The broader conflict is of course very complex, nuanced, and incredibly cruel to civilians on all sides, but from a purely technical point of view, if the Israeli losses are as low as confirmed, this is an incredible feat of military technology.
I get that the Iranian rockets are somewhat dumb, but even then there were hundreds of them. And Iran still probably ranks quite high on military kit sophistication (at least among the adversaries of the Global West)
From the footage it looks like the majority of the ballistic missiles are getting through the Israel's defenses. Their missiles travel between mach 5 and mach 16, so that makes sense.
Somehow there are no reports of Israeli casualties (yet).
We'll see how Israel responds, or if they keep their focus on southern Lebanon.
Interception of intermediate-range BMs is much more expensive than short-range (and slower) missiles. Israel are likely being discriminating in what they counter. They may also have limited antimissile munitions.
Cost-wise, defence costs ~$1m -- 3.5m per launch. The attacks are costing Iran ~$80k per missile.
So that's a ~$15m attack which would cost ~$400m to defend against completely.
I know the Guardian wrote "80K (pounds, not dollars) or more. However, I question that floor. I wonder what long range ballistic missile actually costs only 80K pounds.
What are the ingredients to a missile? 1 fashioned cylinder, 4 winglets, 1 Raspberry Pi, 1 large glob of explosives, 1 solid fuel propellant?
Obviously I'm being facetious, but we're not talking about some crazy hi-tech gizmos or even genuinely ground-breaking technology, and that price does get a Tesla or two, so really $100,000 isn't cheap. Plus we are not discussing U.S. DoD contractor prices which "everyone knows" have no known correlation to reality.
> "The (Iranian) drones are not costly, around $50,000 (and) $250,000 for each cruise missile and from $1 to 10 million for a ballistic missile, depending on the model," he says.
Hamas's Qassam rockets are basically steel pipe, fins, nozzle, sugar + fertiliser solid fuel, and warhead of various materials: TNT, ammonium nitrate, possibly a grenade.
No guidance. These are basically aerial mines and serve as area-denial weapons.
Of the many thousands of Qassam rockets launched, they've inflicted 23 deaths (22 Israeli citizens, one Thai national), per Wikipedia:
Some cheesy Scud derivative banged out with low labor costs and minimal regard for materials and tolerances? Probably cost as much in HE and fuel as baseline hw under mass production.
This seems likely based on the casualty number being reported. Also, Israel is claiming many intercepts so not sure how accurate it is to stay most are getting through.
It is definitely not in major cities, otherwise we would've already known.
It might be that Iran doesn't want to cause any real damage (as then Israel would destroy its oil industry and nuclear sites in retaliation) — it only wants to save face. For that, a media picture of "hundreds of missiles falling on Israel" would perfectly suffice — they can sell it domestically. Just bomb some bushes and deserts and call it a day.
Then they wouldn't target Tel Aviv. They tried to do as much damage as possible because their little terror squads lost massive ground. And before the argument resurfaces, yes, Israels military action was precisely targeted at military opponents, in contrast to this attack.
On this Mario podcast they're saying Iran shifted manufacturing from drones and rockets to ballistic missiles was because the drones were so easy to intercept. Many of Iran's ballistic missiles travel at mach 15. That's way too fast to intercept reliably. Some are slower. I don't know what was used here.
Ballistic missile warheads have flown at these speeds for many years. The term "hypersonic" when it refers to missiles is frustratingly imprecise; hypersonic in the sense you're using it refers to more modern weapons capable of substantial maneuvers and not restricted to a ballistic trajectory. Iran is incapable of producing these types of weapons.
Note that plain old ballistic missile warheads are quite challenging to intercept. Past operational systems used nuclear warheads on the interceptors.
"Hypersonic" is a misnomer, most long range rockets hit hypersonic speeds. "Hypersonic" refers to steerable hypersonic glide vehicles that can turn to make them harder to intercept. There is no evidence yet that any of them were used in this attack.
I doubt it, Iran has such capabilities themselves. Apart from their insane regime they have a lot of smart people. Ballistic rockets burn a few seconds and then just follow their ballistic path, which is quite predictable.
Cruise missiles are harder to intercept because you don't know where they will hit. They can change course on short notice which ballistic missiles cannot do after burning their fuel.
Supersonic as a novelty refers to supersonic cruise missiles. Ballistic missiles are something different. Larger range but unguided after they burned all their fuel. But they do reach supersonic speeds.
Cruise missiles have a lower range but can change course. This makes interception more difficult since you don't know for sure where they will hit. The difficulty in intercepting ballistic missiles is that they are very fast and supersonic cruise missiles would make up for the weakness of being generally slower.
The only guided munitions in WW2 I know of were naval torpedoes, I think everything else was still unguided.
There is extensive footage online: below is an example with multiple attempts at interception in a location which, presumably, must be somewhere "important" for those systems to be present. I'd argue it's difficult to claim such barrages can be "tracked, detected, ignored". As for the casualties, it's only been a short period of time, one would hope they do not increase as the situation is assessed.
A terror attack unfortunately killed some people, but as it stands the only victim was a Palestinian, which the Iranian regime so often proclaims to care for.
When Iran struck US bases in Iraq in 2020, there were also no deaths. Drone footage shows that the Iranian missiles hit their targets: [0]. The reason why nobody died was that the Iranians told the Americans in advance that they were going to attack.
Iran also gave Israel advance warning of this attack, and again only struck military targets. That's why no Israelis died.
I'm listening to Mario Nawfal and a bunch of pundits/experts. Some are saying that the attack was to frustrate Israel's air defenses, but the red line hasn't been crossed. Others are saying we don't know yet until the damage reports are in.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I don't specifically know but I would guess that this sort of news is widely available on other news websites and people feel it isn't specifically Hacker News content.
Not really trying to start a political debate, but,
> would be a significant escalation that threatens to spark an all-out war in the Middle East that the Biden administration has desperately tried to avoid.
Did they, though? Because every single action the US has taken in the last ~year seems to have been leading to this exact outcome.
The US is the reason Israel didn't respond to the April attacks from Iran. They have also been breathing down Israel's neck about their use of force and escalation problems in Gaza and now Lebanon.
You would have to do a very bad faith reading of the news over the last year to imply the current administration has been trying to increase tension between Iran and Israel.
In 2024, U.S. officials expressed increasing frustration for Netanyahu due to his handling of the Gaza war and relations with the U.S. There were tensions over his reluctance to negotiate ceasefires and his perceived prioritization of political survival over broader strategic interests.
There were serious criticisms, including calls for him to step down.
I didn't say this. I said, separately, that there were serious criticisms - including for him to step down. There were, however, by others:
"This would happen at a time when Netanyahu’s popularity is tanking: an Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) poll in January found that only 15 percent of Israelis wanted him to remain in office after the war ended. Another IDI poll this month showed that the majority of the country — nearly 60 percent — thinks his handling of the situation since October 7 has been “poor”."
"Baskin, who is also Middle East Director of the International Communities Organisation, went as far as to say Netanyahu’s actions indicate that he is “no longer worthy to lead.” “Netanyahu is a disaster for Israel. This is going off the rails,” he said."
Okay, then. The wording of your post seemed to suggest otherwise. But if it wasn't what you meant to say, then all good, and I appreciate the clarification.
My evidence seems more ironclad to counter the idea that approval for Netanyahu is not "unconditional". You know criticisms are a conditional approval by definition, right?
No, I didn't miss that, nor did I miss the millions of dollars of weapons this administration has also sent, nor the warships and troops - that doesn't seem very "de-escalate"y to me, personally, but maybe I'm nuts.
I am not sure what you are implying - the US parking warships nearby seems like a strong deterrent. It didn't work this time, but it didn't mean it's a bad idea.
Deliberate misunderstandings or just a general incomprehension of how deterrence works.
You use deterrence to prevent a bigger conflict. It's on Israel and its leadership (Bibi) that they used the lull between their increasingly brazen attacks against their opponents as an excuse to launch a full scale invasion of a neighbouring country.
Israel didn't start many conflicts, I have none in my head. This of course was also caused by an attack by Hamas and Hezbollah, which lead us to today.
And you are cleary using a false argument. GP said that the conflict werent started by israel while your argument is about who started the kinetic war.
A conflict in these cases started before the first shot was fired, hence your take is just wrong.
In the 1967 war, Israel claimed that it's attack was preemptive, but it actually seems most likely that Egypt was not going to attack Israel.
The Israelis had massive military superiority over the Arab armies in 1967, and they knew it (at least, the Israeli leadership knew it). They expected the war to be a fast, lopsided victory, which is what it turned out to be.
Right, I was talking about kinetic engagements. Which are pretty much all that matter when one makes the mistake of stepping into these silly "who started it?" debates.
As for who started the whole "conflict" in Palestine, metaphysically speaking -- we all know the answer to that question.
Can't agree with you in terms of the conflict's deep origins (pre-1947).
However it seems we do strongly agree in terms of shared blame for the conflict's continuance at nearly every stage since then. And that's really all that should matter, at this juncture.
In that vein, it seems we should also agree that there's no need for implications that it was Israel's neighbors who "really" started the 3 major wars in its post-independence history in which it explicitly (as in the whole Cabinet sitting down together and saying, "Okay, let's do this") initiated large-scale operations in the absence of any credible immediate threat to itself.
I don't believe you as there is more apartheid in almost all surrounding countries, mostly on religious grounds. Apartheid isn't really a fitting term though. The reality for Israel is that all inhabitants are better off in Israel anyway.
There also was and is no genocide in Gaza, this is mostly projection by people sympathetic to Hamas or similar terror organizations.
The reality for Israel is that all inhabitants are better off in Israel anyway.
The inhabitants of the occupied territories (and those within pre-1967 borders forced to accept Israeli citizenship) are perfectly capable of deciding that matter for themselves. I'll take their word over yours.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-01/ty-article-li...
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