Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies being used by Hezbollah terrorists suddenly exploded in Lebanon, killing and injuring thousands of people. No one knows how it happened but utterly ignorant media of the world went ballistic speculating that Israel had rigged them with explosives and detonated them remotely in a striking demonstration of high-tech war and its ability to penetrate the ranks of its adversaries.
If you are terribly excited about this and have started dreaming of the next film in Tiger/Pathan series where your oh-so-clever-n-brave Indian agents would quietly kill terrorists ensconced abroad just by the press of a button sitting in their offices, I am going to pour ice-cold water on your excitement.
Millions upon millions in India have derived their ‘notions’ (dare someone call it knowledge) of explosives from what they have seen in third-rate Bollywood action films that have sunk in their subconscious. Elsewhere in the world, similar ignorance is fostered by what they have seen in spaghetti Westerns and action films like those of James Bond and Tom Cruise.
If you think that high explosives are like Diwali crackers and all that you need to blast them is to light a fuse, this article is the right medicine for you. Still, if this article leaves anyone unconvinced howsoever slightly, I recommend that they must then read if not research papers on the subject, at least Tadeusz Urbański and M. Jurecki’s classic three-volume work ‘Chemistry and Technology of Explosives’.
What Exactly Happened In Lebanon?
Pagers are wireless telecommunications devices that receive and display alphanumeric or voice messages. Hezbollah communicates through its own telecommunications system and has asked its members to avoid using mobile phones since the Gaza war began almost a year ago. Hezbollah have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication to evade tracking of their locations by Israeli intelligence. You get an alert on pager and then make a call from some unpredictable phone or do whatever you deem fit. Paging can be one-way or two-way.
On September 17 at 1530 hours local time, pagers suddenly started exploding in their belts or pockets. It was followed by another round of blasts at 1700 hours. New York Times said that the pagers received messages that appeared to be coming from Hezbollah’s leadership before detonating. The blasts in pagers killed 12 and the next-day similar blasts in walkie-talkies killed 20. Nearly 3,450 have been injured according to Lebanese health ministry.
Outrageous Speculations
The AP924 pagers in question are from Taipei-based Gold Apollo, but they said that they had outsourced to BAC, a Hungary-based firm. More information regarding manufacture and supply chain is yet to emerge. The walkie-talkies were Icom’s old model IC-V82. Icom Inc. said they had stopped producing it 10 years ago.
Speculations about the amount of explosive planted ranged from 1 gram to 3 gram in the pagers at the manufacturing stage itself. Of course, the ignoramuses have no answer as to how this amount was decided upon? Is it undetectable? Why not less or more? It is nothing but pure speculation. Question is, who told you and on what authority? Israel has not even owned it up. And, of course, the media cannot be bothered about the nature of the signal to the device.
Why High Explosives Are Insensitive?
Modern high explosives are deliberately made notoriously difficult to explode. You can take them in a pan and heat them directly over gas fire. They would melt but not explode. In fact, before plastic explosives or plastic-bonded explosives were invented, this was indeed the USP of explosives like TNT. You could melt them and pour them in a shell casing so that they filled every crevice and corner uniformly. Before that, packing a solid explosive like Picric Acid in shells was a difficult and unreliable process. You can burn high explosives and make tea over the fire. This is what many American soldiers used to do in the jungles of Vietnam by taking a little piece of the C-4 explosive block given to them for demolition purposes.
Now, why are they made difficult to explode? Simple; so that they remain safe in handling and accidents do not take place. When Nitro-glycerine was invented in the mid-19th century, it was so sensitive that it used to explode literally at the drop of a hat. There was a jocular saying that Nitro-glycerine has got a mind of its own and it kills every fool who tinkers with it. It was 13 years after its invention that Alfred Nobel could devise a procedure to make it relatively safer to use. That’s how Dynamite was born, but not before his brother Emil Nobel perished in a blast in their factory at Heleneborg.
Also Read: Trunk calls to mobile — the journey from dumb to smart phones
Now, they are made so ‘insensitive’ that USAF bombs are actually tested by dropping them nose down on a hard concrete floor from a height of 80 feet and they do not explode. They explode only when their fuzes trigger them.
What Are Detonators and What They Do?
High explosives (correctly called Secondary Explosives to distinguish them from friction and heat sensitive explosives called Primary Explosives) do not burn like gunpowder. They detonate, that is, their large molecules break into smaller gaseous molecules. This detonation takes place only when they are subjected to a critical threshold of shock energy into them in the form of heat or shock stress.
This critical energy for detonation or initiation of high explosives is necessarily provided by what is known as detonators. These specially made devices contain a chain of primary explosives like Lead Styphnate followed by secondary explosives like PETN or Tetryl. Usually made of thin aluminium, they look like thin cigarettes. They, in turn, are exploded by safety fuses (for non-electrical detonators) or electrical current (for electrical detonators).
You require detonators of different explosive powers for exploding or initiating different high explosives, depending on their ‘insensitivity’. There is no universal detonator for all explosives. These days, for military demolition applications, mostly electrical detonators are used. Different types of detonators require different currents to explode them. If the initiating current is less than that, the detonator would not work at all or not work reliably.
For example, according to the US Army Field Manual FM 3-34.214 titled ‘Explosives and Demolitions’, their M6 detonator for C-4 explosives requires 1.5 amperes of current. This current is ensured by devices like M-34 or CD450-4J Blasting Machines. You cannot take out your torch/flashlight AA battery and use that! In England, the No. 10 detonator requires minimum 1.0 ampere of current and 0.65 ampere is described as ‘guaranteed no fire current’. It means that between 0.65 and 1.0 ampere, the detonator would not work reliably and below 0.65, it will not work at all.
Now let us turn our attention to the batteries commonly found in pagers and smart phones. These batteries are described in terms of milli-ampere-hour (mAh) as a measure of their capacity. Most people do not understand much about it, except that they want a higher figure.
If your smartphone has typically a battery of 3000 mAh, it means that drawing 150 mA (that is, 0.15 ampere), it will last 20 hours (150×20=3000). Pager batteries are much smaller because a Pager has to do very limited functions. You would find them typically in the range of 260, 300 or 500 mAh, that is, giving currents less than 0.05 ampere.
Can One Use Pager Batteries for Detonators?
No. You saw that mobile and pager batteries give very low currents in continuous discharge mode. In fact, they don’t have to give high currents because the electronics of the phones does not demand high amperage. They are not even designed for that. If short-circuited, however, any battery can give higher current for very short periods. Theoretically, it could be in the range of detonators but in all probability, they would not work reliably. That is why scores of attempts to trigger bombs by mobiles have been failing regularly. One has to use a relay circuit with a separate power source to make them function reliably. Most terrorists do not know that much electronics.
In the instant case, several thousand devices had to explode. Nothing short of absolutely reliable could be used.
World media did not speak of detonators even once in any single report. It only goes on to show that ignorance is universal. Let it sink in your mind. Whether you are using 1 gram or 1 ton of high explosive, you necessarily require detonators. Period. Then the question arises, how will you conceal them in the devices and power them?
There Is No Way We Can Know What It Was
Think for yourself. If it was a Mossad intelligence operation, do you think that the technology used would have been so simple that you could figure out its secrets or even reverse engineer it merely by reading third-rate speculative media reports on it? By God, had it been so simple, Al Qaida, ISIS and Hamas etc. would have been exploding millions of phones across the world!
There is a problem in planting explosives and detonators in devices like pagers and phones. You see, a terrorist organization, in its secret hideouts or meeting places would have necessarily installed sophisticated X-ray scanners, metal and explosive detectors, etc. They cannot run the risk of enemy agents barging in disguise in their hideouts, or subverting some of their own, and blasting them out of existence. If Israel planted commercially available explosives and detonators, the devices run the risk of getting caught in such checking. If you have rigged thousands of devices, the risk of detection is greater.
Thus they would have to invent some new explosive with extremely low vapour pressure that is not detectable and micro-sized detonators. In public domain, there is information about a patent application for an integrated thin film explosive micro-detonator but it could not become commercial.
Hence, it stands to reason that whatever they have used has to be extremely complex and advanced, invented by the best scientists in the world. I am using the word ‘invented’ because the existing technology about which we have information in published works, cannot explain them.
Scientifically speaking, the most likely possibility is that the batteries were tampered with. Some such chemical was inserted in the electrolyte layer of the batteries that would not interfere with the regular functioning of the battery but would readily convert into gaseous products if the battery overheated or was made to produce current more than a critical value to start some reaction. That can be ensured by planting a special circuit in it, which, in turn, could be activated remotely. It would result in the device exploding due to overpressure without any explosive in it. What that material would have been is, of course, not known but a blast in the battery by this would be more powerful than blasts in batteries due to overcharging etc. we are familiar with.
Implications for aviation security
Supposing it is indeed somehow possible to rig electronic communication devices with explosives and detonate them remotely, it would have a most disastrous effect on aviation security. Aircrafts receive mobile signals easily up to a height of half a mile or nearly 3000 feet in both ascent and descent mode. Imagine exploding all the, say 200-300, mobiles on the plane simultaneously! The plane may very well crash. Even if the devices are asked to be kept in the cargo hold, they can be made to explode there too. In descent mode in particular, planes are highly vulnerable. There would be a crisis in aviation if that could be done. Arthur Hailey’s novel ‘Airport’ could materialize in a far more frightening avatar.
Correct scientific analysis.