Silly clickbait title, but newsworthy all the same. This looks like the first instance of a successful ballistic missile interception in battle and not a test. I feel a chill because you never know what payload a ballistic missile is carrying until it reaches its target. Using them in war is a scary precedent.
This is definitely not the first successful use of ABM against an adversary, just the first case where the interception was above the Karman line. There are many battle-tested ABM systems, such as THAAD (which targets missiles in their terminal phase).
Even though this is a mid-course interception, it's critical that we contrast it with America's GMD (ground-based mid-coure defense). GMD is targeting ICBM payloads, which travel faster and are more likely to have countermeasures. GMD is still unproven for targets without homing beacons on realistic trajectories. Long and the short of it: this doesn't mean America could successfully intercept incoming nukes from North Korea.
I felt that same unease. It's very unlikely Yemeni rebels could get their hands on a nuclear device, and even more unlikely it would be small enough to launch on a rocket. But not impossible.
The country that gave the Houthis intermediate range ballistic missiles is also capable of developing pistol-type fission bombs if current estimates of the country's uranium enrichment capabilities are to be believed.
using guided ballistic missiles in war is indeed a scary precedent, but as the article explains, it is a precedent that was set 81 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket and in particular iraq launched lots of guided ballistic missiles into israel in the first gulf war
the newsworthy part is not the ballistic missile launch but the interception in space, where velocity is lowest but maneuvering is most difficult
though to me the biggest news was that yemen's houthi rebels have ballistic missiles now
You're right, but I was more referring to this statement "This looks like the first instance of a successful ballistic missile interception in battle and not a test". The Ukrainians used a Patriot missile to shoot down at least one Russian ballistic missile in the spring. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/air-defence-systems-rep...
It depends on your perspective. I would argue that the space race was fundamentally about two superpowers racing to develop the ability to accurately deliver munitions anywhere via suborbital trajectories. The fact that we got scientific probes out of it is sort of a happy accident and PR play.
Sort of a narrow definition to call an intercept in space a battle but not to think of the typical deployment of ballistic missiles as a type of space battle.
Still a major step forward on the path of missile defense.
It is interesting how Iran is the only country that is, through its proxies, getting kinetic against Israel. The Iranian proxies in Yemen and Lebanon have been firing missiles at Israel for a month while the Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria are starting to assemble in Syria for what might be a land invasion of Israel.
This has given Iran an unprecedented level of popularity and credibility in the Islamic world.
How did Iran-Israel relations even get this bad to begin with?
In 1953 the CIA intervened in a power struggle and helped depose the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddeq, handing power to shah (essentially, 'king') Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose father, a military officer, took power in a coup in the 1920s.
The shah, with US backing, ran a brutal, oppressive regime until 1979, when he was overthrown by a revolution led by the Islamist, theocratic ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini [edit: Khomeini seems to have led one faction, which eventually seized power from the others; see below]. Khomeini's people broke into the US embassy (a major diplomatic violation - even warring parties maintain embassies) and took over 50 hostages, who they held for over a year; one demand was that the US send them Pahlavi (Egypt granted him asylum eventually).
That government still runs Iran, though via Khomeini's political decendents. They see the US as probably their greatest threat, and the US treats Iran as a major enemy. In the 1980s, the US helped Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein fight a war with Iran, including using poison gas. These days, high-ranking US leaders periodically talk of attacking Iran and the US maintains economic sanctions against the country.
Israel is the closest US ally in the region and is seen by Iran as a US proxy, and the US and its allies are seen as competitors for regional power, with the Arabian Peninsula between Iran and Isreal being a sort of battleground. Both countries routinely threaten attacks against each other. Also, to some degree, Israel is a seen by Iran as a Western colony imposed on the Middle East.
Edit: I shouldn't assume this part is known: Iran routinely attacks US interests and destabilizes the region in its drive to dominate the Middle East, and also aligns itself at times with Russia. Particularly, now that the US deposed Hussein in neighboring Iraq, Iran has strong influence there (I think they are the only two majority Shia countries in the world). They also helped Assad in Syria fight a civil war to defeat a powerful revolution, forming a very strong bond; and they have long been the major supporters of Hezbollah, the terrorist/insurgent and Shia group that controls southern Lebanon. If you look at a map, that means Iran now has a logistical route to the Israeli border - they can drive trucks there - as well as influencing a large part of the Middle East.
The overthrow of the shah was not "led by Khomeini". He did not return from exile in France until the shah was already gone. The shah was overthrown by a broad coalition that included, for example, also Iran's Communists. That broad coalition was then promptly sidelined by the religious faction once Khomeini returned and took advantage of the power vacuum.
Before he returned, he merely oversaw one faction among many, and should not be singled out as the one leader at that stage. Iran's post 1979 government may well have gone in a completely different direction if he had not personally returned.
People familiar with this history get frustrated by the description you give, it is simply inaccurate. It is similar to the common misconception that the Bolsheviks in Russia overthrew the tsar, when the tsar had already been deposed months before (in the February Revolution) when Lenin returned from exile and launched the October Revolution.
What you say sounds familiar, though you might forgive a lack of detail in an online post (that was pretty detailed!).
Still, what is the particular frustration? Is it that other participants in that revolution don't want Iran and their revolution painted with a broad brush as theocratic? (And that would be a false image.)
It's a good lesson for anyone who wants to shift power structures: The ones who do the shifting often are not the ones who get the power.
> Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, brought about a new worldview that predominantly championed Islam and argued for standing up to “arrogant” world powers and their regional allies, who would oppress others – including Palestinians – to serve their own interests.
> This meant that Israel became known in Iran as the “Little Satan” to the “Great Satan” that is the US.
> “To overcome both the Arab-Persian divide and the Sunni-Shia divide, Iran adopted a much more aggressive position on the Palestinian issue to brandish its leadership credentials in the Islamic world and to put Arab regimes allied with the United States on the defensive,” he said.
> The two are alleged to be behind a long series of attacks on each other’s interests within and outside their soils, which they publicly deny. This has become known as a “shadow war” that has increasingly spilt out into the open as hostilities grew.
> Tehran opposes US hegemony in the Middle East while Israel has consistently pushed back against any efforts in Washington to bring American troops home from the region. Iran-linked groups have regularly attacked US bases in Iraq and Syria.
> It’s a “rivalry for dominance and power in the region, the two states have been embroiled in a low-level war for more than a decade,” said Parsi.
Yeah, it seems rooted in the intersection of ideology/tribalism and realpolitik. You would expect Sunni powers to head the opposition to Israel, as 99% of Palestinians are Sunni, but Saudi Arabia, the chief sponsor of Sunni militant groups, has had a long unofficial working relationship with Israel. Partly because of mutual animosity towards Iran.
> You would expect Sunni powers to head the opposition to Israel, as 99% of Palestinians are Sunni,
They did. First the UAR and Egypt as the UAR dissolved, later, after Egypt-Israel peace, Iraq took up a role. Iran started backing groups that were more extreme Islamists (though still Sunni) that opposed (and often directly fought) the main anti-Israel Palestinian groups, which ended up themselves as the main fighting groups as the peace process took the PLO off the table as a group actively fighting against Israel, and took up an even bigger role when the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq took Iraq off the table entirely, creating both a regional power vacuum and removing the main issue focusing Iran's attention away from Israel.
That's fair. My oversimplified narrative elides that a lot of changes have occurred over the decades. Iran remains the head of the anti-Israel opposition because a lot of the Sunni Arab states have diminished over time and sought economic ties if not outright diplomatic ties with Israel. And Iraq falling into the Iranian sphere of influence, as you allude to, only meant that Iran's star has risen.
> How did Iran-Israel relations even get this bad to begin with?
There was an Islamist revolution in 1979 in Iran. The new rulers despised Israel long before attaining power. Before that the two countries had excellent relations.
> How did Iran-Israel relations even get this bad to begin with?
The US destroyed the regime in Iraq whose location and simultaneous hostility toward Israel and Iran was a mitigator working against the other forces driving Israel and Iran against each other, as it often gave Israel and Iran common interests.
> How did Iran-Israel relations even get this bad to begin with?
I know you were just posing this rhetorically, but I love the folks above that are responding as if this is something that can be answered adequately in the hacker news comment section
>How did Iran-Israel relations even get this bad to begin with?
The 1979 Iranian Revolution installed the Islamic Republic and repudiated the previous government's relatively amicable diplomatic relations with Israel.
I'm pretty sure (but I don't know) that high up there's no real "airspace" issue, but I'm curious where the missile was intercepted. Was it over water? Or one of the intervening countries (I'm guessing without a map: Yemen, SA, Jordan, or Israel).
Above the Kármán line. AFAICT, it didn't say how far above.
I'd be interested in knowing how much orbital debris has been created. If it's right above the line, probably not much with a significant life, as most bits will de-orbit with the atmospheric friction. But higher...?
by definition, it's a ballistic missile. its trajectory is to hit the earth. It doesn't have enough velocity to stay in orbit. A missle hit on it isn't going to impart enough delta-v to it to keep any piece of it in orbit.
TL;DR: A hostile ballistic missile was intercepted above the Kármán line. This has happened before, but only during testing. No treaties were violated. No space marines were deployed.
Someone pull up the Gartner square thing or the Gartner hype thing. We've moved into early adopters zone, but are we in a "peak of inflated expectations" just yet?
