Assuming this was indeed the work of the IDF/Moussad et al , it goes to show that these guys can play the Long Game quite well.

Doubt we here in the west could emulate that -- we don't have the patience or discipline.

To only use manual tooth brushes. And even then, maybe without tooth paste...

There's an old joke about the bog roll and the toothbrush having a chat, comparing how bad their jobs are.

Sure, a [1]toothpaste bomb could knock more than one's teeth out in a heartbeat, but poor dental hygiene is also [2]directly correlated with mortality ... pick your poison!

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/02/sochi-threat-update-toothpaste-bombs/357772/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885153/

Blow up the pagers, so they resort to using the walkie talkies, then blow those up.

I agree that this looks like the act of a country planning a major invasion. Decapitate the leadership, destroy the ability of the leaders who remain by making them fear the use of any electronic communications device, then you roll in and they can't coordinate a response.

Pity someone didn't slip Netanyahu one of those pagers. Not only has he continued to escalate against the wishes of many in his government, but it is looking more and more likely that he knew what Hamas was planning a year ago and let it happen because it gave him the excuse he wanted to level Palestine.

Et la marmotte, elle met le chocolat dans le papier alu...

BBC was reporting that Israel* had to "pull the trigger" early as they were worried that Hezbollah was onto them. Certainly, timing it just before (or during) an actual assault into Lebanon would have seriously hampered any defensive effort, they will presumably have a short time to regroup while Israel is now moving troops to the North. Whether Israel is reorganising for assault or defence time will tell, but the rhetoric suggests attack. That's an escalation in a volatile region and it's getting messier.

Same on DW.news, reportedly the plan was compromised by two people, and exposure was imminent.

If this had been pre-attack, you'd see it done hours before, not with enough time for the opponent to formulate a response, now they will go through their entire logistics chain with a fine coomb.

Whether Israel is reorganising for assault or defence time will tell, but the rhetoric suggests attack. That's an escalation in a volatile region and it's getting messier.

The playbook is to disable communications before launching an attack, so expect that shortly.

Strange choice and very obsolete radio. Maybe Icom stopped making them 10 to 15 years ago. Analogue with Digital voice option UT-155/UT118, and as it's an Amateur Licence model it makes no sense unless the DV modules had encryption and set modified to be outside Ham 2m band (144-146 MHz, or up to 148 MHz in USA). No encryption allowed on Amateur (Ham) radio, unless someone changed that recently.

Icom has warned there are counterfeits.

Plenty of cheaper Chinese two-way radios, but they are mostly analogue.

Other than crowd / event management why would they use a 7W analogue VHF FM (thus unencrypted) radio?

I don't suppose they worried about it being illegal. A Lebanese Minister has said these are unlicensed. There are multiple ways to have a pager fitted with explosives only trigger on a specific message, or even be remotely armed and trigger set, but it's harder to see how this would work unless they only looked like an IC-V82.

https://www.rigpix.com/icom/icv82.htm

If they had access to put explosives in, they'd have had access to pack along whatever is needed to respond to a modulated signal.

There are multiple ways to have a pager fitted with explosives only trigger on a specific message, or even be remotely armed and trigger set, but it's harder to see how this would work unless they only looked like an IC-V82.

It should be entirely possible to hide pager electronics, detonator and explosive inside the radio. If not pager then something which can activate on a particular sequence of tones.

Since few cheap radios will have their own encryption anyway since it's not allowed on amateur bands, I would probably try to bolt it on. In that case, it wouldn't really matter whether they were digital or not as long as I could patch into the audio connection. However, that sounds like more work than they were doing. Maybe they just didn't think it through or valued being able to receive signals from any radio over keeping their signals encrypted. For the same reason, if I was using pagers, they would only send encrypted messages, but that's probably not what they were doing either.

"For the same reason, if I was using pagers, they would only send encrypted messages,"

I don't see why they wouldn't just send coded messages rather than encrypted.

The digital option might hold a clue. Its got to be a combination of tones and time to prevent premature detonation. Triggering them over a wide area might be troublesome, it assumes that there's either repeaters that could be used or an aircraft broadcasting the command.

I daresay we'll find out soon enough. Unfortunately this may set off a whole new phase of terrorism because up to now there's a treaty prohibition on mining everyday objects for everyday civilian use (which, according to the Guardian, Israel is a signatory to). Now that's been broken literally anything could be turned into a bomb and the fun starts because you don't need to spread the products over a wide area to cause panic. Obviously Israel -- the prime suspect in this ("they've got form") thinks "it can't happen here", not a smart long term strategy.

Remember that the pager's explosive content was only 2-3 grams.

" No encryption allowed on Amateur (Ham) radio, unless someone changed that recently."

I have a strong feeling that the entities in the middle east would not worry too much about what's "allowed". Placing explosives in devices isn't "allowed" either, but there you are.

I like how everyone is an expert here.

You love how everyone here is an expert? Why, because every other post you have made gets downvoted? Isn’t there a Raspberry Pi item you should be complaining about ElseGobbler?

"I like how everyone is an expert here."

I blame IR35. Or possibly Intel. Or possibly green energy--you never know what those windmills are getting up to.

Hey, I've read all the James Bond novels and watched Mission Impossible and Secret Agent (Danger Man in the UK) on television.

Amateur radio operator and EE. Have built, operated, and disassembled lots of radio gear. Familiar with Icom products.

From the photos of blown-up Icom radios, they could be either amateur-band or commercial radios - the photos aren't clear enough to read the model numbers. Probably not important which, either.

The important part: They look as though the batteries exploded. The radios themselves were largely intact. This makes excellent sense, as there's very little empty space in the chassis itself to Put Stuff into. The battery, however, is large and heavy, provides a convenient power source, and one could easily remove half the battery and replace it with Stuff. Piggybacking on the radio's receiver would be more of a challenge, but is well within the capabilities of a professional engineering team. And the users would be unlikely to notice that their battery life was half of what it should be.

So the batteries were probably the place where Stuff Happened.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

As to the ethics of mounting attacks that unavoidably kill or injure significant numbers of bystanders, I have nothing but bad things to say about that.

You caught us. All we do is plan attacks such as these. BTW, don't buy any cheap Lebanese pagers or radios. Of course, in two more days, we'll have another type of personal appliance that you shouldn't buy second have from Northern Israel.

"The devices were then blown up once in the hands of members of the Iran-backed terror collective Hezbollah"

Israel doesn't seem to have cared much about whose hands they were in as they executed their extra-judicial removal of eyes and limbs. Many have concerns about drone strike assassinations without trial and due process and this is of even greater scale. There is also the thorny problem of whether those killed or maimed were playing an active part in hostilities and where this sits with respect to international law and the Geneva conventions.

It is unlikely to worry Netanyahu and his far right goons who consider Hezbollah and Hamas and anyone associated with them to be sub-human vermin who need eradicating by any means necessary but it doesn't sit comfortably with others.

"It is unlikely to worry Netanyahu and his far right goons who consider Hezbollah and Hamas and anyone associated with them to be sub-human vermin who need eradicating by any means necessary but it doesn't sit comfortably with others."

That's kind of how those people see the Jewish people, they've never had a problem attacking Israel, so, kind of nice to see this in return. If Hezbollah and Hamas asked for peace, and actually meant it, they would have it.

kind of nice to see this in return

When someone can stare into the empty eye sockets of anyone and says "you deserved that" I will be questioning their humanity.

The other big problem I have with it is it allows others to say Jews and Israelis are no better than they are.

Both sides are as bad as each other. They have decades of disputes and both keep hitting each other (often the civilians on both sides) in "retaliation" for the last exchange.

Neither side seems capable of putting forward a leader that is able to think of peace like Gandhi or Mandela. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by the orthodox right for trying to implement the Oslo Peace plan. Hamas kicked off Oct 7th knowing full well what it would provoke.

Maybe in a couple of centuries they might stop fighting but I see little hope here.

Just to repeat the obvious. Iran is a sovereign country. I know we've been effectively at war with the place for 40 years -- economic war, at least, with occasional breakouts of hostilities -- but regardless of what we think its still a legitimate country with a legitimate foreign policy. The fact we don't agree with them or their policies is irrelevant. There are forums for that sort of thing.

The moment we justify any form of terrorism because the targets are what we call "Iran backed militants" is the moment we lose all legitimacy and become a terrorist state ourselves. This isn't a White Hat / Black Hat cowboy movie, this is real life with real people. This mindset is edging a population that might have included a lot of neutral or even friendly people towards open hostility (you might have noticed that Turkey seems to have shifted significantly in the last year or two and its not going be a matter of a quick "regime change" to bring it back to being a loyal NATO subject).

The tinfoilers were right all along. Ham radio is now an adventure sport

especially one with any interests in the Middel East, I think I'd be giving my personal electronic gear a thorough scrub down right about now.

This is a game with multiple players.

especially one with any interests in the Middel East, I think I'd be giving my personal electronic gear a thorough scrub down right about now.

Or just an immediate ban on electronic devices on airlines, or importation of any devices containing Israeli components.

Israel may want to play coy about exactly how it engineered this, but there are only a few options. Devices were compromised at source, ie in Taiwan for the pagers and wherever the iCom radios were made. Or shipments destined for Lebanon were intercepted in transit, modified to add the splodey feature and then sent on their way without anyone along the supply chain noticing. And that only pagers & radios destined for Lebanon, and ideally Hezbollah have the dial-a-bang feature and aren't floating around the world in fairly urgent need of disarmament. I think it's pretty certain devices that failed to detonate, or incompletely detonate are being studied to find out how it was done.

Anyone read about that "solar system equipment" that also blew up ?

Someone cannibalizing a radio for their panel real-time monitoring, or someone trying to run an insurance claim ?

I thought we had about 4 billion years to go before that happened.

Dang. I just washed my car, too.

From what the Beeb reports, the pagers were manufactured in Hungary (a Hungarian company paid the Taiwanese company for their trademark a while ago, according to the Taiwanese), so that's a damn sight closer to Israel. And the Hungarian company is not responding to press enquiries... would it be beyond the realm of the believable if Mossad set up a Hungarian company, paid for a trademark, bought stock of pager hardware, modified it as appropriate, and then rebadged it before flogging it to someone who flogged it to Hezbollah?

It would not surprise me in the slightest. Now add walkie-talkies to that too... hey presto.

And the Hungarian company is not responding to press enquiries... would it be beyond the realm of the believable if Mossad set up a Hungarian company, paid for a trademark, bought stock of pager hardware, modified it as appropriate, and then rebadged it before flogging it to someone who flogged it to Hezbollah?

Sure. But that would require a couple of someones to set up the shell company, buy the trademark and then wait for an order. Mossad might have been able to steer that, if they had control over the buying process to specify only these devices from these suppliers to make sure they only ended up with the target users. Hungary might not be very happy if they had an unlicensed bomb making factory either.

It is quite probable that most of the Hungarian company did not know this was an objective. They probably made a lot of innocent pagers, etc, to have a working model and tooling to match. Only for this special customer would some part(s) be swapped.

You can't simply "modify" 5,000 assembled units between order and shipment by hand, that would be so much effort and so risky. I guess they had some part mass produced secretly, probably the battery, that had less L-Ion and the rest filled with explosives. Who would notice? Pagers are not 1-2 day power gobblers like a mobile phone, if you get 4 weeks between charges instead of the advertised 6 would you care or bother checking why?

The mystery to me is how such a battery would be triggered by a specific message, but maybe someone will get a hold of a failed-to-explode example and tell the world.

or importation of any devices containing Israeli components

Dude do you even hear yourself :D

How much do you think each of these devices ended up costing the Israelis once you draw the line on a per-unit cost ? Pennies ? A few bucks ? Or was it an operation with money no-object, involving probably creating a company in Hungary and setting up production facilities ?

You think they placed an order by the container to save, and have any remaining, that can end up blowing up your back pocket ?

Any industrialized country is equipped to build such items, and most of the organized groups can build them as well. This is why you spend time cursing at the TSA line at the airport, shoes in hand.

And any half-baked organization can DETECT such devices, should they THINK of doing so.

That's the sting of it - whoever was providing these DID NOT.

Nothing has changed as far as your precious safety goes. If any organized entity wants to blow your trousers, they'll have the device that will do it built in your own town. No matter whose imports you restrict.

So they did this to create an in-country market for cell phones, pagers, and walkie talkies? Fucking brilliant!!!!!!

Note to self don't buy from AllahExpress!