The Iron Beam is not relevant against ballistic missiles.
Iran also fired “over 1,000 suicide drones” [1].
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.
That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
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.
I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier.
That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it.
> 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
This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2.
I would still say "what about a missile shield?".
If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors.
If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard.
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, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.
We get a really ripping novel from Iain M. Banks, at least.
Isn’t it the other way? With a lot of medicine’s modern advances being rooted in combat medicine?
Triage and ambulances come from battle medicine [1]. (Not sure about communicable-disease prevention.)
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Prog...
Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians.
“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 least one way than what’s already available.”
This is a defensive application of lasers, like CIWS is a defensive application of guns.
Not so much when it comes to drone swarms.
And it's not like there's any need of a fancy weapon to do that. This exists to engage high speed targets. Just because you can use a GBU-28 to kill a gopher doesn't mean anyone ever will.
This isn’t an endorsement of corruption or violence; it’s just a recognition that human social organization has long involved the use of force alongside diplomacy, negotiations, trade, and other political instruments. The modern/post-modern/meta-modern isms may change how we fight, but it doesn’t by itself make the underlying dynamics disappear.
"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."
"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)
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.
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.
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.
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'
iranians arent gonna nuke anyone without first toppling their religious government
According to Wikipedia [1], Israel has an average GDP per capita of about 60 USD per hour worked, which at 40 hours per week, 50 weeks worked per year over 20 years comes to about 40000 hours of work and ~2.4 million USD of GDP generated. At an income tax of about 30% [2], that means an income for the state of about 800k USD equivalent. If the person dies due to rocket attack, the state would miss out on that. Iron dome interceptors are quite cheap compared to that and the laser intercepts should be an order of magnitude cheaper still.
This doesn't even take into account the sunk costs that industrialized nations incur by every citizen having to attend school for about the first two decades of their lives, mostly funded by the state. That represents a tremendous investment into human capital that would be lost if you let your citizens get shot up in preventable rocket attacks.
So no, human lives are not actually cheap when viewed through the lens of a country, even when completely excluding morals and only looking at it financially. They are in fact quite valuable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Israel#Income_tax
Life in the developing world is very cheap.
In any case, elderly and disabled are not as useless to the economy as you might suppose. There are many disabled who are economically productive. One of the most capable colleagues I've ever had was a blind programmer. Grandparents often provide things like babysitter services that don't show up in formal GDP measurements but are very valuable nonetheless. Don't count out the contribution of people to society just because they don't have a normal job.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
What Ukraine have found a net launcher is effective and cheap solution against drones and may allow more use of tanks and heavy armor vehicles again in 2026. Then shotguns with a special ammunition is effective. Then against fiber drones a fence with moving wire works surprisingly good to cut the fiber.
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-a... 2: https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/how... 3: https://claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com/p/iron-dome-part...
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.
No. But I can hope.
Although I will believe there are a few more iterations before this regime falls
And the people with guns mostly either cheer it on or pretend it's not so bad (until they themselves feature in /r/leopardsatemyface).
Try being arab and going around armed.
1. Just to repeat myself from another comment on this thread, there is no such thing as a defensive weapon. Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
Let me pose this question to you: if these were purely defensive technologies, why don't we give them to everyone, including the Palestinians? and
2. Israel has already ruled out giving Ukraine the anti-missile (and assumedly anti-drone) defenses [1]; and
3. Many people, yourself included it seems, need to examine these conflicts around the world through the lens of historical materialism.
Take the genocide and conflict in Sudan. The SAF are arguably the ones with the "cheap rockets" here. Should we be giving the RSF anti-drone technology? The RSF are backed by the UAE using US weapons. Why? To loot Sudanese gold.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Territory, access to the Black Sea, resources and to create a land bridge to Crimea that had otherwise become extremely expensive to maintain as a colonial outpost. Like, just look at a map of controlled territory.
But why is it in a stalemate? In part because Russia is a nuclear power but also because the West is unwilling to let Ukraine do the one thing it could do to defend itself properly and that is to attack Russian energy infrastructure. Despite the sanctions, Russia is still allowed to sell oil and gas to places like Hungary, Slovakia, France, Belgium, India and China.
Back to the Middle East, we have Yemen, who was devastated by war and genocide at the hands of another US ally, Saudi Arabia.
The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
[1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-rules-out-giving-ukr...
'moving from wooden shingles allows society to be negligent when it comes to fire/forestry management and makes the world worse'
Collectivism will not save us. The day after we abolish markets, prices, and capitalism, there will be as many disagreements about resource allocation as there were the day before. Some of those disagreements will spiral into conflict.
I'm not sure that's true, before Iron Dome, Israel would respond to many rockets from Gaza by firing mortars back at where the rocket was launched from, often the roof of an apartment building or similar, causing civilian casualties.
After Iron Dome, a lot of rockets were simply intercepted and ignored, because there was no longer political pressure from Israelis seeing rockets land in their villages and wanting to hit back.
It would normally be absurd to expect a state with military superiority to tolerate ~30k rocket attacks from its weaker neighbor. That was only tenable because Israel's air defenses mitigated the bulk of the damage.
If Israel's air defenses and bunkers suddenly disappeared, Israel would be forced to respond far more aggressively to each terrorist attack.
Israel build in Ukraine early warning system for missile defense and transferred to Ukraine it's stock of patriot missiles and batteries
In contrast the Gazan government strategically uses humans shields [2, 3] and despite this the majority of Palestinians still support starting this war by attacking civilians on Oct 7th [1]. Defense technology doesn’t help if you don’t want it unfortunately.
Hamas also has hundreds of miles of tunnels which civilians aren’t allowed to use.
1: https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/1000#:~:text=The%20Trump%20Pla... 2: https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.... 3: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/01/hamas-officials-admi...
Us $ to israel: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-foreign-aid-does-the-u...
Israel defense budget: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-raise-defen...
The US also gives similar levels of military aid to Egypt as well. The EU and US give billions to Ukraine.
Gaza also receives billions in aid; substantial amounts of which has been hihacked and looted. For example this lady summer the UN reported that 88% of their aid trucks in Gaza were looted [1].
1: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/08/05/un-reports-88-percen...
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 infrastructure aid is not the same thing as weapons.
> 88% of their aid trucks in Gaza were looted
Ok? This tells me that both food and food aid are in short supply, if people are willing to take it by force. If myself and my family was starving, i would hyjack food trucks too. Wouldn’t you?
> Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
It literally does not. The way that every English speaker uses the word "invests" is exactly the opposite of this. If you're going to speak English, you use words as native speakers use them and you don't make up your own definitions.
Israel “invests” ~30b in military spending.
Of that, ~7b is not their own money, and the could not accept that money and spend it another way.
Therefore, israel “invests” about 1/4 less than it would seem.
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 inside a hospice, should we conclude they are starving people?
Second, yes there is a war going on - solid data is hard to come by. But that’s a lack of data, not a change in their criteria. You can read their full mortality analysis and reasoning starting on page 24 https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/I...
The conclusion is:
>Considering the available evidence, and in line with the IPC Guidance Note on Famine Classification,64 the FRC infers from the available data that mortality thresholds for Famine have already been exceeded in Gaza Governorate. Based on expert judgement, we also conclude that the Famine thresholds for mortality have not yet been crossed in Deir al-Balah or Khan Younis governorates.
No goalposts moved. Based on the data we have, people are dying of malnutrition.
Lots of politics at play.
This is factually incorrect. The amount of money that the US gives Israel is completely and totally irrelevant to whether or not Israel also invests their own money in defense.
The fact that the US has a problem with foreign influence literally does not matter for the statement above.
To be clear, I don't agree with the GP's implied suggestion that Israel is more defensive than offensive, but making objectively incorrect statements is not a valid way to refute that.
The defensive and offensive capabilities of Israel is about 1/4 larger because of american tax dollars not their own spending.
usa aid is typically around $3b-$3.5b . 2024 higher aid is one off due to the war. also (unless i am wrong), good chunk of aid that Israel got from usa during war was in form of loans/guarantees for loans and such
In 2020 their military budget was ~21b. In 2020 the US gave 3.8b - so 21%, or 1/5. My number was based on 2024 budget and spending, which is why i said 1/4, but you’re probably right that pre-war numbers are more accurate if we’re talking about their long term spending trends.
Sources:
Israel military budget: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CD?end=2020...
US money to israel, page 6: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/RL/PDF/RL3322...
from israeli site:
The 2021 budget framework for the "Ministry of Defense" includes an expenditure budget of NIS 62.357 billion, in addition to NIS 14.972 billion in income-contingent expenditure and authorization to commit in the amount of NIS 36.3 billion.
In 2022, the framework for the budget includes an expenditure budget of NIS 59.833 billion, in addition to NIS 15 billion in income-contingent expenditure and authorization to commit in the amount of NIS 42.9 billion.
Here’s another one that agrees with my number for israel’s military spending: https://www.timesofisrael.com/bennett-gantz-liberman-agree-o...
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
That statement is completely false, and is very different than what you said just now.
If you're going to walk back your words because you were proven wrong, that's fine, but don't claim you're "rephrasing" when you're actually changing your claim.
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
You are clearly claiming that because Israel's defense budget isn't entirely their own spending, that that claim is not entirely true.
Then someone else responded:
> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
If that hadn't been your claim, then you would have agreed with this. But you didn't - you responded and doubled down and made it extremely clear that that was what you were saying[1]:
> Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
Given how incredibly clear you were about your claims, the "revised" statement:
> The defensive and offensive capabilities of Israel is about 1/4 larger because of american tax dollars not their own spending.
...is objectively and factually different.
It's not me who's misunderstanding - given not only the repeated statements that reinforced exactly the same point, and other commentators interpreting it actually the same (because they can read) - it's you who are lying about your original words.
This just means Israel knows they're hitting women and children every time they send a bomb their way.
> the majority of Palestinians still support starting this war
Palestine isn't a democracy with well documented preferences. Israel is though, so why don't you say that a majority of Israelis are fine with the killing of women and children in Gaza?
elcritch, you're beating around the bush but strongly suggesting there's a reasonable justification (not just an explanation) for killing women and children if it suits someone's needs. Does this apply just to Israel killing people in Gaza or universally valid? Because I distinctly remember the US going to war over WMD that never existed. So elcritch, are you saying US women and children are fair game now?
Women have been serving in combat roles in the U.S. military for decades now…
2) When human shields get hit we blame the side that put them in harm's way, not the side that harmed them. Just look at the criminal trials in police actions--a hostage dies when SWAT hits a place, the murder rap lands on the person who took the hostage even if it turns out to be a police bullet in the hostage.
And your note about WMD--said WMD existed. On paper. We read the paper, didn't realize it was underlings lying to Saddam.
So they didn't.
> a hostage dies when SWAT hits a place, the murder rap lands on the person who took the hostage even if it turns out to be a police bullet in the hostage.
The murder wrap doesn't fall on the SWAT shooter even when they shoot completely unarmed, innocent people, in their own home. So all your example says is that SWAT gets gets a free pass for murder no matter what. All it takes is for someone to anonymously say "LorenPechtel is a terrorist, he's planning to blow up some children at this address right now" and your chances are slim.
The Law of Armed Conflict specifies exactly when it considers such a reasonable justification to exist, which is not "never". You don't get to plop down women and children in front of military installations and go "neener neener" like you're a child on the school playground.
Sure Eli, and I'm sure you're not biased at all, but when you find so many "reasonable" reasons to kill thousands and thousands of civilians, women and children included, and you never ask yourself any questions, there's nothing more anybody else needs to know about you.
The comparison writes itself and when it doesn't, you make it obvious. You wouldn't be the first person who finds justification for something like this.
I do agree the Hamas strategy was explicitly about getting civilians killed, though.
When some idiot in the ME decides to shoot something at Israel, the character of the response demanded by the population depends heavily on whether any Israelis die or property is destroyed.
Israel didn't aggressively bomb Gaza till October 7 killed a lot of Israelis, even though they were regularly shooting down Hamas launched rockets with Iron Dome.
There is a practical gulf in political and diplomatic options depending on if an attack lands or does not, so much so that whether or not someone can shoot down incoming weaponry is a factor in some diplomatic decisions (I.e. Iran firing missiles at US bases in Qatar).
Real life doesn't break down into simple narratives. The facts in the Middle East are that post-October 7 Israel aggressively bombarded Gaza at a scale and intensity where it did not previously, and a substantial chunk of the population supported that. In particular, it felt compelled to significantly escalate kinetic action against Hamas and Iran where it had not previously.
Post 9/11 the US aggressively invaded 2 sovereign nations it otherwise had little interest in and occupied them for 20 years.
These are all scales and levels of military action which were precipitated by successful attacks that killed civilians. If 9/11 hijackers had been stopped in the planning stage, does the US still invade Afgahnistan? Probably not - it wasn't on anyone's cards. Iraq maybe but the conditions were set by that strike hitting the way it did.
You would have done it if you thought you could get away with it and had sufficient power.
You should watch some Sky News Australia; at least once a week there is a special report on how to prepare for China's invasion - which is never more than two weeks away.
I'm not convinced. Responding purely defensively allows your attacker to systematically probe every weakness in your defenses without risk of harm to themselves (e.g. how Russia is playing cat&mouse with the EU).
Country B has possibly the best missile defense system in the world; mainly because their neighbors shoot unguided rockets into their city. They work to defend their citizens at all costs even with expensive missiles and a protracted military campaign. They design cutting edge laser missile defense to help them alleviate the burden of protecting their citizens. The only reason they do not have to completely annihilate their neighbor who's shooting rockets at them is because they are able to intercept most of them. If those rockets were actually landing and causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties their retaliation would have to be far more deadly.
People on the internet: "actually its the civilians from country A who need defenses"
The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
Genocide accusations:
- Amnesty International - https://zeteo.com/p/amnesty-concludes-israel-genocide-gaza
- Human Rights Watch - https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-exterminat...
- Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) - https://msf.org.uk/issues/gaza-genocide
- University Network for Human Rights - https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/projects/genocide-in-gaza
- B'Tselem - https://zeteo.com/p/israeli-human-rights-group-says-israel
- Al-Haq - https://www.alhaq.org/publications/25781.html
- Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - https://pchrgaza.org/category/genocide-against-gaza/
- Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
- United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied - Palestinian Territory - https://zeteo.com/p/united-nations-un-gaza-genocide-israel
- The International Association of Genocide Scholars - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ...
Apartheid accusations:
- Amnesty International - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/israel-opt-is...
- Human Rights Watch - https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
- B'Tselem - https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is...
- Al-Haq - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16183.html
- Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16183.html
- Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/19761.html
- Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/20931.html
- UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk - https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-y...
- UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16324.html
- Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/7207.html
- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) - Referenced in multiple coalition statements
- BADIL Resource Center - https://badil.org/press-releases/592.html
- Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/17012.html
- Palestinian Coalition of 8 Organizations - https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/20931.html
Ilan Pappé
Avi Shlaim
Simha Flapan
Why would he be one of the New Historians? Norman Finkelstein isn't really even a historian, he's more of a activist/political scientist if anything AFAIU.
> watch their debate hosted by Lex Fridman.
I've seen it, it's pretty clear if you dig into the facts that the accusations of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence.
It's also quite clear that people like Norman Finkelstein like to cherry-pick facts(often from books written by Benny Morris) to support a particular narrative. Benny Morris tends to take a more balanced view of the history in general which has a lot of nuance.
Of course Benny Morris takes a more balanced view. He’s trying hard to make up for the imbalance.
Yeah, one is a real historian and the other calls a Holocaust denier "a very good historian"[0].
> Of course Benny Morris takes a more balanced view. He’s trying hard to make up for the imbalance.
Maybe neutral is a better word, Benny Morris is certainly much less of an activist than someone like Norman Finkelstein.
[0] https://www.thejc.com/news/norman-finkelstein-praises-holoca...
The 3 historians he listed were 3 out of the 4 most well known "New Historians", but him leaving out Benny Morris(arguably the most well known of the New Historians and the one who coined the term itself) was a bit of a red flag to me that he's cherry-picking sources to support a particular narrative. Technically the "New Historians" are a subset of "Israeli historians".
> he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to.
Yeah, I'm sure he isn't, although I'm probably also less familiar with those original historians myself as well since I was born after the point in which the "New Historians" had access to the declassified archives.
Even amongst the New Historians there's a lot of disagreements on things like which side has been more of an impediment to peace and a number of other key issues, with Benny Morris often being highly critical of say Ilan Pappé.
My own views of the history of the conflict and Zionism in general are probably broadly in line with those of Benny Morris. It's important to at least try and understand the history/perspectives of both sides of these conflict. At the same time it's worrying that even a lot of otherwise intelligent individuals would fall for rather overt antisemitic propaganda.
Apartheid is race based discrimination, not citizenship based like what happens in Israel/Palestine. Making an accusation of genocide does not mean there actually is a genocide.
> Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible.
Comparing the holocaust(an actual genocide) as something "equally vile and reprehensible" to the situation in Israel/Palestine is equivalent to a form of holocaust denial IMO.
Claims like these are a rather overt display of antisemitic propaganda.[0]
> Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below.
There is a long list of organizations that have thrown away their credibility with dubious accusations for various reasons.
> The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
It seems you're trying to downplay the very real threat from Islamic extremists that Israel faces.
[0] https://www.ajc.org/news/the-gaza-auschwitz-comparison-a-mor...
The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, you have fallen to propaganda by even bringing that up. Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948. There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember. The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
Why would I blindly trust the conclusions of "international organizations"? Especially ones that have shown themselves to have very little integrity?
> You trust Amnesty and the UN?
The same Amnesty international that has shown to have serious issues with bias across multiple conflicts?[0][1]
The same UN which has thrown away essentially all of their credibility when it comes to anything related to Israel?[2]
Obviously I would never blindly trust these organizations.
> The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism.
There is an occupation because the Palestinians have refused to negotiate a final peace agreement, Israel clearly can not unilaterally end the occupation as they did in 2005 with Gaza and expect a positive outcome.
> Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948.
Where have they lived together peacefully as equals for hundreds of years prior to 1948?
> There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember.
There's a long history of conflict between Jews and Muslims throughout the years, obviously in recent years it has been worse in a lot of ways.[3][4]
> The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
So Jews wanting to have a state where they wouldn't have to live as second class citizens[5] and have a right to self determination was the problem? Why would it be so hard for Muslims to accept the existence of a Jewish majority state when there are plenty of Muslim majority states?
After the holocaust it's entirely reasonable that Jews would reject being forced to live as a minority in a Muslim majority state.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/28/amnesty-intern...
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/ngos-anti-...
[2] https://unwatch.org/2025-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks
You’re not “effectively” denying it. You’re just denying it.
You stated what Israel is doing is as "equally vile and reprehensible" as the holocaust, this is an absolutely insane comparison.
The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, they wiped out something like half the worldwide population of Jews...on the other hand during the Israeli occupation the Palestinian population over the years has increased drastically.
The holocaust has very little in common with the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and one certainly can't realistically claim Israel doesn't have the military means to exterminate the Palestinians if they wanted to either. Israel clearly doesn't have that sort of genocidal intent towards Palestinians. You can probably make an argument that some of the more extremist elements in Israel want to ethnically cleanse Palestinians but that's not remotely equivalent to the holocaust.
By making this comparison you're effectively denying the holocaust by downplaying it and saying it's somehow equivalent to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Making this comparison is a well known antisemitic trope.
Which is exactly what Israel is. They literally have a term for it: "birthright"
Israel has been committing genocide for 80 years. No amount of tossing around the fake term of "antisemitism" is going to change that.
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 all deaths. Natural causes, internal combat, rockets falling short (historically, ~25% of Gaza deaths, but probably not this time), combatants and civilians. As well as some that are fake.
And Hamas had the power to end the war at any time--return the hostages, the world would quickly have stopped Israel. Thus we can conclude that Hamas wanted the war despite what it did to their population.
"Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...
The way they came up with this 83% figure is insane, they are essentially claiming everyone killed that hasn't been identified as a named fighter in one specific Israeli military intelligence database is assumed to be a civilian, this logic is of course blatantly misleading as one would not expect Israel to have the capability to identify the name of each and every enemy combatant in a war zone. On top of that the total number killed is a figure published by the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry which is well known to have major accuracy issues.
That list was of those both identified to be terrorist and identified to be dead. Thus, not only does it not count the unidentified dead but it also does not count the identified but not established to be terrorist.
That’s some newspeak right there.
Tell me, given all adult, non-ultra-orthodox, Jewish Israelis, regardless of gender, must mandatorily serve in the military and remain reservists for decades, does this mean most Jewish adults are “combatant adjacent”?
War has a huge logistics tail. That logistics tail is a completely valid target, often considered the primary target in western tactics. (Look at the original Russian attempt to seize Kyiv--Ukraine didn't attack the tanks, it cut them off. The guy driving the fuel truck for those tanks is combatant adjacent.)
Golden Dome is planning large constellations of lasers like this in constant orbit, as well as hypersonic warheads able to target any spot on Earth within 90 seconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
It's explicitly an offensive technology (and of course Musk has been involved)
As for drones, they’ll fly lower to the ground to reduce the line of sight.
There's a reason that's been happening, and it's not technical in nature. Technical solutions are thus unlikely to successfully address the root cause.
Will it solve the "root cause"? Probably not, but that's because there's no single "root cause", but it still might lead to some diplomatic resolution.
Now I doubt the technology is anywhere close to that now, but in 10-20 years alongside other technological advancements? Who knows.
That you're primarily concerned with disruption to life and financial burden rather than casualties and infrastructure indicates that iron dome is already capable of preventing these rockets from being a serious threat.
The absolute asymmetry of every war they fight is proof enough that the only real solution is a commitment to negotiations and diplomacy. Palestine has under constant siege since long before I was born and they still haven't given up despite having the worst kdr of the last 80 years. They don't care about the laser dome, they will keep fighting.
Also I have doubts about this laser boondoggle, its far more susceptible to atmospheric disturbance and flack than a surface-to-air missile and it relies upon having access to a stable source of electricity during an air raid.
Diplomacy only works if both sides desire peace.
The reality:
Israel desires to avoid a continuation of the Holocaust.
Iran desires stirring up trouble as a means of taking over countries, and uses the conflict with Israel as a justification. It's working fine for Iran, why would they agree to peace? They never have, just some stuff playing us for fools. I don't support The Felon but tearing up the Iran agreement was a stopped clock thing.
The left thinks everything can be solved with enough jaw, jaw. The right thinks everything can be solved with enough war, war. Both are wrong.
Then why the UN-recognized genocide of Palestinians?
We may say that it was unproductive, badly conducted, or a lot of other things, but saying it was unprovoked is like saying that Ukraine has no reasons to attack Iran and/or Belarus. They do have those reasons, because both of those countries directly and materially support their attackers. It just might not be productive to do so (and indeed, Ukraine seems to believe it isn't).
And they didn't provoke a war with Iran. Israel struck those arming Hezbollah. They got somebody high up in the Iranian chain of command. Iran responded with major Geneva violations.
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.
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.
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.
What period of human history are you referring to exactly?
Consider an attack for which Israel was blamed for a large number of civilian casualties. Israel had given warning they were going to hit the building, get out. Reality: Hamas ordered all the neighbors to rush to the roof of the building to keep Israel from hitting it. Too slow, they were still inside when the bomb landed.
I'm not going to rehash the war crimes Israel has committed during the last two years. It's likely a waste of time as you already appear to be said apologist. A useful tool to those I don't see as any different to Nazi expansionists ...
Always based on nonsense. The number that matters is civilians per combatant--and for urban combat where there hasn't been an evacuation Israel far outperforms every other country. Every other--they make us look bad.
Got it. Thanks for your input.
Talking of disregarding ...
We have a lot of incidents frame by the press as being wrongful Israeli actions. Most of them turn out to be garbage. And even uncontested casualty numbers show Israel did better than we do.
I'm not an Israeli apologist, but I don't feel that I'm competent to tell the world's best performer that they're wrong.
i expect the iron beam is going to make a lot more deaths, just of people israelis dont consider human. wooo
Some tend to be more introspective:
Shahak's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel picked up on the theme in explaining its pervasive, destructive influence in Israeli politics, the military and society. He noted that substituting German or Aryan for Jewish and non-Jews for Jews makes it easy to see how a superiority doctrine made an earlier genocide possible and is letting another happen now. Shahak called all forms of bigotry morally reprehensible and said: "Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes more potent and politically influential if it is taken for granted by the society which indulges in it." For Israeli Jews, he believed, "The support of democracy and human rights is... meaningless or even harmful and deceitful when it does not begin with self-critique and with support of human rights when they are violated by one's own group. Any support of human rights for non-Jews whose rights are being violated by the 'Jewish state' is as deceitful as the support of human rights by a Stalinist..."
Kook was Israel's first chief rabbi. In his honour, and to continue his teachings, the extremist Merkaz Harav (the Rabbi's Centre) was founded in 1924 as a yeshiva or fundamentalist religious college. It teaches that, "non-Jews living under Jewish law in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) must either be enslaved as water carriers and wood hewers, or banished, or exterminated."
Chief military rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, called Operation Cast Lead a "religious war" in which it was "immoral" to show mercy to an enemy of "murderers". Many others feel the same way, prominently among them graduates of Hesder Yeshivat schools that combine extremist religious indoctrination with military service to defend the Jewish state.
Others in Israel teach the extremist notion that the 10 Commandments don't apply to non-Jews. So killing them in defending the homeland is acceptable, and according to Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council: "There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them... A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail."
In June 2009, US Hasidic Rabbi Manis Friedman voiced a similar sentiment in calling on Israel to kill Palestinian "men, women and children". "I don't believe in Western morality, ie don't kill civilians or children, don't destroy holy sites, don't fight during the holiday seasons, don't bomb cemeteries, and don't shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)."
...
Though a minority, Israel's religious community wields considerable influence politically, in the military and society overall.
...
How the future balance of power shifts from one side to the other will greatly influence the makeup of future Israeli governments and determine whether peaceful co- existence can replace over six decades of conflict and repression. So far it hasn't, and nothing suggests it will any time soon; not while extremist Zionists run the government, serve prominently in the Israeli army, and -- according to critics -- are gaining more power incrementally.
Rav Kook was not Israel's first rabbi. He died in 1935 - a full 18 years before Israel's rebirth.
Nor was Kook the founder of Zionism. The belief that Jews should be able to return to our historic homeland has been a belief and conviction for religious and secular Jews for at least two millenia.
That you can find individuals, such as a R. Friedman (not even an Israeli!) with extreme views should not surprise anyone. Nutpicking is easy. Jews, like any other group, have fools and extremists in their rank. Israel is a plural democracy with 2 million Arabs, 7 million Jews, thousands of Christians and Druze, all with representation in the multiparty Knesset.
Hamas's evil, however, is not nutpicking. Hamas' founding charter in its opening paragraphs calls for the destruction of Israel and its conquest of the land in the name of Islam. It is genuinely intrinsic to the organization.
People who are actively endorsing kahanism are in the center of power today.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-01-02/ty-article/.premi...
You can lead a horse to water...
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.
You’d still have to deal with an asymmetric ablative jet.
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.
Range is limited in urban environments because of obstructions -- even the range of CIWS is far too great to be useful.
There hasn't been a real possibility for a long time, I don't think -- it's just not an easy use case.
Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight.
This is exactly the kind of thing that is unworkable.
(A) You don't want to shoot all those people. It's rare if ever the case that even 10% of those males are actually combatants. Even in Germany at the end of the WW2, I doubt it was that high.
(B) What if your own people make a breakthrough and take control of an area, and have all these machines with wildly nonspecific rules shooting at them?
Now, you may think I have the facts wrong, here -- that we haven't had the kind of precise turret before, or that we can't deliver small arms ammunition with great precision -- but you don't come out and say that: you haven't said I have bad facts.
If we accept that the technical capabilities have been there for a while, then we need another explanation for what the hold up is. I have offered an alternative, which is that it comes down to doctrine or operational issues -- it's not easy to see how to deploy a weapon system that automatically targets people without creating huge practical problems. I offered two concrete cases in my earlier comment. Here again, you haven't really spoken to them: you haven't said, for example, A is not a problem and here's why not. You have just ignored them.
It is really starting to look like you have a story and you are sticking to it.
(A) "...bullets move slow, can miss causing obvious damage to surrounding infra..." -- In other words, the precision I say is possible with small arms isn't realistic. This has two consequences:
(A1) The bullets can miss. Consider a bullet on its way to a target 500m way -- it may be in the air for more than half a second. Maybe the target was walking forward at 1m/s and just stops walking forward -- then the bullet will pass 50cm in front of them. This kind of miss is unacceptable can prevents technology like the kind you imagine from being deployed.
(A2) If the bullet misses, it will put a whole in a wall, &c, &c, whereas a laser either (A2A) will not miss or (A2B) won't cause a problem if it misses?
Regarding (A2A) and (A2B), are either or both of them something you had in mind?
(B) "...they are loud..." -- Firearms are loud but it's hard for me to say what you think the contrast or relevance is here. The lasers are silent or nearly so? Or the firearm's sound creates a problem for some other reason?
(C) "...minaturization is important to making this a real trend..." -- Firearms are not small enough. You said earlier that "...I think this is taking a miniaturization turn..." but how small do you think these lasers need to be, for the reality that you're concerned about to come into play?
And the Lavender system was only deployed once it was doing as good as the humans. It isn't 100%, war never is.
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.ht...>
Requires a mountain of evidence and argument.
https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-pa...
https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-laser-revolution-pa...
At their terminal phase icbms go at mach 25, which is pretty hard to shine a laser on for an extended period of time.
https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-tr...
Pretty sure you will get similar outcome anywhere else
https://thecjn.ca/news/canadian-jews-overwhelmingly-support-...
For anyone who has worked in Israel or who has just visited it, there is no doubt that Israel is one of the richest countries and it has more than enough of its own resources to ensure that it maintains its military superiority against any neighbors.
Israel certainly does not need a permanent aid for that, though of course they would be fools to refuse the many billions of $ they receive as a gift from USA.
Perhaps this aid might have been justified in the initial years after WWII, but it has been a long time since the initial reason cannot have remained true.
Now USA claims that it may have not obtained benefits commensurate to its expenses in the relations with many other countries, even if it is much less clear which were the benefits obtained by USA for paying this aid to Israel every year.
A part of the money paid to Israel is likely to return to some US companies that are friendly to the US government, so this is an indirect method for giving gifts to those companies too, but in other countries USA has been able to obtain such profitable contracts for well-connected US companies in a much cheaper way, just by bribing or blackmailing the local governments, instead of paying the contracts in full with US money.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
condensedcrab•1mo ago
100kW laser is nothing to joke about, but seems a good application for anti drone tasks. Fiber lasers are pretty snazzy.
cogman10•1mo ago
jstummbillig•1mo ago
cogman10•1mo ago
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•1mo ago
amluto•1mo ago
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.
cenamus•1mo ago
Can't imagine they get a very small spot at multiple km unless they use gigantic lenses or multiple independent laser focused on the same spot
condensedcrab•1mo ago
That being said, probably ~10kW/m^2 is enough to overheat or disable a UAV
chmod775•1mo ago
That would force these laser systems to point each drone until it either visibly goes up in flames or impacts the ground (which means you also need to be able to track them all the way down), otherwise you can't be sure it won't just snap back to life once you started engaging the next drone.
I don't feel like 10kw/m2 would be anywhere near useful. It's gotta be more than that.
* Stadium floodlights aren't going to instantly grill any bird that flies in front of them either, and they reach that ballpark.
cenamus•1mo ago
If you can target it for a couple seconds with that power then you're not gonna do much, much less if it's not very absorbent
JumpCrisscross•1mo ago
tguvot•1mo ago
margalabargala•1mo ago
simondotau•1mo ago
JumpCrisscross•1mo ago
A few decades ago lasers were dismissed because they involved chemical reagents for high power and explosive capacitors for even low-power applications.
cogman10•1mo ago
Not too much. The power delivery was doable even 15 years ago. It would have just been more expensive and heavier.
The bigger issue I believe would have been the lens and tracking capabilities. For the tracking to work you need some pretty good cameras, pretty fast computers, and pretty good object recognition. We are talking about using high speed cameras and doing object detection each frame
Animats•1mo ago
Not really. It took a long time for solid state lasers to make it to 100KW. That's the power level military people have wanted for two decades.
Megawatt chemical lasers are possible, and have been built. But the ground based one was three semitrailers, and the airborne one needed a 747. Plus you ran out of chemicals fairly fast.
serf•1mo ago
Animats•1mo ago
A 100KW generator is no big deal. It's a truck Diesel engine coupled to a generator. Trailer-mounted, it can be towed with a pickup truck. It's a standard rental item for larger construction projects.
A 100KW laser is a big deal.
The big problem with this as an anti-drone weapon is that, unlike artillery shells or unguided missiles, drones can operate close to the ground, and the laser needs line of sight.
galkk•1mo ago
tguvot•1mo ago
there is footage of intercepts out there. was released about half an year ago
wolfi1•1mo ago
stackghost•1mo ago
http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeathRay/DamageFromLaser.php
FunnyUsername•1mo ago
cogman10•1mo ago
No. Most US homes are on 200 or 100A service. 200A tops out at 48kW
You won't find many home chargers that are more than 60A.
SigmundA•1mo ago
You would need 5 80 amp charger to approach 100kw but with other loads in a large house, I have seen large HVAC systems and elaborate pools with lazy rivers etc that can add up very quickly which is why they had 400 amp service.
100kw isn't really that much, a modern EV can put out 3 times that from its battery pack into the motor for short bursts and easily sustain 100kw until drained.
480v 200 amp 3 phase commercial supply can provide 100kw continuous and would be some thing used in a medium sized office building.
FunnyUsername•1mo ago
One home actually consuming close to 400a is pretty rare, but it's possible mainly in gas-free builds, if using things like electric tankless water heaters (a bit niche) in addition to multiple EV chargers, a range, dryer, etc.
Maybe a better way to convey that 100kW is “small” is to point out that industrial sites all around us, such as smaller datacenters, are well into the MW range.
montjoy•1mo ago
someNameIG•1mo ago
https://eos-aus.com/defence/high-energy-laser-weapon/apollo/
tguvot•1mo ago
breppp•1mo ago
I think the major difference here is that the Iron Beam is operational, as in finished trials, delivered to an armed force and actually was in active use in the previous war for more than a year
upcoming-sesame•1mo ago
jvanderbot•1mo ago
I think we're talking the second.
slfreference•1mo ago
JumpCrisscross•1mo ago
You’re right for ambush drones of the sort e.g. Hamas could launch. For the ones that would stream in from Iran, which Israel needed American help defending from last time, I’m not sure that’s the case.
breppp•1mo ago
Hamas and Hezbollah MO since the 1990s was based on bombing Israeli towns with statistical rockets and this system is supposed to reverse the cost equation (cheaper than those cheap rockets)
Today this is also used for drones though
pimlottc•1mo ago
nine_k•1mo ago
jimnotgym•1mo ago
MomsAVoxell•1mo ago
First wave of drones get targeted, explode into clouds of chaff, second wave of drones penetrates the de-focused laser system.
marcosdumay•1mo ago
Those materials do not reflect evert frequency.
LorenPechtel•1mo ago
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.