Stop being racist. It’s not a good look.

Probably just more dystopian disposable drones from Israel featuring distress sounds including crying babies[0].

[0] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6747/Israel-intensifie...

This is a good article. I disagree with its implications. I would agree that the average us citizen is much too far removed from the defense industrial complex and that creates these situations where a Google engineer (not necessarily this guy) is perfectly willing to help destroy American society with his advertising tech but balks at automating image tagging for the dod's big data lake because would rather have another 9/11 than be responsible for a false positive in the ME.

This is designed to save people.

It's quiet the power requirement. I wonder how long it has to focus on a drone to eliminate it. Like how long is this thing consuming 100kW?

They say it's first operational system in it's class, but it seems very similar to the Australian Apollo system, with Apollo being able to go up to 150kW

https://eos-aus.com/defence/high-energy-laser-weapon/apollo/

Lets send some over to Ukraine.

Each Iron Dome interception cost many times more than the cost of the rockets. This will make it cheaper for other poorer nations to afford and operate.

Next up we'll be hearing about the virtues of V2 in the Nazi arsenal. Fun tech. Still does not erase the bad feelings from seeing kids shot at intentionally from drones, or submarine launched drones throwing incendiary munitions at a flotilla featuring my fellow countrymen from the same fucking country designing this laser. Fuck Israel.

That laser station will not last in Ukraine an hour and will be destroyed either by missiles or drone swarm.

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.

Yeah, I see this as ultimately a wash.

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.

Mirrors are not effective enough. Shielding drones from energy weapons seems like a similar problem to entering Earth’s atmosphere, you want to shield it in a way that will blast away safely and ideally diffuse the laser, so the energy is spread over a larger space. I suspect larger lasers will likely aways win, since there is only so much shielding can do. At which point we could end up with transformers like drones that are built to be broken apart mid flight and yet still deliver damage. I feel like defending drones could become possible with energy weapons but only under ideal weather conditions.

I'm not certain, but I think the returned beam would likely be significantly out-of-focus.

No, but an AI drone like the one Turkey has can probably detect the source of the beam by hiding behind some sacrificial/decoy drones and watching them blow up then shooting a missile at the laser source. It's not like the laser is coming out of thin air.

> It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones

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.

Three thoughts:

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...

Gaza (Hamas), the West Bank (Fatah), and Lebanon (Hezbollah) are the reason this technology is needed in the first place: violent religious fundamentalists firing cheap rockets at Jewish cities because of religious hatred. Over 16,000 rocket attacks on Israel last year alone.

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.

They certainly have those for radars! Although the reason for using them is different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain_(countermeasure)

In the war in June, Iran fired 500kg warhead ballistic missiles. These were the only lethal munition they used, killing a couple dozen civilians.

The Iron Beam is not relevant against ballistic missiles.

On the last day of the year, I am taking a few minutes to linger on this. At face value, most would agree with this, myself included. But I think we can dive one layer deeper. There are different schools of thoughts whether mankind is inherently good or evil. Over the years, I have become pretty firm believer that every person has the innate capacity for both good and evil, and the outcome is determined by both character and circumstances. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote (quote by Gemini):

"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)

Downvoted for not saying Apartheid in your buzzword bingo.