Tuesday’s attack in Lebanon, where hundreds of pagers used by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah simultaneously went off, indicated a highly sophisticated operation that may have required months of planning and global supply chain penetration, experts told Business Insider.
At least 2,800 people were injured and 12 were killed, the Associated Press reported, citing Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. Pagers went off in Lebanon around Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, a small attack involving walkie-talkies and exploding solar devices injured hundreds of people and killed at least 20 people, according to an AP report, citing Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
Israel has not commented or claimed responsibility for the attack. US and other officials who were briefed on the operation and spoke on condition of anonymity told The New York Times that Israel was behind the attack and had among a group of Taiwanese pagers to plant explosives in the device.
Spokesmen for the Israel Defense Forces and the United States Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
An attack of this magnitude requires extensive technical expertise involving intelligence gathering and months of planning, a national security and weapons expert told BI.
“The scale of this operation suggests a sophisticated supply chain attack by a state actor,” NR Jenzen-Jones, director of the Arms Research Services, told BI. “This would have required a significant investment in terms of personnel and other resources, and potentially months of planning.”
And if Israel was really behind the attack, as the United States officials said, then it is not surprising to come from a country that has already proven its technical capabilities, Sean McFate, an expert on ts’ national security and foreign policy at Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship &. Public Affairs, told BI.
“Israel is a very technologically savvy country with its own ‘Wadi Valley,’ as they put it,” McFate said.
Supply chain experts also told BI that the attack shows how weaknesses in global supply chains are often overlooked and can be exploited in war.
“The fact that the explosives were placed in the pagers before they reached Hezbollah shows the difficulties in obtaining electronic equipment, especially in international shipments,” Robert Khachatryan, CEO of Freight Right Global Logistics, said. he told BI.
Images available online appear to show that the pagers in the attack had the logo of Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based company, NBC News reported. The company told the agency in a statement that a Hungarian entity called BAC Consulting has been granted permission to use the Gold Apollo brand and that “the design and production of the products is fully managed by BAC.”
Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono, the chief executive of BAC, refused to do the pagers in a statement to NBC News and said it was “only the middleman.”
Gold Apollo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Business Insider was unable to reach BAC Consulting for comment. The company’s website appears to have been down since Wednesday evening.
Jenzen-Jones said that while supply chain attacks are often thought of in the context of cyber attacks, “destroying enemy supply lines has a long history in warfare.”
In 2012, The New York Times published a story about a secret US-run program for booby traps intended for use by the Taliban.
The size of Tuesday’s attack in Lebanon and the targeting of something like a pager rather than weapons is what makes this operation different, Jenzen-Jones said.
“For this type of attack – someone using modified objects on a daily basis to deliver potentially harmful effects in a planned manner – the scale of the operation is unprecedented,” he said.