Somehow, a bunch of pagers in Lebanon, probably mostly owned by Hezbollah, exploded simultaneously or nearly so.
Does anyone know how this could be accomplished? Maybe sending some code that causes the battery to severely overheat? Embedded explosive in the pager?
Since I get most of my breaking news from the SDMB, I thought I’d start a thread. Speculation is fine by me, and any facts you come across. I’m hoping to avoid politics or the broader topic of the war, or the morality of this action, etc. Thanks in advance.
I presume those pagers at some point were in the hands of the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) – either Mossad set up a bogus pager store and convinced Hezbollah it was legitimate, or Mossad obtained pagers they knew were on their way to Lebanon for Hezbollah’s use.
We don’t know yet how targeted this was – whether it was ONLY Hezbollah pagers, or other pagers, etc.
I saw a few videos of the exploding pagers on CNN from security cams. It didn’t look like batteries overheating and catching fire. The pagers literally exploded. The videos looked to be from grocery stores and offices with lots of other people around. It doesn’t seem like there was much concern about collateral damage from whoever did this.
I’m torn. It sounds like these were specific to pagers used by the Hezbollah system and explosions sized such that most did not even kill the person holding the device (maim yes). In my head I am trying to think of any disruptive attack that could be anywhere near as disruptive and as precise.
If one accepts that Israel was going to undertake an attack aimed at disrupting Hezbollah capabilities.
Of course personally I think doing that at this point is a mistake in any case. But given that?
The explanation offered up abovethread sounds most plausible - that Mossad must have physically inserted explosives into a batch of pagers that they knew were headed towards Hezbollah hands. However, many of these pagers ended up in the hands of civilians as well.
It seems like hitting a hornet’s nest with a stick. It doesn’t seem effective enough to really make a dent in Hezbollah, but it does seem like it will make them very upset and motivated to get revenge.
Just to be totally clear, I’m not really interested in the effect of the pagers on the war (there are several other threads to talk about that), just theories about how it was accomplished – some back door that made the batteries drastically overheat, some bug in the system, explosives inserted at some point in the supply chain, maybe other theories.
Again I would want to see deescalation, and a ceasefire delivered that gets everyone stepping down. Not a ramp closer to all out war’s edge. But assuming a decision to cause maximum operational disruption per amount of collateral damage? This is in one fell swoop a large number of Hezbollah operatives taken off the field, a communication network at least temporarily disabled, the possible forcing them back on a compromised cell phone system … that’s a lot of bang. How many of the serious injuries were collateral? I don’t know. I don’t know if it is known. But odds are fewer than any drone attacks would result in that accomplished the same disruption.
I assume this puts a crimp in the way Hezbollah communicates. Doubtless they’ve thrown all their pagers out now and it will take some time to come up with a new way to communicate.
They may have added some extra electronics and/or firmware changes so that it would only explode when a specific message was received. If they could somehow deduce which person had which pager, they may have been able to limit the explosions to just certain people.
Intercept a shipment of pagers being sold to a vendor known to distribute to Hezbollah members, pack a small charge and a microcontroller that receives a specific message or data sequence, probably behind the display screen so it blows outward directly into the face of someone trying to read it, and then send it on its merry way. It appears that all of the pagers are from the same manufacturer and some type, and were purchased at around the same time.
Also while lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries can rupture and burn energetically, and couple possibly be forced to do so by overdriving them via firmware, they don’t detonate as seen in camera footage, so this is definitely due to some additional explosive charge implanted in the pagers.
It disrupts their communications system, and driving Hezbollah to “get revenge” may be their objective; every time Hezbollah launches missiles at Israel, it renews international (and particularly) US sentiment in favor of Israel doing whatever it feels justified in doing to improve its security.
It’s like being a fry cook; shitty job and a good chance you’re going to get burned, but anyone can get hired, and you can eat your fill of french fries and mozz sticks without anyone noticing.
…and any devices they use in future will be eyed with skepticism. Make them take apart and check every cell phone, most likely breaking them in the process.
And as soon as they get lazy about doing that, Mossad strikes again.
It is more likely that they’ll change to some other method entirely, like a decentralized mesh-based communications network. But again, the purpose of this is to goad Hezbollah into a violent response which gives Israel justification for counterattacking, and potentially even an invasion of Lebanon.
I’m wondering how pagers are used in the modern world. Can they send & receive text messages directly pager-to-pager? Back in the day I had one, you’d get a message to call a number then you’d call on a landline.
