Exploding pagers

That is absolutely diabolical on the part of the Israelis, nice job.

cams said:
US used a similar tactic in Vietnam with different types of ammunition. They’d leave behind a case or a belt on a trail as though it fell off a truck or they left in a hurry and didn’t take it with, but many of the rounds would be stuffed with explosives and repackaged.
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MACVSOG called that “Project Eldest son” 👍
 
MaverickNH said:
Most Liked comment on WaPo: ” All this glee about exploding the pagers of people in public places and injuring innocent bystanders illustrates perfectly the mindset of many of the people who support Israel.”
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All this concern over the lives of Hezbollah terrorist illustrates perfectly the mindset of the useful idiot cadre within America.
 
cams said:
US used a similar tactic in Vietnam with different types of ammunition. They’d leave behind a case or a belt on a trail as though it fell off a truck or they left in a hurry and didn’t take it with, but many of the rounds would be stuffed with explosives and repackaged.
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The US also "lost" reports with a "metalurgical analysis" of the enemy's weapons concluding the steel was faulty and the weapons were blowing up when fired.
 
alx said:
Epic… and one surely for the textbooks.

I do not believe the batteries alone in the pagers were the source of the explosion. There had to be a small charge also inside. Maybe there is no detonator and overheating the battery provides the go juice for the explosive, but battery alone is unlikely…. Which means that the Israelis were able to intercept the shipment or even the manufacturing source and install the explosives and the required firmware changes to trigger them one way or another. The logistics and maintaining secrecy alone must have been staggering and apparently perfectly executed
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Or put the explisives in the battery along with circutry to detect a certain load pattern as the trigger.
 
cockpitbob said:
An insider said Hezbollah changed from phones to Motorola pagers just a few months ago. Israel worked fast.

This is like James Bond supervillain stuff, but done for good, not evil. It takes real genius to come up with something this simple. I'm in awe.
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They've been doing exactly this kind of shit for decades. It really is awe-inspiring.

The Brits used to be fast, flexible, and ruthless with their covert ops, just like this, during WWII. That's where the earliest Israeli-state operatives got all their training. But then the British joined the Good Guys and stopped all their skulduggery. The Israelis never did. This is the result: an institutional mindset that celebrates bold thinking and decisive action.
 
Kevin_NH said:
The elegance of the approach taken is that a teardown or other close inspection, basically everything short of putting a sample of the battery in a mass spectrometer, wouldn't give away the plot -- no observable physical indication of the extra capability.
cybmvxpp0ddd1.jpg
CT scan of "a" pager from a reputable brand, not "the" pager model used in Lebanon.
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I figured whatever explosives they used were placed on the side of the battery, wrapped together with the battery on the side of the external clip. If it was taken apart it wouldn't look out of the ordinary, unless like you said something more than a CT.
 
tbk5 said:
NYT reporting lack of eye surgeons. That sounds like your suggestion is spot on. Page, delay until the person looks at it, then boom. Blinding all the terrorists could be as effective as killing them without hurting others. As someone else said--a big message was sent.
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I just saw a vid that showed the same thing. Intention is to damage fingers and eyes.

This reminds me of that season on The Wire where the cops make the gangs so nervous they only buy burner phones and the cops figure out how to supply the pre tapped phones to them. I could easily see Mossad buying out a pager company to be the sole provider for an area.
 
You got mail!
Admin said:
I figured whatever explosives they used were placed on the side of the battery, wrapped together with the battery on the side of the external clip. If it was taken apart it wouldn't look out of the ordinary, unless like you said something more than a CT.
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But you can't check smart phone batteries.
 
Admin said:
I figured whatever explosives they used were placed on the side of the battery, wrapped together with the battery on the side of the external clip. If it was taken apart it wouldn't look out of the ordinary, unless like you said something more than a CT.
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Id be thinking put the explosive on the body side of the battery/pager, not quite a shape charge, but directed energy.
 
walter62 said:
what I don't quite get is why didn't they make the pagers EXTRA killy?
Seems like they missed a perfect opportunity to just wipe 'em out.

Add some ball bearings dipped in anti-coagulant so the Hezi's DIE, not just
injured?

Maybe they can just shoot any young men limping or on crutches ;)
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I suspect that the limited space and small form factor limited the explosive power they could get from these. But there is another factor, which is that killing the enemy is not always necessary or even desirable.

Killing people makes martyrs. And making martyrs needs to be handled cautiously. Sometimes martyrs greatly motivate their associates. And most of the "bad guys" in the Middle East are well known for making payments to the families of martyrs. So a martyred son can bring some money and local fame to a family.

But a severely disabled fighter is a whole other story. Now they are not a martyr. But if the injuries are bad enough, they are a drain on their family forever. Many young men would fear this more than death. And if Hezbollah can't pay for their care forever, then it makes their family less loyal instead of more so.

I am not saying any of this thinking guided this particular operation, but these would be familiar lines of thought for everyone in the Middle East.
 
pewpewpew said:
I didn't realize people are still using pagers in 2024
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They're a one way messaging system. The cell towers have no idea where the pagers are so every page is sent to EVERY cell tower. Think of the tactical implications of a message that is transmitted nation wide and the receiver can't be traced because its passive because it's technically incapable of transmitting anything.
 
cams said:
US used a similar tactic in Vietnam with different types of ammunition. They’d leave behind a case or a belt on a trail as though it fell off a truck or they left in a hurry and didn’t take it with, but many of the rounds would be stuffed with explosives and repackaged.
Click to expand...


Those who fail to study the past...something something

i5hk4eih5ar71.jpg
 
drgrant said:
Thats one thing mossad et al are very good at. Another fun techical thing.... you know that pager was keyed to blow up with one specific piece of code/phone number. That means they hacked the firmware or something too, or tapped into it somehow. This is probably an idea they'd been working on for years.

It's also fun that supply chain management has been a hot topic in computer security the past 5 years or so, but particularly hot in the past year. Lots of warnings about "be careful where you buy your shit from. " If I was going to make a wag, a double actually set this whole thing up. There's likely Lebanese people who have grown sick of Hezbollah and Hamas dragging their country into bullshit.
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Selling rootkitted pc hardware at 90 cents on the dollar in volume seems like an easy black op to set up.
 
Picton said:
They've been doing exactly this kind of shit for decades. It really is awe-inspiring.

The Brits used to be fast, flexible, and ruthless with their covert ops, just like this, during WWII. That's where the earliest Israeli-state operatives got all their training. But then the British joined the Good Guys and stopped all their skulduggery. The Israelis never did. This is the result: an institutional mindset that celebrates bold thinking and decisive action.
Click to expand...
In WW-II the British put explosives in dead rats and had the Underground place them in steam train's coal bins. They didn't blow up a meaningful number of steam engines, but it caused a lot of trouble because every dead rat became a concern. Genius[rofl]
 
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cockpitbob said:
In WW-II the British put explosives in dead rats and had the Underground place them in steam train's the coal bins. They didn't blow up a meaningful number of steam engines, but it caused a lot of trouble because every dead rat became a concern. Genius[rofl]
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The amount of resources that it takes to disable and remove a single explosive device is noteworthy.
 
cockpitbob said:
In WW-II the British put explosives in dead rats and had the Underground place them in steam train's the coal bins. They didn't blow up a meaningful number of steam engines, but it caused a lot of trouble because every dead rat became a concern. Genius[rofl]
Click to expand...

I've read more than a little bit about the SOE during the war; they did some truly innovative and high-payoff thinking, all of which depended on a keen understanding of Axis psychology and bureaucracy; they seldom failed. Some of the operations that got approved are breathtaking.

There was a secret turf war between the SOE and the OSS; the British found that the Americans, all of whom were Ivy Leaguers, couldn't think outside the box and weren't flexible enough to work well in that kind of war.
 

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