On the former: the Second Directorate would like to extend its congratulations to the Mossad on a well-conducted and technically ept polyassassination.
On the latter: let it be noted that ongoing events in Ukraine have demonstrated to my satisfaction that it is, in fact, a good idea to equip your tanks with technical means to pop drones that are sneaking up on you in a fashion too fast and nimble to hit with the big gun.
And it looks like they’re extending it to “walkie talkies” today.
I think Mossad is doing this as much to map the threat surface of their enemies as eliminate them.
I think they’re doing a marvelous progressive degradation of Hezbollah’s communications capabilities. Having previously done mobile phones, they’re now working on discouraging pagers and walkie-talkies. What next?
(As I said on the twits, even now the Mossad are working on exploding or HitchcockedÂą pigeons in their secret bunkers.)
Yes, the beepers and 20yo radios all going kablooey has proved entertaining. I’m assuming reduced-capacity lipo battery packs that had a couple grams of energetics added, along with some flavor of control chip.
And somehow the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon had one of those pagers… I’m about to die of not-surprise.
I still think Stuxnet was more impressively creative, though.
On the other hand, using an Israeli-controlled shell OEM to sell Hezbollah the modified pagers, meaning that not only did the Mossad pull off this intel coup but got paid by the enemy for doing it unto them…
FOI, regarding technical feasibilities, see https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/turning-everyday-gadgets-into-bombs-is-a-bad-idea/
Oh, absolutely, being paid by the enemy to make the bombs that will destroy them is far too entertaining.
Would this be Stratarchy of Misdirection and Subtlety operation if the Eldrae were doing it?
It depends on how formal the war is. If a war has actually started (they’ve appointed a Warmain to be in charge of it, etc., etc.), then it would probably be an Indirection & Subtlety gig.
On the other hand, in peacetime, it could also just be Second Directorate doing their routine job of asshole-pruning, something run out of Adjustments PWG or even Black Justice PWG.
On the gripping hand, the Empire by and large shares the salarian opinion that announcing that you’re at war before prosecuting it is rank folly, and so it’s not like you’d get a formal announcement of the former¹, and it’s also not like Second Directorate stop doing their thing just because there’s a war on, so, y’know, could be either.
…I guess they can afford that, inasmuch as their operations are precise enough to not actually pose all that much risk for ~unaffiliated civilians who happened to end up in the same general area.
(Mossad tries but they’re not that good, and they’re constantly getting blamed for not being that good. But AFAICT the Second Directorate is, indeed, that good, so that particular problem does not [much] occur.)
Eh, to an extent, but the warning flag I should raise here is that one should not confuse professionalism with mercy. Those agencies love to pull those sorts of “cut their heart out with a scalpel” operations, leaving behind no discernable signs of a chest-cracking, because it has a palpable memetic effect in making them look spooky and terrifying and not to be fucked with.
But while they don’t have DREAMING MALIGNITY, DREAMING SINISTER and INFERNO DAMPER do exist, and allocate non-zero collateral budgets for a reason. Not everything can be done with perfect elegance, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have to be done, belike.
On another note - well, it depends on how much work you are asking “~unaffiliated” to do.
The Empire isn’t quite so neurotic about its wars as we are on modern Earth, and more importantly has certain notions about freedom of choice and ethical responsibility (a long way downstream of the conception of a polity as an association-of-associations-of-people rather than as a chunk of land owned by a shiny hat) even when being governed which don’t go along with our notion that the citizen body is collectively irresponsible for what their government - or their government’s pet - does.
The first order consequence of which is that if you are going along quietly with storing missiles in your homes, etc. ad naus., then Theater Command will be more than happy to blow you to hell, noting in its briefings and aftermath reports that they engaged “auxiliary ablative meat” - which is to say, not civilians insofar as they were helping the enemy to conduct military operations.
(Duress is a very limited defense to crime in their legal system. [And one rarely attempted, since the usual response to attempted duress is, as the humans say, “Up yours. Die.”] It’s an even more limited defense to warcrime.)
Many people do not particularly appreciate this position on the part of the Imperial Admiralty, but since doing so discourages people from attempting to blackmail them with their own decency, the Admiralty isn’t known for caring a great deal about those people’s opinions.
The second order consequence of which, too, is that if your government is, say, mind-bogglingly stupid enough to carry out a military operation targeting civilians for atrocities, and if you the people are, say, mind-bogglingly stupid enough to throw a street party in celebration and/or otherwise make public your approval of same, then it will take the Senate all of five minutes to officially reclassify you as “uncivilized brigands of no worth” and authorize Theater Command to carry out the kind of strategic bombing campaign that the ghosts of “Bomber” Harris and Curtis LeMay might consider slightly overkill.