Iron Beam: Israel's First Operational Anti Drone Laser System

If these things are even 50% efficient, then power delivery is really not a problem these days. Most EVs have no problem delivering 200kW for quite a few seconds at a time, limited mostly by components getting warm. Higher-end EVs are generally rated for 300-500kW.

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.

Ah, good point, that seems likely.

It'll get a lot of time to react at that energy as it's not going to "instantly" fry anything. That's probably less energy/m2 than consumer heat guns, especially if consider that these drones are likely going to get sprayed in reflective paint. Easy defense for the drone would be just: get into a spin to get roasted evenly -> shut off -> fall for a few hundred meters, cooling using air that rushes by to counteract the laser further -> catch itself once it lost the laser.

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.

yes it does

I imagine that it depends greatly on the laser’s spectrum. Aluminium is a good reflector of infrared but not ultraviolet, for example.

> The power delivery was doable even 15 years ago.

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.

Wouldn’t they be able to just use radars?

There is 400 amp residential service you can get 80 amp 19.2 kw level 2 chargers.

You would need 5 80 amp charger to approach 100kw but with other loads in a large house, I have seen large HVAC systems and elaborate pools with lazy rivers etc that can add up very quickly which is why they had 400 amp service.

100kw isn't really that much, a modern EV can put out 3 times that from its battery pack into the motor for short bursts and easily sustain 100kw until drained.

480v 200 amp 3 phase commercial supply can provide 100kw continuous and would be some thing used in a medium sized office building.

As the sibling comment notes, 400a residential service is available as an option in many places these days.

One home actually consuming close to 400a is pretty rare, but it's possible if using things like electric tankless water heaters (which are admittedly niche), in addition to multiple EV chargers, a range, dryer, etc.

Can you please leave the Jews alone.

Are they afforded the same rights as jewish israelis? What about Gazans and West Bank palestenians whose families came from elsewhere in the earlier Palestine and were driven out to these areas, now living in terrible conditions. For simplicity lets pretend it is Sep 2023 for this argument, as the conditions were terrible then, due to Israels policies.

Thats why you should read and not rely on AI for your opinion.

If one wants to avoid nationalism, then yes.

As the russians were not asked about it.

The russian government decided to do so and to supress any oposition.

(But their army is largely made up of volunteers)

It sounds like they both suck.

Sorry that happened to your family. The Zionist project has killed a lot of innocents.

> 800k Jews were kicked out of middle eastern countries

As a result of the creation of Israel.

As for Jews killed or terrorized into leaving Baghdad: Israeli historian Avi Schliem (whose family fled Baghdad to Israel after the Baghdad bombings) says Iraqi Zionists were responsible for some of those bombings in his latest book.

Finally, should Jews who had their lands stolen in the name of Zionism have their lands back? In a just world, yes.

At this point, aren't we all descendants of Abraham with high probability? Maybe we should just give the land we identify as Israel to the world.

Bro, 2026: Quit HN, lookmax, remove the anime, start actually developing and find yourself a girl. You will thank me.

Response to “How much U.S. taxpayer money was spent on this?” - now flagged: $1.2B Source: https://defensescoop.com/2024/04/25/iron-beam-procurement-us...

There is a similar mentality among humans that many fall into, the “victimhood mentality”. And many Jews themselves also have the same thing. In a conflict, often both sides use the same tactics without realizing it.

The way BLM blamed “systemic racism”, various Jews might see “antisemitism“ behind every critique of Israel. It is not just individual but group psychology. The worst scorn is reserved for heaping on defectors, who Black BLM activists would call “uncle Toms” and Jewish Zionist activists would call “self-hating Jews”.

So what’s interesting is the common tactics. I don’t mean to imply it is one sided. Both sides of an ideological conflict (eg abortion, socialism, etc) want to take over a powerful state apparatus to use for their agenda. Both sides want to cynically and hyporcitically exploit millions of people to further their agenda.

For example, antizionists (and more generally revolutionaries / “axis of resistance” supporters who may be either leftist, Islamist or whatever) want to perpetuate statelessness of millions of people in Lebanon, Syria and all over the Middle East, so they can be labeled “Palestinian” because one of their grandfathers was in Palestine circa 1947, so that they can “keep their identity” by essentially forcing on them, and maintain large numbers for “the cause” of removing Jewish majority in any area of the Levant. They oppose giving them citizenship on a jus soli basis even if they and their parents were born in another country. This happens even with Palestinians who themselves got citizenship long ago in Chile, USA, UK, Sweden, Canada etc. It is a similar mentality to “fight to the last Ukrainian” by Ukrainians abroad who left Ukraine an settled in other countries.

Meanwhile, Zionists have a form of that, where many of them constantly play up and almost seem to welcome how badly Jews would be treated among other countries, and downplay the role of their right wing government waging wars in a far more reckless fashion than they could have. Instead of placing the blame on that government for making Jews less safe, they say “you see? This is why you should move to Israel. You’ll be safe here among Jews.”

In short both movements cynically use their own people, almost welcoming hardship for them until they are “forced” to embrace their identity and move back to where they same place both groups are competing to demographically dominate ..

This isn’t unique to Israel. Armenians vs Azerbaijanis for example seek foreign alliances for protection. Serbs vs Albanians. Tamils vs Sri Lanka. Rohingya vs Burma. Uyghurs vs China. And so on. There are horrific proxy wars happening in Sudan now, and Congo throughout. But people don’t tend to focus on any of that because Ashkenazi Jews are famous and successful in the West. And because Abrahamic religions are based on Judaism, so Israel is quite foundational to all their religions. Not so much Sri Lanka…

You can see in Eastern cultures which are not Abrahamic, not Muslim or Christian, the attitude is the same as to any other sectarian conflict. That is proportional. But it is extremely disproportionate in the West! For the reasons I listed above.

Settlements in West Bank are Israel’s great crime.

> If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of

You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.

> then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors.

We get a really ripping novel from Iain M. Banks, at least.

> Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces

Isn’t it the other way? With a lot of medicine’s modern advances being rooted in combat medicine?

America's school lunch program was created so that it would have healthier soldiers. We better stop feeding children.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Prog...

Then when that happens that might be morally objectionable. But probably like any other weapon that already exists, a rocket, missile or gun.

While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians.

"It's a very expensive way to hurt people" has historically never been a real deterrent to motivated nation states to bring costs down

The heuristic is that it would be in their interest to trumpet their successes.