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...
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...
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)
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.
Although I will believe there are a few more iterations before this regime falls
No. But I can hope.
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...
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.
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.
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.
'moving from wooden shingles allows society to be negligent when it comes to fire/forestry management and makes the world worse'
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.
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.
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
Christian Zionism, on the other hand, does seem to want this to happen.
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.”
They have rules that say it's okay to kill 100 civilians as long as a single "operative" is also killed.
This is a country whose leadership cares only about executing terror. Just like the USA.
Without it, Lebanon might be looking a lot more like Gaza right now.
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.
Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
100kW laser is nothing to joke about, but seems a good application for anti drone tasks. Fiber lasers are pretty snazzy.
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
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
That being said, probably ~10kW/m^2 is enough to overheat or disable a UAV
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.
A few decades ago lasers were dismissed because they involved chemical reagents for high power and explosive capacitors for even low-power applications.
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
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.
http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeathRay/DamageFromLaser.php
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.
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.
there is footage of intercepts out there. was released about half an year ago
https://eos-aus.com/defence/high-energy-laser-weapon/apollo/
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
I think we're talking the second.
https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-tr...
It's not aging particularly well.
Israel unilaterally disengaged from GAZA in 2005 and pulling out generations of Jewish settlement in the process. By 2006 GAZA has zero Jews, and 2007 Gazans elected HAMAS who fired rockets at Israel because they want to free Palestine from the river to the sea, AKA eliminate Israel. October 7 attack is a culmination of that, and between then and now, HAMAS didn't forget to build their military base in the mix of civilians and using civilian targets as shield. So that they can blame Israel for every single Palestinians death, including the death cause by their own firing.
The situation in west Bank is qualitatively the same.
No, protecting your people from terrorist is not apartheid, and Israel has no interest to build iron beam and/or build wall--which the west misinterprete as apartheid-- if the neighbors had no intention to eliminate them.
There are zero Jews in Gaza -- not even just living ones, they had to remove the long-buried dead ones too.
For Arabs in Israel, it is important to note that inside Israel parliament knesset, there are Arab representatives, some who even call for the soft dissolution of the state itself ( rights of return). They are the descendants of the Arabs who didn't leave Israel during the 1947 Israel independent war. So no, Arabs there are by and large not removed at all by anyone. By contrast, there are zero Jews in Gaza or West Bank. Jews enter those places at their own peril, they could be lynched.
The Arabs in GAZA/West Bank are not under Israeli jurisdiction, and by their actions and words they are still declaring war on Israel, despite that they launched the war first every single time, and lost every single time, and play victim every single time. If Israel wanted to wipe them out then there is no need for Israel to accept the 1947 partition, the David peace accords (2000) or the Oslo accords (2008), which Palestinians all rejected wholesale. If Israel really wanted to wipe them out, the GAZA war following October 7 terrorist attack would be over by the next day as Israel dominated absolutely militarily.
Really, the conflict is really that simple. One side, Israel, wants peace, and the other, the Palestinians, who don't ( as captured by their slogan, "from the river to the sea Palestinians will be free", do look up on where is the river and where is the sea if you have doubt).
It is made complicated only because a lot of people try to obscure the reality. But that's the topic for another day.
Israel won't let food into Gaza in reasonable quantities. It has restricted basic things like tent poles and just about any commodity which humans anywhere else in the world would have the luxury of being able to take for granted.
All in violation of international law - that which has lost all meaning in the last three or so years.
Not really relavent. Occupying powers still have the right to self-defense. Certainly they have the right to take defensive measures to prevent attacks on the civilian population of their primary territory, which is what is being discussed here.
> Israel won't let food into Gaza in reasonable quantities
As far as i understand the food situation in Gaza has now stabilized. However even if Israel was illegally restricting food into gaza, that wouldn't have any bearing on the legality of them setting up air defense systems on their own territory.
> All in violation of international law
Being an occupying power is not in and of itself a violation of international law. (The food thing might be. Israel is allowed to put certain restrictions on aid, but groups like the ICC have argued that the restrictions were beyond what was permissible under international law. Personally, even though it is incredibly unlikeky to happen, i hope the issue goes to trial at the ICC so we get a firm answer. However even if true, it does not mean Israel loses every right it has under international law)
(This is distinct from a state’s “right to exist,” which is nonsense. But once a state does exist, it has the right to defend itself by definition.)
[1]: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-7
[2]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assemb...
Yes it can, and it's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Russia believes it has the natural right to reclaim what it considers to be Russian territory. Ukraine believes it has the right to be free. So everyone should just put down their weapons and come to an agreement based on these rights?
The fallacy at the heart of your argument is that there is somehow some greater single truth, and that each side agrees that it is the greater single truth, and that everyone will just peaceably agree to follow the single greater truth because it is the single greater truth. Nothing could be less human. What are we, the Borg? We're supposed to follow some hive mind?
> something simple, like tying sanctions to murders of civilians
Not even remotely simple. Define sanctions, murders, civilians. The US bombing "drug" boats in the Caribbean, are those civilians? International law recognizes that collateral damage can legitimately happen during legitimate military operations. Is the collateral damage "murder"? How far should sanctions go? Sanction enemy banks (layer 1)? Sanction citizens of neutral countries who do business with the enemy country (layer 2)? Sanction citizens of neutral countries who do business with other citizens who do business with the enemy country (layer 3)?
Here's my peace plan: Blow up or starve kids on the other side +1 sanctions. Intercept a drone or rocket +0 sanctions. Say you're sorry and reduce arms by 10% -1 sanctions.
If the US alone did this they'd stop with all the murders in days to weeks.
Of course the state of affairs where random online commenters can think of better answers than the individuals in charge is only due to a lack of a desire for peace at high levels! There is nothing complicated about it at all.
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.
i expect the iron beam is going to make a lot more deaths, just of people israelis dont consider human. wooo
Except agreeing to a peace deal and state recognition... with Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert. And Except letting their citizens vote for their own gov in Gaza for over 17 years...
I guess responding to Israeli expansionism has some great strategy I still don't grasp.
Israel has never been interested in a peace deal.
It is a settler colonialist project in the finest traditions of such with the aim of conquering the entire region. And the US and friends support it for racist and capitalist reasons.
There fixed it for you. last I checked, Israelis are using drones to summarily execute Palestinian kids with impunity. the idea of these people having even more weapons at their disposal paid for by MY tax dollars leaves me a bit disgusted.
The Iron Beam is not relevant against ballistic missiles.
Iran also fired “over 1,000 suicide drones” [1].
"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)
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.
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.
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.
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.