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Facts Matter
Footage Appears to Show ‘Iron Beam’ Laser System Use 100 kW Beams to Shoot Down Ballistic Missiles
00:13:11
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- [00:00]
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Good evening. And right before we dive in, I'll quickly mention that very obviously right now we are in the very thick of the fog of war. I mean, I'm skeptical of everything I'm seeing right now. I just assume instinctually that everything I'm reading, everything I'm seeing is propaganda from one side or the other, even seemingly raw footage on X. I just have to keep reminding myself that every one of the belligerent nations, Israel, Iran, the US they have huge social media teams who are working to shape the narrative, skew the discourse, just flood the zone with as much disinformation as possible for their side. Right. And so with that as the caveat, I'm going to present to you two points that I believe are worth highlighting from the last several days that I think are interesting and that I would like to share with you. The first one being the question of why exactly the US chose Sunday, February 28, to launch the offensive. And to that point, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he was on his way to brief Congress on the state of the war when he paused for a moment to speak to a gaggle of reporters and answer some questions. And one of the surprising things to come out of that exchange was the revelation of why exactly the US chose to attack Iran on February 28, meaning the proximal cause to the start of the war. Take, take a listen.
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There's two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders. It was automatic and in fact it bear to be true because in fact the. Within an hour of the initial attack on the, on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north for that matter, had had already been activated to launch. In fact, those had already been pre positioned. The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the President made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.
- [02:22]
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And so essentially, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's, statement right there. The US Launched our attack on Iran because we knew that the Israeli military was about to launch their attack on Iran. And Trump at that point had to make a choice whether to join them or to not join them and deal with the blowback. Now, of course, that could be the case, but again, with the fog of war currently in place, it's hard for me to believe anything like that. For instance, Even prior to February 28, the US military buildup around Iran was huge, with two aircraft carrier strike groups already in position. And so Obviously going into February 28, there was already that potential. And so now when you have the Secretary of State saying that we had to do this because the Israeli military was already going to do it, that could be true. But it could also just be a good way to say that our hands were tied. And also, if it wasn't on Sunday, maybe it was just going to be on a different day regardless. I mean, all of our assets were already in place. But I just try to think of it from a broader three dimensional, four dimensional chess perspective because Marco Rubio, he's a great statesman, he knows how to think about things multidimensionally. And so it could be the case. I'm not saying it is, but it could be the case that if many months from now, this whole thing winds up going sideways three days after hostilities began, Marco Rubio made that statement saying that, hey, our assets were in position, but they were only in position as a force posture during our nuclear negotiations. We were not planning on using them. And it was only when the Israeli military launched their attack that we basically had to do it because our hands were tied. I'm not going to speculate, by the way. I'm just going to tell you exactly what the official said. And, and according to him, according to the Secretary of State, the proximal reason, not the grand strategic reason, but the immediate reason for the February 28th attack was because the Israeli military was going to do it on that day. And Trump believed that we either had to join them and deal more damage to Iran or deal with the Iranian blowback that such an Israeli attack would result in. And so that was all the first point. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I'd like to introduce today's sponsor, Shen Yun Performing Arts. It is the pre, preeminent best Chinese classical dance performance in the world. But funny enough, they're actually based right here in the US and they're not allowed to perform in China. Part of the show. It exposes the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party. And so ironically, they can't even go there. But the show itself is great. I've personally seen it several times. And the athleticism, the artistry, the stories are phenomenal. Some of them are touching, some are funny, a lot of them are thought provoking and, and you're not really allowed to film the show, but basically it looked exactly like the commercials do. Beautiful colors, a full orchestra right there in the theater. They also have the screen in the back that's perfectly timed with the dancers. So sometimes it looks like they're jumping in and out of the screen to tell the story, which is cool. But the best part is that it's just super uplifting in a moral sense. I feel like every time I watch it, I leave the theater as a better person than I did coming in. And most shows nowadays, at least in my opinion, are really subversive and they sneak in some communist elements. But Shen Yun is different. They really showcase traditional culture. And even though it's Chinese, it actually probably resonates with everyone. So check it out, they have shows coming up in like 100 different cities. Dallas, Houston, New York, Memphis, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Seattle, pretty much everywhere else in between. And the best part is that to our viewers, they're offering a special promotional deal. Just buy your tickets over on the Shenyun website and use promo code Roman26 to to avoid paying both the ticketing fee as well as the facility fee. That's again, promo code Roman26. I'll throw a link to the website where you can find all the different show dates and cities. It'll be down in the description box below. The second point that I wanted to mention has to do with money. One of the financial difficulties of conducting a war like this is the asymmetry that exists between the price of the drones that are launched from Iran versus the price of the interceptors that are used to knock them out of the sky. And the difference in the cost is truly substantial. One of those Shahid 136 Iranian drones, they might only cost something like 20 to $50,000 to produce, but to intercept them, the Patriot air defense system, it might spend upwards of 4 to 5 million dollars per missile to shoot them down. And it's the same thing for the other systems like David's Sling, which intercepts mid range missiles. You have the Thaad system. Thaad, that system for high altitude missiles, the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems that defend against ballistic missiles. And especially when you're dealing with barrages that have a Mix of both missiles as well as drones that come out of Iran, the ratio might be upwards of 30 to 1, meaning it takes $30 million to knock out a million dollars worth of drones and missiles, which is, I'll mention an estimate. I've seen a range of estimates as I've been reading about this, but whether it's like 30 to 1 or 10 to 1, it's unsustainable in the long term. When you have to use $4 million Patriot missiles against a $20,000 drone, you can really only keep that up for so long, especially when just to be safe, you have to use multiple interceptors for a single missile. For instance, in this video here that you see up on your screen, to the naked eye, I mean, it looks like 11 Patriot interceptor missiles were used to take down a single ballistic missile. And so that kind of asymmetric warfare is just hard to maintain, which is a reality facing some of the Gulf states already. Here's in fact what the Wall Street Journal recently reported. After hostilities began, quote, Persian Gulf nations targeted by Iran have so far managed to limit damage by deploying sophisticated U.S. made air defenses against the hundreds of drones and missiles that have rained on their cities. With costly interceptors and radar, all integrated with the US military, the oil rich Gulf Arab states have fielded some of the most advanced air defenses in the world, despite their small populations and militaries. A crucial variable in this war, however, is whether these monarchies start running out of interceptors before the Iranian regime runs out of projectiles. At current burn rates, it could be very soon. And so it's amidst this backdrop, this reality, that this footage here blew up online. It, it was posted by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, so take it for what it's worth. And it allegedly shows missiles getting fired out of southern Lebanon by Hezbollah. However, those missiles, they explode shortly after being launched, one after the other. And the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, which by the way, just for your reference, is wholly owned by the Israeli government, they explained in that post that those missiles were not just misfiring. Instead they were getting shot out of the sky by a new type of weapon, the Iron Beam laser system. Now we discussed that new weapon late last year when it was first rolled out into use. But basically it's a system manufactured by a company called Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and It uses a 100 kilowatt high energy laser beam to shoot down aerial threats, things like rockets, mortars as well as drones. Back in September when that system was first rolled out, the they published a promotional video showing what the system actually looked like in action. Take a look. Laser system ready 3, 3, 2, 1 1. Target launched. Target engage. Laser interception and proclamation Progress successfully intercepted. Target successfully intercepted. Target launched. Target launched. Target engage. Laser interception in progress. Successfully intercepted. Target successfully intercepted. Iron Beam High power laser weapon system, the Iron Beam 450 as it's called. It claims to be a near zero cost solution for air defense. And that's probably true. I mean, firing a laser like that might cost thousands of dollars in electricity, but that's really just a rounding error when you're comparing it to tens of millions of dollars worth of interceptor batteries having to be fired off. There is a big caveat though to that system as reported by the Times of Israel back in September when it was first rolled out. Quote the main downside of a laser system is that it does not function well in low visibility, including heavy cloud cover or other inclement weather. However, judging from that footage that allegedly just came out of southern Lebanon under the COVID of darkness, that laser system still is able to shoot down missiles shortly after launch, saving potentially millions of dollars worth of aerial defense Patriot systems. If you want to see either the footage from earlier this week or that demo footage from September of last year, I'll throw those links down into the description box below this video. And then lastly, I would just honestly really want to know your thoughts. What do you think about this war? Do you agree with it? Do you agree with the kind of grand strategic vision of knocking out Iran in order to bring more stability to the region and to be able to have the US shift their focus more to the Pacific theater? Do you think that Trump is right, that this could just take four, four to five weeks, I believe he said to topple the regime and to implement something more, more friendly to the US in Iran? Or do you think it's just a quagmire that would just open up another can of worms and that this is like a year, decades long affair that our kids and maybe even grandkids will have to deal with in the future? And so yeah, so anyway, I'd love to know your thoughts. Leave them in the comments section below. Smash those like and subscribe buttons so that the algorithm picks this video up and shares it with ever more people. And then, until next time, I'm your host Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed and most importantly, stay free.