Comment by fortran77

Comment by fortran77 2 days ago

6 replies

I've seen photos posted on X and Telegram (of course I can't verify) of what look like Baofeng and Icom UHF hand-helds that have detonated. Not sure how they can get them to all blow up in unison--these aren't devices that can receive a digital message--as they apparently did at a funeral today.

danparsonson 2 days ago

If one can modify a device to incorporate an explosive, then it's surely possible to add another receiver of some kind too.

doodlebugging 2 days ago

Back in the day working on land seismic crews our blasting was handled by radio signal transmitted from the observer doghouse to the blaster at the shot-hole. You could hear on the radio when the recording crew began shooting for the day's production. There was a tone that triggered the shot while the blaster was connected to the blasting cap on the down-hole charge.

If someone placed explosives in a radio device I'm sure it would be quite easy to detonate them on command with a signal tone.

solardev 2 days ago

Those radios do decode some digital messages, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squelch#DCS for managing group convos (squelching others on the same channel who aren't part of the same group). There's also ANI identifiers and repeater codes, for example. So there's definitely firmware/software to work with SOME digital stuff onboard.

But I also think a lot of radios look like Baofengs, or are whitelabeled Baofengs, so who knows...

Besides, if Israel or whoever can modify the supply chain, they can add whatever receivers/chips they want into it alongside the explosives. Or just some sort of analog radio detonator/trigger.

ivan_gammel 2 days ago

They could receive a radio broadcast.

  • MPSimmons 2 days ago

    Given apparently(?) none of them detonated prematurely, the arming device would need to be content aware so that a normal transmission didn't set them off randomly and warn the rest of the targets that the devices were compromised.