Sorry for the lack of posting, been fighting a sinus infection and other smaller issues. Took some time to rest and heal a bit.
The operation by whomever (cough, Israel has not officially said it was them, cough) to take out Hezballess (HT Chris Loesch as apparent originator) operatives was masterful. On several levels even.
First, it was fairly precise targeting, which limited (nothing can eliminate the possibility of) “civilian” casualties. Limiting the explosive to one or two ounces helped guarantee limitation of collateral damage. Those who are screaming otherwise, and that it was against the rules of war, are both wrong and far more upset that their favored side was hurt and that the Jews dared defend themselves instead of just lining up for the slaughter. By their words and actions, they reveal who and what they are. Make notes.
Second, if they could intercept and do this to THOUSANDS of pagers, do you think they wouldn’t be able to also use those devices to track locations, monitor communications, and more? Months of data, and just the location data alone would have revealed locations and more. Where did they meet? With whom did they meet? Where did they go when things got hot? The so-called meta data on this is tremendous on its own. If they literally did get inside their coms and were reading the mail…
Third, most interesting that the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon had a Hezballess-issued pager. Not surprising in the least, but interesting. Even more interesting is that a rumor is making the rounds that the pagers were altered in Iran. For those that aren’t familiar with how things like this work, it is not likely that Hezballess placed a direct order with Gold Apollo for the pagers. Because of sanctions and other delights, there would have been cut-outs, middle-men, and such in play. Odds are good that various blinds and fronts were used by the IRGC to get them and have them shipped indirectly to Iran. From there, they would then go to Hezballess.
Now, think back to the recent assassination (that made the news) allegedly by Israel (who once again has not claimed credit) inside Iran. That one set a cat amongst the pigeons in Iran as members of the IRGC (and possibly others) were implicated. Nice little round of purges and accusations got going before being stomped out by Iran’s top leadership. Lots of hard feelings, suspicions, and upset at not being able to eliminate internal enemies (political) on the part of several it would seem. Now there is this. Openly or not, the cat is back amongst the pigeons and there is a good chance of all heck breaking loose. Let your enemies attack themselves is an ancient and honorable concept, and I think it just got played beautifully.
Fourth, if you think Israel wasn’t watching the hospitals and other locations to see who came in and when, and wasn’t monitoring local social media for news and IDs, I’ve got a bridge for sale… Again, no way for them to know in advance who all the members of Hezballess were. They do now, and can plot that against all the intel from the metadata and…
Oh, and as for those who are screaming about doctors having pagers too, note that only doctors (and other medical types) who were members of Hezballess were issued “augmented” pagers. No danger to honest medical types, only terrorists. See the above about those who are upset as their side was hurt and no Jews died. It applies to those making this argument too.
Fifth, whomever did this just took Hezballess pretty much offline. In many respects, not just temporarily. Lots of damage, including lost hands, fingers, etc. Those that raised up to look at the mesage (a la the Iranian ambassador) have eye damage if not permanently blinded. When you are talking several thousand injured simultaneously, you’ve taken major units (and potentially several thousand others) out and rendered them combat ineffective. If Israel gets lucky, some of those having to take command are not truly fit for such and are going to do stupid things. Stupid things always, ALWAYS, open doors for the enemy, and one presumes Israel is prepared to take full advantage of such openly and covertly.
If you also go in and hit some of the critical centers you’ve already identified, you can do a lot of de-fanging. Funny that I heard reports that Israel hit a number of targets in Southern Lebanon last night…
Also smart is that Israel (if they did it, cough) was smart enough not to tell the U.S. in advance. Good thing, as in hours after U.S. officials were allegedly briefed on the op that details were leaked to corporate media, who promptly spilled the beans. Leaks to hurt Israel were the rule (and specialty) of the Obama admin, so no surprise that such continues now. Cough. One hopes that such a briefing left out key details and may have even included daisy or two. That is, information that may be true (or not) but is not precise and is intended to send people down the wrong path. After all, it’s not the first time the current admin (cough) has done such to hurt Israel. Know your enemy and use them accordingly.
One more positive benefit out of the op is that right now, terrorists everywhere are looking at their coms and going “oh bleep.” I guarantee you some have ditched pagers and other items in panic. Why? What if it wasn’t just Hezballess that was targeted? Who do you think supplies coms to Hamass, Hooties, and others around the world? Also, if one country did this, what’s to say others have not and would not do this? What this has done is to create mass uncertainty and to emulate Hamass and go as much as possible to in person and courier communications. Which will slow things down and bring up yet other opportunities for infiltration and co-option. I mean they could go carrier pigeon, but with drones and/or the amount of explosive you can fit in or on a pigeon… Just sayin…
There are some other points but I’m going to skip them for now. Especially if this was not a one-off use-or-lose op. What I will say is BRAVO! and bow in respect to a mastercraft operation. Whoever did this, my hat is off to you.
UPDATE I: The next round has begun, with radios and other devices exploding across Lebanon. What I said two paragraphs above is now playing out in the open: no electronics are safe. Terrorists around the world are having to look at all coms, and even solar chargers, as compromised. When even your battery charger can explode, there is nothing you can trust. Also, you may find the first explosive charge, but what if there is a second, hidden/camouflaged charge in the device? I mean the children and grandchildren of Pride-of-Dupont have come a long way since it pretended to be paper orders after all. Remind me tomorrow to talk about other potential Christmas Gifts/Easter Eggs of which we need be concerned.
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And today their radios are blowing up. Whatever the trigger for Israel doing this, the affect has to be profound. Hezballess (heh) just got 1-2 punched, hard, via stuff that everyone took for granted and as being mundane. Their heads have to be swimming at this point wondering how deeply compromised everything and anything they have is. The amount of paranoia this should be causing – the message is clear from Israel, they have told Hezballess ( and all their enemies ) that you are all touchable at our discretion and at a scale you never considered. Simply rebuilding their secure communications is going to hamper them deeply for some time to come.
“Paranoia Will Destroy Ya”
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep…
Still hoping those same wizards who decapitated Hezbollah have already included special “additions “ into several of the ballistic missiles and rockets so graciously provided by Iran.
Let the fireworks begin!
It’s a masterpiece of operational skill, but why now? Is it driven by the need to stop Hezbollah from mounting an offensive while the IDF is occupied with fighting Hamas in Gaza? Or is it battlespace preparation for an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah? After all, the normal reason for a large-scale attack on an enemy’s communication system would be to prepare the ground for an offensive, and if the Iranian strategy is to besiege Israel with proxy forces like Hamas and Hezbollah then the logical Israeli response must be to destroy those forces at the first opportunity.
What I heard, from someone in Israel who is fairly connected, was that the IDF learned that two Hezbollah guys became suspicious of their pagers; the attack was triggered in order to use the explosives before they were discovered and neutralized.
Disinformation. To make hamass relax and pick up walkie talkies for today. Now Hamass know months of monitoring and ops means bombs and spying devices are everywhere. Everything is compromised. They know where the weapon depots are. They know where they gather. Names. Phone numbers. Addresses. The calls are coming from inside the house.
How about Iran itself?
I’ve heard the same thing Kathleen heard: two people tumbled onto the op, one was eliminated but they had to move it up to prevent the other from blowing it, as it were. Wish they could have waited, but…
I give. What or who is the “Child of Dupont”. Is it just the gunpowder and explosives?
If what I’ve read and/or been told is correct, “Pride of Dupont” was a special form of explosive that looked and felt like paper. Purportedly used in covert ops in Vietnam, in that “orders” were delivered to a VC headquarters which then exploded when the seal was broken. It’s children are continuations of that development, if any such are indeed being developed. Cough.
“if any such are indeed being developed”
It’s quite likely that funding for any further development did dry up once electronic communications became the norm. It would have got crowded out by competing projects that targeted the new technologies.
But if certain groups now start to treat all electronic devices as suspect then the old paper-based (or paper-imitating) exploits will suddenly become relevant again, and the three letter agencies will be searching their archives for techniques that were once dismissed as obsolete.
Well, wasn’t referring just to paper. Without saying too much, efforts have long gone into making things that look like (and or work until boom like) other things. 🙂
This also highlights the concerns with widespread domestic usage of electronic devices made in unfriendly nations (e.g., China).
Just looking to see if anyone else mentioned this. With so much of our electronics made in China, we should be very worried about what’s hidden in the hardware, firmware, and software.
It’s a big jump between putting some HE and a radio-triggered firing mechanism inside a pager, and cramming in a transmitter *and* detecting the incredibly tiny signal it would be able to generate. I think you’d need a dense network of moderate-sized antennas (cell-phone tower network dense) or a big dish flying overhead all the time.
There are More than a couple really big dishes in geosynchronous orbit That can probably listen in to every pager and cell phone in the Middle East all at the same time. I’d consider that a done deal.
I don’t understand all the criticism of these events. Exploding pants is just a ME version of gender transitioning treatment. One would think that all Woke Thinking Persons would laud the act.
I know it’s been said elsewhere, but in the interest of completeness:
-pagers are passive receivers. No tracking, no data capture. That does not negate the value of identification/location of the users when the pager pops.
-this approach is pretty much limited to things that receive a radio signal or equivalent. That said, the IoT has made a lot of inroads.
-there has been some talk of using explosively formed penetrator designs to improve results. No. Focusing the explosion will not help because you don’t know how the device will be oriented at use.
-this is not a one time trick. Time and complacency will reset caution.
This is asymmetric war at its best for the first world. The first world makes these things; the 7th century societies cannot, and they really need the first world tech to commit their acts.
Find and read a copy of Chris Anvil’s “Pandora’s Planet”.
“pagers are passive receivers. No tracking, no data capture. That does not negate the value of identification/location of the users when the pager pops.”
This is not correct. Pagers are two way radios, they have to be so that they can tell the cell phone towers how to route the messages. So tracking data is certainly available, and data piggybacking is a trivial software change.
The AR-942 model pager that was used by Hezbollah is a POCSAG protocol model, it is a one-way system where all pages are broadcast, and the individual pager itself determines which, of all messages it receives, are meant for it to display. In untampered form it would contain no transmitter.
The UK used to have a nationwide provider “Pageone” that noted as a feature that “we operate completely independently of the mobile networks, and this offers vital resilience if normal mobile networks fail or are congested – as experienced with the New York and London terrorist attacks”.
There are 2-way and ‘response pagers’, different beasts that do have intentional RF emission.
Next up: Earbuds!!!