"Contrary to initial assumptions, it was not the pager batteries that caused the explosions, but the lithium within them that caused the detonation."

Lithium is nasty stuff, and lithium battery fires are a growing worry for fire services (and the aviation industry, cf the 2013 787 grounding), but the explosions we've seen in video from Lebanon don't seem consistent with a deliberately triggered thermal runaway - no continuing fire and flames. The suggestion there was a beeped prompt to make people bring it up to their face before the explosion suggests a degree of precise timing I really don't think is consistent with a thermal runaway.

Example lithium battery fires:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nz5ijXcckI
 
The theory that there was around there thousands of batteries rigged with explosive is absurd. Why would you expose the general public to such risks for an indefinite period of time? Visualize those pagers at airports, in flight close to you etc... That would be stupid.

I think that very unique explosive charges must have been well hidden inside the pagers (either in their batteries or inside integrated circuits or larger components), or within the walkie-talkie batteries. The Icom walkie-talkie sets shown above were too old to be rigged outside Lebanon unless Hezbollah acquired the "new old stock" from somewhere lately, which was already rigged.

The efforts by the adversary then were really massive.

If these pagers were fielded not earlier than in Q1 of 2024 as reported, unless only in the summer, then they were supposed to operate for maximum several months before the massive RC detonation to avoid detection. There was discussion in the links mentioned above that two Hezbollah members realized that something was wrong with the pagers (or rather their batteries) and wanted to bring the matter to the attention of their superiors. Each of these two guys lost their lives consecutively in unknown circumstances. The information published even by Hezbollah sources is so vague that it's impossible to determine now how the pagers and the walkie-talkies could have been rigged. Perhaps Hezbollah still isn't sure. Maybe tomorrow they will say something more through their Secretary General.

If you happen to remember the GUR plot to set the Kerch bridge ablaze in 2022, the explosives weighting 50k lbs. were wrapped inside large plastic foil coils, which made them invisible to X-ray. Perhaps another special plastic coating was used in the pagers to hide the explosives well enough to avoid detection by the customs while being imported by Lebanon.

The case only shows that Hezbollah must have been heavily penetrated by its adversary to make the pager and walkie talkie operation successful.
 
Perhaps another special plastic coating was used in the pagers to hide the explosives well enough to avoid detection by the customs while being imported by Lebanon.
And the moment Hezbollah figures out how to duplicate this, then no more laptops, phones, or battery powered devices on airline flights.... Ever.

Welcome to 2024.
 
"Oh, really, KGB? You mind if we give them an explosive present?"

That would be the SVR, the KGB hasn't existed since 1993 IIRC.

(either in their batteries or inside integrated circuits or larger components), or within the walkie-talkie batteries.

All of the evidence points so far towards the batteries being modified with a hidden HE-charge, no doubt we'll know more by the end of this week.
 
There are now reports of home energy solar systems going bang....
Not only them. Also car batteries. Household appliances.


 
Lots of people talking about the technology and how clever an attack it was.

But was it?

3000 explosions randomly scattered around a country is not an attack pattern consistent with the laws of war. There was no capability to determine who else was in the blast radius or otherwise likely to be endangered and whether they were civilians.

Mossad has staged technologically clever attacks before, but they've almost always been specifically targeted at a target few people will object to. That isn't true here and people outside Israel aren't going to remember "two hezbollah fighters killed", they're going to remember "young girl killed".

Israel is losing the PR war, and it's doing it to itself.

And are the actions of Hamas/Hezbollah per the "laws of war"? Certainly not and Israel cannot fight them in a army vs. army sense as we have seen thru history. Can't see faulting them for taking an approach that targets the leadership and wipes out communciations at the same time. October 7th was not targeted at the military so where is the outrage at what was done on that day and with the hostages since then?

Mark
 
And are the actions of Hamas/Hezbollah per the "laws of war"? Certainly not and Israel cannot fight them in a army vs. army sense as we have seen thru history. Can't see faulting them for taking an approach that targets the leadership and wipes out communciations at the same time. October 7th was not targeted at the military so where is the outrage at what was done on that day and with the hostages since then?

Mark
What made terrorism profitable was the lack of reaction by the US and French governments to the massacre of their soldiers in 1983.

Forty years of terrorism later, its credibility is minimal.

In my opinion, the new phase of the war announced by the Israeli Minister of War could consist of fighting terrorism with terrorism in order to test the will of the enemy. A dangerous game.
 
Alex Hollings from Sandboxx has uploaded a video about these exploding pagers:


On Tuesday afternoon, explosions wrang out across Lebanon as thousands of pagers carried by operatives of the militant group Hezbollah detonated in what now appears to be a concerted attack mounted by Israeli forces. According to Lebanon’s health minister, at least 12 people are confirmed dead with at least 3,000 more reportedly injured in the attack, though thus far, Israel has not claimed responsibility for what may be the most unprecedented counter-terror operation in modern history.
A second attack reportedly followed on Wednesday, this time, with hand-held radios apparently exploding in a similar fashion.
How was any of this possible? Let's see what we can find out.

Edit: The actual video starts at 4:17 in.
 
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Just wait for exploding carrier pigions...

I wouldn't be at all surprised. Hezbollah uses (used?) pagers because they knew that Israeli intelligence could track phones. With no trust in phones, they moved to a less capable technology. Now trust is being undermined in that technology in the most visceral way possible. Most media reports frame this as an attack on people when it's really an attack on the network through the human elements. 'Social engineering', as hackers call it, turned to a technique of war.
 
And are the actions of Hamas/Hezbollah per the "laws of war"? Certainly not and Israel cannot fight them in a army vs. army sense as we have seen thru history. Can't see faulting them for taking an approach that targets the leadership and wipes out communciations at the same time. October 7th was not targeted at the military so where is the outrage at what was done on that day and with the hostages since then?

Mark
Were did I even imply that I wasn't outraged by that? Or is Israel immune from criticism, no matter how egregious their conduct?
 
The theory that there was around there thousands of batteries rigged with explosive is absurd. Why would you expose the general public to such risks for an indefinite period of time? Visualize those pagers at airports, in flight with someone seated close to you etc...

It's clear that the affected pagers were a single order specifically for Lebanese Hezbollah. Those folks don't fly a whole lot, and probably are under direction not to take their pagers if they do. The pagers seem to be "in-house" models that work on dedicated networks, not general telephone networks, so they would not work anywhere else anyway.

The child casualties are probably from kids picking up their dad's pager sitting on a table when it began to ring. Which does make this technique rather indiscriminate and worrisome. Triggering it because of possible detection, rather than to preempt an actual LH attack, also seems problematic to me.
 
"Contrary to initial assumptions, it was not the pager batteries that caused the explosions, but the lithium within them that caused the detonation."

Lithium is nasty stuff, and lithium battery fires are a growing worry for fire services (and the aviation industry, cf the 2013 787 grounding), but the explosions we've seen in video from Lebanon don't seem consistent with a deliberately triggered thermal runaway - no continuing fire and flames. The suggestion there was a beeped prompt to make people bring it up to their face before the explosion suggests a degree of precise timing I really don't think is consistent with a thermal runaway.

Example lithium battery fires:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nz5ijXcckI
The pager batteries are very small, on the order of 500mAh, while modern smartphones are 3000-5000mAh. This must have been an added explosive.
Those folks don't fly a whole lot, and probably are under direction not to take their pagers if they do.
Very likely.
 
"Contrary to initial assumptions, it was not the pager batteries that caused the explosions, but the lithium within them that caused the detonation."

Lithium is nasty stuff, and lithium battery fires are a growing worry for fire services (and the aviation industry, cf the 2013 787 grounding), but the explosions we've seen in video from Lebanon don't seem consistent with a deliberately triggered thermal runaway - no continuing fire and flames. The suggestion there was a beeped prompt to make people bring it up to their face before the explosion suggests a degree of precise timing I really don't think is consistent with a thermal runaway.

Example lithium battery fires:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nz5ijXcckI

I did see some early reports that they got hot before they went off, in fact a few people had noticed they were overheating and discarded them. There was also reports that earlier models of the pager in the same order which used a different sized battery but had also been rigged didn't get hot enough to reliably detonate.

I am speculating it was a combination of a software hack to their ROM to create a triggerable thermal runaway and PETN explosives (3 grams is mentioned by Israeli sources) having been installed inside the batteries along with a detonator tied to a thermal switch. They then wouldn't have had to make any modifications to the physical electronics to create a detonator. The other clue is that the ones supplied to Hezbollah had lithium battery packs whereas the Apollo Gold Taiwan specification for the model said they used rechargeable AA batteries.
 
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To quote The Bard, A plague o' both your houses! And Mods, please feel free to delete/censure/muzzle/cleanse/correct/edit as you see fit. If anyone is truly interested in my opinions on the future of the current middle east hellhole (Bueller?), message me, if you feel inclined to do so, because I am dead certain that my views would not survive out in the open wild...
 
Update on the walkie talkies.
Icom says all of that model were manufactured in Japan between 2004 and 2014, it had exported them to the middle east but obviously not recently. They said from the pictures they couldn't check but looked authentic apart from missing the security hologram on the batteries (though obviously after 10 years doubtful if they would still have original batteries).
Lebanon Government has said the Walkie Talkie import wasn't through official channels or recognised agents and they weren't screened, they said pretty much all instances of the IC-V82 circulating in the middle east were counterfeit due to the originals wearing out.

Meanwhile Hungary says that BAC only acted as intermediary, they never manufactured the pagers. The company was registered in 2020 as a sole trader but it had previously existed at the same address under the same name. Hungary said it would co-operate with the criminal investigation into the attack. BAC's published accounts show a record of payments to 8 companies for imports from Taiwan and that it didn't have any relationships with any electronic manufacturing firms other than Apollo Gold, it also showed minor transactions importing and exporting jewellery and food from Asia with a turnover of about $725,000 per year. Apollo Golds chairman has also said hes considering suing Israel for reputational damage.
 
To me, this is little different than throwing hand grenades in crowds.

Now I look for a response to be an even easier hack of substituting menorah candles out for explosives...by either Hezbollah, or the Price Tags as a false flag.

I wouldn't be near a subway sandwich in that part of the world right now.

Here, it's take the gun, leave the cannoli.
 

This was mentioned in the lead article on the six o'clock news which I've just finished watching. Firstly pagers were remotely detonated yesterday and then today walkie-talkies, the news article showed a large funeral procession in Beirut for a boy who was the son of a Hezbollah member who was killed by his dad's pager when it detonated while he was playing with it, this and others has the place in an uproar.
 
More information is coming to light:

By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

Sources:



It transpires from the NYT article that Hezbollah also uses the Icom IC-V8 walkie-talkies, albeit it's not clear whether they were genuine Japanese products or counterfeit.

18hezbollah-reconstruct-02-wqfm-superJumbo.jpg


Specs are available from: https://archive.org/details/icom_IC-V8_brochure

I can't believe Hezbollah's addiction to the older Icom radios (eg. IC-V68, IC-V82, IC-V8). Cheap Chinese Baofengs that can be purchased almost everywhere for less than $30 each are of similar or even better quality. The Russians use them en masse in UA and so far we have not heard about the instances of Baofeng explosions.
 
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So a full year before the Oct 2023 attack they had been distributing thousands of bombs throughout Lebanon disguised as civilian objects which is illegal under Article 37 of the Geneva convention which bans disguising a military personnel/weapon as a civilian so as to invite confidence or which an adversary might trust in good faith (by the way militia, where civilians have taken up weapons are exempted from the requirement to wear an identifying uniform in the Geneva convention, Special forces for example are allowed to disguise themselves as civilians for camouflage but are required to identify themselves to the adversary before the commencement of hostile action). Or if you want to argue they were mines then the rules on landmines ban their use in civilian areas in which ground combat is not presently taking place.
 
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After 150 posts in 48h, we should note that the purpose of the forum is collecting information about unbuilt technology, allowing enthusiast to interact.

This particular thread about the beepers is an example of another thread converted into a news agency updated almost real time with occasional off-topic and personal confrontation due to the unavoidable emotional derivatives of the subject.

Threads in the bar, although interesting, should be kept secondary because that adds data clutter to the whole database.
The bar is basically made from off-topic contents so it shouldn't be "data heavier" than the core sections
 
Hi Antonio,
Thanks for the input. Well, the issue of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies is so extraordinary and, as an unusual weapon system, I hope we can somehow associate it with 'unbuilt technology' especially given that we still do not know exactly how the pagers and other electronics were made to detonate, hence the discussion and the addition of the sources. In fact, every hour brings more details on the matter, so we count here on your understanding.
Moreover, as @WatcherZero pointed out, such perfidy weapons are banned by the Geneva Convention (IV) on Civilians, 1949, Article 37:
Interestingly, Israel seems to be a party of the IV Geneva Convention, actually.
 
What I'm wondering and waiting for are the results of the forensic examination of the various pager fragments to determine which high-explosive was used, I wonder if it was something like C4, Semtex, RDX, TNT, PETN or something else. One thing for sure is that the lithium-batteries would have an incendiary effect too upon exposure to air.
 
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Icom of Japan distanced itself from the matter of Hezbollah's exploded radios bearing their logo. Perhaps indeed counterfeit Icom products and their battery packs were rigged with explosives and then supplied to Hezbollah. That would constitute the top of perfidy, anyway.




The IC-V8 and IC-V82 are listed by Icom as counterfeit. It has been a long time since the products were discontinued.
 
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@yahya

As I said this is an obviously interesting subject. I'm even following myself from different sources, including what is being posted here.
I also agree with you at being a novel war technology. I'm not consider it into the category of unbuilt because it has been operationally deployed but certainly it deserves a place into the "military" section.

One of my moderation action aim would be slowing down the "post flow". Most information is still speculative thus what about waiting for more objective facts.

Just my personal idea to keep enjoying a more efficient forum. It's almost 20 years since we started it and why not thinking about preserving it pretty fit to work smooth for, at least, two decades more ;)

Regards
 
Notice that, as was envisioned earlier, feedbacks from device manufacturers at this stage point already toward an increased scrutiny in their supplier, manufacturing and reseller chains... as to the extra costs.
I hope that US and European government would find here more incentive to repatriate component sourcing to allied countries where no ideological fronts stand.

It is also understood that consumer's appreciation regarding those products would be altered, perhaps leading to adjustments in marketing or even the design of those items.

IMOHO, the mediatization of the horrific wounds could lead, and this would be an additional welcomed consequence, to some urgent hardware modifications.
 
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It's been a while, but I spent my first years in industry QA/QC testing 'Purchase Samples'. Regardless of dubious 'Certificates of Analysis' that ranged from implausible to absurd, we kept discovering new ways that wannabe suppliers kept trying to 'slip one by us'.

Never mind contamination by look-alike substances, often heavy with toxic metals, we dealt with fungi, drum-bottom fines and, just the once, 'Crawling Crud'. Latter was a severe infestation of tiny mites that crawled out of postal baggy onto lab bench, reducing lab-tech to hysterics (*).. After summoning our delighted Microscopist to take an appropriate sample, we chloroformed the rest of perps, reported, 'Appearance = FAIL'.

Due to my Electronics hobby, I was uncomfortably aware of the ways and means tech components' supply chain were vulnerable.
Case in point: One company supplied budget ICs with but 99% certification. Happens their production line was better, so they'd save the now-rare bad chips to put one (1) into each tube of discounted but perfect chips to restore the statistics.
Also, we heard of slightly sub-standard chips that were slightly too thin because they'd been 'skimmed' some-where along convoluted supply chain, and re-printed to mimic the 'Good Stuff'.

Don't get me started on 'Mafia Zantac', whose 'Quick & Dirty' synth route left their tablets with actual carcinogens a-plenty...

*) The young woman in question was a fan of horror stories, Stephen-King stuff. Having a recent B-Movie 'come to life', though...
 
If the Admin does not mind, here is an update. It seems that the cover-up stage has commenced.

I wonder why that Hungarian-Italian lady of BAC does not say where exactly she has ordered the production of the AP-924 and other pagers which were later shipped to Hezbollah unless the Hungarian investigators or her lawyers told her to do so.

So, here there are the revelations.

(1) The Bulgarian Connection.

A news outlet claims that a Bulgarian company from Sofia called Norta Global Ltd sent the pagers that exploded to Hezbollah.

The Hungarian company BAC Consulting owned by Israel only served as a front company and the deal itself was carried out through Bulgaria

photo_2024-09-19_14-25-23.jpg

Sources:

And according to the Daily Mail (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...r-hezbollah-pagers-built-scratch-lebanon.html):

At least two other shell companies, one in Sofia headed by a Norwegian businessman were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.


(2) The Bulgarian / Austrian Connection - a minor mod to #(1)

The Hungarian Government states that the pagers were not made in Hungary, but in Bulgaria, according to a government spokesperson.

BAC Consulting never had any Manufacturing capacity in the first place, said the spokesperson, and the work was outsourced to Bulgaria, at the same time, Apollo Gold LTC states that "An Austrian Engineer" was involved in the business.

(3) The Czech Connection according to Pepe Escobar on sm (quotation follows):

OPERATION MOSSAD PAGER: THE BREAKDOWN

The pagers that blew up or blinded 3,200 people - including Iran's ambassador to Lebanon - were manufactured in the Czech Republic.

The shipment was purchased in early March by a Qatari - with delivery to Beirut.

The manufacturing company, operating under license from the Taiwanese parent company, Golden Apollo, is owned by a - surprise! - Jewish American.

The explosive device and the printed circuit board with the malicious code were installed still at the factory in the Czech Republic.

The batch was shipped by sea from Hamburg to Lebanon.
.
The pagers were equipped with tracking sensors. Mossad could detect where Hezbollah operatives as well as civilians were gathering and where were they going.

Forty seconds before detonation, the pagers sounded a high-pitched alarm - and self-destructed.

The pagers started to get very hot an hour before the explosion. A significant number of potential victims moved them away from themselves. But the 3,200 victims did not.


(4) The False-flag / Put-the-Blame on French Connection:

That is the official address for BAC Consulting KFT, which produced them under a commercial agreement, according to Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese company whose brand was on the exploding devices.

But a woman at the Budapest office said the only sign she had seen of BAC was monthly visits from a representative to pick up the mail. A building in Paris listed as the address of BAC’s chief executive turned out to be barracks for French gendarmes.

Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/...ding-pagers-in-lebanon-runs-to-taiwan-hungary
 
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And obviously, Lebanon CAA banned pagers and Walkie-Talkies:

Walkie-talkies and pagers are prohibited on planes​

Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, located in Lebanon, prohibits all passengers from carrying pagers and walkie-talkies on board. The ban applies to both hand luggage and checked luggage, but also cargo and comes into effect immediately, states Lebanon's state news agency NNA.

The Lebanese civilian aviation directorate asked airlines operating from Beirut to tell passengers that walkie-talkies and pagers were banned until further notice. Such devices were also banned from being shipped by air, the Lebanese state news agency reported.
 

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