There’s still gonna be some collateral damage with those, that can’t be employed at scale as readily – you’d have to concurrently target huge numbers of people from airborne platforms, and these are pretty small charges. Given that Hezbollah isn’t fighting in the open – understandably – this is probably about as good as it realistically gets in terms of collateral damage.
Israel could maybe use DIME charges to have a smaller difference between lethal radius and damaging radius, but that’s got its own unpleasant aspects.
Dense inert metal explosive (DIME) is an experimental type of explosive that has a relatively small but effective blast radius. It is manufactured by producing a homogeneous mixture of an explosive material (such as phlegmatized HMX or RDX) and small particles of a chemically inert material such as tungsten. It is intended to limit the effective distance of the explosion, to avoid collateral damage in warfare.
Upon detonation of the explosive, the casing disintegrates into extremely small particles, as opposed to larger pieces of shrapnel which results from the fragmentation of a metal shell casing. The HMTA powder acts like micro-shrapnel which is very lethal at close range (about 4 m or 13 ft), but loses momentum very quickly due to air resistance, coming to a halt within approximately 40 times the diameter of the charge. This increases the probability of killing people within a few meters of the explosion while reducing the probability of causing death and injuries or damage farther away. Survivors close to the lethal zone may still have their limbs amputated by the HMTA microshrapnel, which can slice through soft tissue and bone.
If Israel isn’t using those already, I guess we could send 'em some, if we have some sitting around. Realistically, though, I doubt that collateral damage is gonna be possible to reduce a whole lot, given the fact that Hezbollah’s hiding in a civilian population.
You’re concerned we can’t scale up arbitrary killings? Would you prefer something on a larger, more industrial scale, perhaps with large, gas-fueled ovens?
Killing should be hard, and it should be personal, not vaguely waving a hand in a general direction. You should know their name and hopefully have filled out a few forms beforehand.
If you want to kill somebody, when you aren’t at war with their entire country, then BE SPECIFIC.
Drone strikes that take out a known Al-Queda leader: ✅
Drone strike that takes out a random Afghan wedding: ❌
In order to launch those concurrently against, I dunno, sounds like there are maybe hundreds or thousands of targets, you’re going to need to have hundreds or thousands of drones. You’re gonna need something like a TB-2 at least to be lobbing them, not a tiny little drone. You’re talking about a lot of medium-size UAVs. That’s where your scale limitation is gonna come from.
Those things are fine if you’re trying to kill one person. But Israel’s fighting a number of people, even if it can identify them. They aren’t gonna have thousands of drones above Lebanon.
And if they’re hitting buildings and such, then you’re gonna be collapsing buildings and stuff like that.
Secondly, I assume that the Lebanese government is not going to give Israel free reign to do drone strikes on Hezbollah on Lebanese territory, will shoot at those drones, so to use those, you’d need to destroy any air defense that Lebanon has. My guess is that Israel’s looking to just fight Hezbollah as much as possible.
There’s still gonna be some collateral damage with those, that can’t be employed at scale as readily – you’d have to concurrently target huge numbers of people from airborne platforms, and these are pretty small charges. Given that Hezbollah isn’t fighting in the open – understandably – this is probably about as good as it realistically gets in terms of collateral damage.
Israel could maybe use DIME charges to have a smaller difference between lethal radius and damaging radius, but that’s got its own unpleasant aspects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_inert_metal_explosive
If Israel isn’t using those already, I guess we could send 'em some, if we have some sitting around. Realistically, though, I doubt that collateral damage is gonna be possible to reduce a whole lot, given the fact that Hezbollah’s hiding in a civilian population.
Well there’s your problem right there:
You’re concerned we can’t scale up arbitrary killings? Would you prefer something on a larger, more industrial scale, perhaps with large, gas-fueled ovens?
Killing should be hard, and it should be personal, not vaguely waving a hand in a general direction. You should know their name and hopefully have filled out a few forms beforehand.
If you want to kill somebody, when you aren’t at war with their entire country, then BE SPECIFIC.
Drone strikes that take out a known Al-Queda leader: ✅
Drone strike that takes out a random Afghan wedding: ❌
There are a large number of people in Hezbollah. Israel is fighting them.
You’re talking about using a Hellfire R-9X.
In order to launch those concurrently against, I dunno, sounds like there are maybe hundreds or thousands of targets, you’re going to need to have hundreds or thousands of drones. You’re gonna need something like a TB-2 at least to be lobbing them, not a tiny little drone. You’re talking about a lot of medium-size UAVs. That’s where your scale limitation is gonna come from.
Those things are fine if you’re trying to kill one person. But Israel’s fighting a number of people, even if it can identify them. They aren’t gonna have thousands of drones above Lebanon.
And if they’re hitting buildings and such, then you’re gonna be collapsing buildings and stuff like that.
Secondly, I assume that the Lebanese government is not going to give Israel free reign to do drone strikes on Hezbollah on Lebanese territory, will shoot at those drones, so to use those, you’d need to destroy any air defense that Lebanon has. My guess is that Israel’s looking to just fight Hezbollah as much as possible.
Tl;Dr you’re declaring war on Lebanon.
Then just admit it, this bs dance is childish.
You’re either at war with them or the Lebanese are innocent bystanders where you have to minimize collateral damage, can’t have it both ways.
Someone should check if Walter White is in Lebanon