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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   28918 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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What's a good anti-tunnel strategy for the Israelis? A few things immediately come to mind:

  1. Blowing them up / collapsing them
  2. Flooding with water
  3. Sealing / flooding with concrete & rubble
  4. Attacking clean air with smoke / toxins
  5. Occupation / patrol / drones / auto turrets

I think the tunnels are the main infrastructure advantage for Hamas, and Israel will need to confront them directly somehow.

Surely the greatest challenge is finding them

Agreed, but once you're in, you should be inside the network. No doubt there are segments and isolated clusters, but all it takes is one entrance per segment.

There are quite a lot of IEDs and booby traps in those tunnels.

Airborne ground penetrating radar.

Not as easy as it sounds, unfortunately. Effective range is rather limited; the last GPR I worked on was humvee-mounted. Finding a steel can 6 inches under the ground might be easier than a rough tunnel.

There are air-mounted magnetic imaging devices that penetrate deep underground and are used in geological surveys. They're helicopter-mounted and able to pick up the depth at which the material of the rock underneath changes composition, so would presumably be able to pick up on the metal used in the tunnels somewhat easily, though I can't guarantee that.

I tried to look into this, but I only found a couple scuffed wiki [pages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_survey_(archaeology). I’d be really interested if you have any more details.

My experience with it is from working with a mining company that surveyed a rather large area, including our property, looking for mineral deposits. It was a large array, probably around 10'x10', carried by a helicopter, and the results were impressive. Can't remember if they let me keep any copies of the study, but I'll dig and see if I can pull it up as it may have more details. It was definitely considered pretty cutting edge at the time, but it was like 10 years ago. Might have been more of a proprietary secret than I realized at the time.

I thought LIDAR was good at finding underground structures, even in dense urban build-up. Am I imagining this?

Yes, I imagined that. I am big dumb.

I don't see how lasers could penetrate the ground.

You're not using enough power.

...right. I should really think before I post.

I know LIDAR is pretty good at finding recently disturbed soil: cut and cover trenches, landmine holes, fresh backyard graves, etc.
You'd need a pretty good laser to make it work 6' underground though.

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