Bomb disposal expert says you would need 1-2 oz of high explosive to cause that type of explosion, which would fit into a pager. You then send a message/signal to it, and a speaker then activates the detonator. It has been done in a mobile phone before to kill a top bod.
Groups like Hezbollah often use pagers to communicate. As 'old tech' they are theoretically harder to trace and cheaper/easier to repair, not needing specialist equipment. This strike is beyond Mission Impossible level intricacy and daring though. From what I'm hearing, Israel infiltrated one of the main pager suppliers to Hezbollah years ago, then built and supplied rigged devices programmed to detonate when the user opened a specific text. The scale of this makes me doubt this account (it's bloody hard rigging close to 3000 devices without being caught), but I'm yet to see a more logical explanation.
Suppose people aren't use to devices being rigged, even if it's been done on a mobile phone before. Just get them sent out there in whatever supply route and bide your time, unless someone opens one up you're none the wise - and for what reason would you open a pager up, you might do it with a mobile, but not pagers. Very clever...just don't put that mobi call near your ear, it's going to explode...
Well, it just needs one pager to malfunction and need repair, or explode prematurely and the whole operation is blown.
As I mentioned above, now confirmed by the Chief of Terror Nasrallah himself, he ordered members to stop using smartphones back in February as they are too easy to trace, switching to old school pagers instead. There are reports that Israeli intelligence picked up on this order, found out where the pagers would be manufactured, infiltrated the manufacturing process at supply and distribution point (which makes much more sense as the pagers are produced and signed off in a regular factory but they are diverted en route to their destination and adapted with explosives before delivery) and rigged close to 4000 of the devices. It did all of this in the space of five months, miles inside enemy territory. Say what you will about Israel, the Mossad pisses all over any other espionage agency.
Yeah unbelievable stuff. Proper sci fi **** that if you saw in a film you'd call unrealistic. Makes me even more certain that they would have known about the 7th October attacks though.
Different agencies. Mossad is almost exclusively focused on overseas intelligence and espionage, bit like the MI5/MI6 split here or FBI/CIA in the States.
i wonder how many people that got blown up in the pagers were not hezbollah though. That's an awful lot of people and collateral damage. Goes to show the israelies don't care and just want a war with everyone
Yeah I get that but in general Israel intelligence is extremely highly rated. You'd also assume that intelligence would largely be shared in a nation that's basically been in a permanent state of war for decades.
Yeah, Oct 7th was a massive intelligence failure. They even had observation towers on the border reporting unusual movements and war games for months before it happened, but apparently no-one took the reports seriously.
Adds quite a dangerous twist to warfare, even though it's not new just not been used on this scale before. What's to stop any state that manufactures any type of device pulling off stunts like this. Putin is probably speaking to his advisors right now and asking why they didn't think of something similar to attack the west. The bigger the devisives the more high explosives you can put in them.
Wasn't this the whole storyline of one of the Kingsman films? iirc Samuel L Jackson played a mad billionaire who installed deadly software on every smartphone in the world, or summat.
