergman did.

monster_truck 2mo ago

A concerning number of stateside scientists working on hypersonics have died or vanished under questionable circumstances in a rather short timeframe recently. It's probably nothing, I wouldn't look into it

WalterGR 2mo ago
You're referring to this conspiracy theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_...
afpx 2mo ago
It just may be that they've been pulled from duty. I haven't looked into those scientists in particular, but a few years ago I did some OSINT on others that had funerals. I was surprised to find a couple of them living in other countries with different identities. The social media posts on their funerals were rich sources of data. So, I think some don't have funerals anymore because of the PII leakage. If any of you were in gifted programs during the 70s and 80s, you may have experienced being scouted by intelligence agencies or at least witnessing others being scouted. I suspect the gifted program was largely created for that purpose. So, at least some exceptional scientists who grew up in that era have connections with intel.

expedition32 2mo ago

If your program has a key scientist it is a pretty bad program.

bensons1 2mo ago

Interesting Heinz Krugs last traces are a car in Solln, which is very close to Pullach, the headquarter of former Gehlen Organisation now home of the German secret service. If there is a good place to vanish, then it's probably there.

elzbardico 2mo ago

It is almost as if there's a country that since its foundation always find perfectly reasonable to kidnap or murder potential enemies in other jurisdictions, ignoring blatantly the sovereignty even of allied or friendly countries, without any restrictions, or respect for international law.

mdp2021 2mo ago
What is the value in reminding the readers? Is there anybody who does not know at that level? Avoidable also in view of the following: have you noticed in the past years a surge of indoctrinated that, at every misdeed from some part P immediately note how some other part S championed it? Judge: "Have you committed rape?" Defendant: "What about all the other rapists?". It's not even a bad argument, it's gut diversion - it's for the distraction of animals.
- elzbardico 2mo ago
  I was talking about exactly the same country referenced in the TFA.

whearyou 2mo ago

I recall reading the Arab world was a major refuge for escaping Nazis. Egypt had WW2 Nazi aces flying against Israel unless I'm mistaken? I wonder if the Arabs got nearly as much milage out of Nazi scientists as the Americans or Soviets got.