That's my assessment. By threatening and targeting bystanders, Iran tries to make any military action against them costly to those not involved, who will naturally apply pressure to whomever is taking the action.
So, the USA and Israel started a war with Iran when they were in the negotiating table and the Iranians were accepting all the nuclear demands.
In the first unprovoked attack they killed an important religious leader of a big part of the population of the area (not only Iran) and a bunch of civilians (160 children in a school between them).
But the assesment is that 'is Iran who is threatening and targeting bystanders'. No surprise that we are in the mess we are.
look at the stats of what the UAE has defended against, what is the purpose of those attacks? They make no sense to me.
Iran attacks on the UAE
186 ballistic missiles
812 drones
this article even states that the UAE has been attacked more than Israel itself which, again, blows my mind. The UAE is, wisely IMO, choosing to stay out of it but i mean how much can they take?
> UAE has been attacked more than Israel itself which, again, blows my mind.
UAE is closer and so it is harder for them to intercept attacking missiles and drones. Israel is further and thus harder target. They have more time to destroy the attacking drone or missile, making such attack more wasteful.
Second, the goals are likely American soldiers stationed there and the defense systems themselves. Intercepting missiles can run out and Iran likely wants them to run out.
> So, the USA and Israel started a war with Iran when they were in the negotiating table and the Iranians were accepting all the nuclear demands.
They were not accepting all the nuclear demands[0].
> In the first unprovoked attack they killed an important religious leader of a big part of the population of the area (not only Iran) and a bunch of civilians (160 children in a school between them).
Calling the attack "unprovoked" is just wildly inaccurate, Iran has for years funded terrorist proxies to attack both Israel and US interests in the region.
> But the assesment is that 'is Iran who is threatening and targeting bystanders'. No surprise that we are in the mess we are.
Iran deliberately targets their own civilians as well as 3rd party countries.[1]
I think the massacres and not the nuclear program were however what finally pushed the US and Israel into a war with the regime itself as a primary target as the massacres opened up an opportunity to potentially take out the regime once and for all.
that funding has been for years, and Israel itself has funded some of those same proxies.
the massacres also arent timely. we're months later with the unrest settled down, but its also not something unique to iran. lots of countries, including israel go about massacring civilians
nothing has substantially changed in many years. not even oct 7 is timely anymore
The protest massacres opening up an opportunity for regime change, I think that's ultimately what pushed Israel and the US to take action.
> Israel itself has funded some of those same proxies
Israel facilitating aid/funds into Gaza for humanitarian reasons which often got diverted by Hamas is not the same as Israel funding Hamas.
> the massacres also arent timely. we're months later with the unrest settled down, but its also not something unique to iran.
The war happened as soon as one could reasonably expect it to happen given the necessary logistics involved.
> including israel go about massacring civilians
Israel does not have a top down policy of deliberately targeting/massacring civilians, Iran on the other hand does.
> nothing has substantially changed in many years. not even oct 7 is timely anymore
Oct 7 drastically changed Israel's perspective on containment and deterrence being effective policies for dealing with enemies like Hamas and Iran. Part of the problem with a containment and deterrence strategy here is that groups like Hamas and the Iranian regime don't respond to incentives in the way one would expect a rational actor to respond.
> By threatening and targeting bystanders, Iran tries to make any military action against them costly to those not involved, who will naturally apply pressure to whomever is taking the action.
i'm no geopolitical expert but the most likely outcome of bombing bystanders is more enemies and fewer bystanders.
I have loved my journeys through Germany in recent years; locals are more than willing to speak English to you and are happy to direct you around.
This does hit home though: I did miss an international flight due to the S-Bahn out of Munich. Eventually they were like "this train is so delayed, we're going to make everyone get off and catch the next one". ::shrugs::
...and the Munich airport is just painful in general (the flight status boards shorten the flight numbers with ellipsis for instance).
For most, it doesn't need to 'meet' Apple's performance. It just needs to be competitive to general hardware of around the -the same price point- category. This is the same problematic statement I hear that a ~$1500 PC laptop just isn't as good as a ~$3000 macbook.
Shooting down $40k drones with $4mil interceptors is a problem. Hoping at some point this wake up call is heard.
One recent update is that Apache Attack helicopters are being refitted to hunt/kill these types of drones, but the newest Iranian models are flying 300+ mph which is faster than a single rotor helicopter can fly (the leading blade of a helicopter starts to break the sound barrier).
Israel, United States, United Kingdom, China and Russia have HEL high-energy lasers that can shoot down fast drones. Several other countries are working on HEL development. The numbers of operational HEL systems are still very small but growing. I believe that Israel have the most of them in operation today developed primarily by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. 10kw to 50kw on trucks, 100kw ground based. Range: 7-10km, shorter in fog or rain. Dwell time: 4 to 5 seconds. Cost per shot: $2–$3.50.
Targets: UAVs/drones (including swarms), short-range rockets (Qassam-style), mortars, artillery shells, cruise missiles, and potentially other low/slow-flying threats. It excels against cheap, high-volume threats where kinetic interceptors are uneconomical.
The US is working on a megawatt version that will be mounted on ships to take down full sized aircraft, hyper-sonic weapons and ballistic missiles. Timeline: 2030. Even at 30-50 kW (e.g., the earlier AN/SEQ-3 LaWS on USS Ponce), lasers can target helicopters or manned aircraft to cause crashes by frying sensors or engines. Scaling to hundreds of kW extends range and lethality against faster, larger aircraft.
I'm pretty sure Israel has them active. In June there were many wooshes (i.e. interceptor fire) I heard from my home. Now I'm not hearing any, but am hearing what sounds like short high pitched whines (sort of like coil whine). I've been wondering if that is the HEL powering up for each shot.
Its not clear to me that this is generally worthwhile, even if it is very cheap per-shot; 6 targets at ~100m/s are already enough to overwhelm if the laser gets to engage those targets over 2km of their flight path (with a 4s dwell time).
If your laser emplacements are somewhat expensive and only lightly armored, you might end up in a situation where your opponent happily throws cheap drones, 10 at a time, straight at your defense and still comes out way ahead financially.
Israels situation is quite unique in that it is very small, but gets exposed to imprecise indirect fire a lot, so what works for them might be a really bad investment for the restt of the world.
What’s the cost of a single laser? Russia is launching hundreds of those per attack, over a large territory. With a range of 5-7km you’d need _a lot_ of lasers to effectively cover a reasonably large city.
It doesnt have to be perfect, just better than the next alternative.
If we take 4 million per interceptor at fact value, you can compare them on cost basis. More area coverage for less money would be a potential benefit. Alternatively, reusability could be a benefit if we expect prolonged conflicts or many more of these situations in the future.
Cost per shot including the development and unit costs amortized over the service life of the weapons system? Or is that just the cost of the energy that got pumped into the laser?
That cost per shot is just the energy utilized by the C2 targeting and laser system. I have no idea what the overall cost of the system is. I have not yet found it published. I would wager the overall system is rather expensive but worth it to the point of using expensive ballistics to neutralize a 40k drone which is at risk of being overwhelmed.
I also can't find the accurate time to target stats, just overall dwell time.
yes and no. Imagine they have 100 40k drones. Imagine, if a drone hits it will destroy $10mil in property. So your $100k or even $500k interceptor looks cheap.
However, they have 100 of them (so spend 4mil). so you might have to spend (if say 100k each). 10mil to protect your 10mil in property (and more if the interceptors cost more).
If on the other hand you can get the cost down to pennies (minus R&D costs), this is no longer part of the calculus.
I was thinking about this the other day when watching a video about Chernobyl.
They flew countless helicopters over the exposed reactor core and because this was 1986, helicopters didn't have a million sensors or electronics in it. It was entirely mechanical. Effectively all in-use aircraft nowadays could not complete such a mission as the electronics would be rendered null almost instantaneously, even with ECC, etc.
Do these high energy lasers fry the electronics, or are they able to simply ignite and burn holes through the aircraft?
I had to vouch your comment as it and most comments from your account are auto [dead].
The lasers can fry sensors like I mentioned. They can also burn holes in the body of the aircraft and damage engines. I think you may be conflating the modern glass displays with the sensors themselves. In many cases the actual sensors have not changed that much in terms of being vulnerable to directed energy weapons. The energy being emitted from Chernobyl was gamma radiation which at high enough prolonged exposure can cause bit flips. The two TU-16 bombers that seeded rain clouds around Chernobyl were not affected at all by the gamma radiation and I doubt modern aircraft would be affected just flying over it.
Some time log out and view your comments [1] as almost all are auto [dead]. A new account could be a fresh start.
No. This person should not try to circumvent moderation by creating new accounts. They should ask the moderation team for reinstatement of normal posting privileges, but be willing to accept a refusal. They've behaved appallingly.
I havnt seen this before Does (dead) mean they got downvoted or that everything they write is voided? How do you know what they wrote is appallingly bad?
These weapons have been fitted to most US tactical fighters for the counter drone role as well. APKWS is also not a "new" weapon system - it started fielding back to 2012, and was adapted into the counter drone role.
There are other lower cost (compared to legacy systems designed to take on manned aircraft) solutions currently deployed. The US Army has the Coyote, which is in the ~100k range.
Beyond cost of munitions, you have to consider that cheaper systems are going to have less range, and therefore you'll need more launchers, and you can start running up costs that way.
The Ukrainians have a lot of experience taking these things down with interceptor drones and similar like he sting which is about $2100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone)
It's an arms race with each side constantly updating the tech.
The Ukrainians have offered to help out in the Gulf but for some reason Trump is kind of dismissive.
Surprising there are not more solutions here. We have seen these style of drones for a number of years. I guess it’s a hard problem in general but I also wonder if part of it is simply the historically entrenched defense industry.
Part of it has to be owed to how tactically potent drone swarms are, as a means of asymmetric conflict. Even the best layered defensed are limited by magazine depth, whereas attack drones can be sent in theoretically unlimited waves.
Ukraine has a pretty good track record of taking down drone waves. US had plenty of warning of this tactic and years of examples of successful defense. I’m surprised we’re not seeing footage of thousands of loitering drone killers waiting for a target. Maybe the us just can’t do low cost high volume anything in the military.
The solutions already exist and have been proven on the battlefield. Peacetime military forces are just slow to adapt, as there are no real incentives to adapt quickly.
Drones such as the Shahed are little more than cheap mediocre cruise missiles. Because they are cheap, the enemy can launch them in large numbers. You counter them by detecting them early and then using plenty of cheap mediocre anti-aircraft weapons. Mostly guns and interceptor drones (=cheap mediocre anti-aircraft missiles).
The laptop segment is a poor example. Apple is the only company mass producing high performance arm laptops with a completely custom os that integrates to the hardware. You take what you can get. Your choices are: run windows (lol), or linux(whats linux?) system76 is the only company even coming close, but their performance is way behind mainstream unfortunately because they don't have the custom silicon capability that Apple does.
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