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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
No you have to be incredibly naive if you believe all the headlines about "breathing down Israel's neck". The support for Netanyahu is unconditional, you just have to follow the actions such as at congress. There is no disagreement and US troops are being deployed at the middle east.
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.
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.
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)
I wonder if the Iranian nuclear facilities will last the week.
Israeli media says "close to 200".
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-01/ty-article-li...
Jpost says 180.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-822801
[redacted]
cant seem to find an archive link for this one
This isn't the same article as OP
Where does this lead?
War. I suppose.
Wonder about the effect in the US and the election. I can see today's debate being about this.
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.
What is the red line, and are you referring to the Samson Option?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
> I'm listening to Mario Nawfal
I am curious. Why?
I looked him up. Is he not a scammer?
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/mario-nawfal-twitter-...
He hosts the show but it's not him doing 99% of the talking.
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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.
>> are getting through the Israel's defenses.
Or are being detected, tracked, and ignored unless they are likely to land somewhere important.
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.
Quite a few of them are clearly getting through:
https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1ftt06t/doze...
https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1fttep9/mult...
I'm greatly skeptical that nobody else has been killed, and that damage is minimal.
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.
That's just fantasy.
I think there is one reported casualty. From almost 200 ballistic missiles?
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.
https://x.com/UKR_Report/status/1841172196678311945
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.
Mach 15 seems to fall into "hypersonic" weapon territory. Did they develop their own tech or buy it from Russia?
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.
If it's the Fattah-1, it was developed in-house by the IRGC.
Having said that, I have no idea if there was some tech transfer from Russia to Iran to enable it.
>Somehow there are no reports of Israeli casualties (yet).
It's almost like it's a country under constant missile attacks from all sides. And they spent money on shelters.
Why was this post flagged? Is this not news?
From the HN FAQ:
What to Submit
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.
There's going to be a lot of very low quality discussion in this thread.
oh no there isnt
You don't think very highly of HN contributors I see.
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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.
No you have to be incredibly naive if you believe all the headlines about "breathing down Israel's neck". The support for Netanyahu is unconditional, you just have to follow the actions such as at congress. There is no disagreement and US troops are being deployed at the middle east.
A war with Iran is inevitable.
What are you on about?
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/05/09/netanyahu-say...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
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.
There were serious criticisms, including calls for him to step down.
I'm not aware of any. Can you point to specifics?
You must've missed the fact that Biden has been pushing for deescalation for ages.
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.
> nor the warships and troops
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.
People still believe Biden is running anything? The same person who got pushed out due to dementia?
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Something like half of adults in Israeli controlled territory are disenfranchised. They're hardly a democracy imo.
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It is not the lack of democracy that we condemn Israel for. It is apartheid in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza
Though to be clear, that apartheid is an example of a lack of democracy.
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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)