How does Telegram advance the frontline command? The secret behind the alarms has been revealed

When a red color alarm sounds throughout the country, most of the public obeys the directives of the Home Front Command and enters the protected areas. Despite this, in recent years a wide phenomenon has developed of Telegram groups and bots in the messaging apps that report the launches long minutes before the horn starts to sound. Many wonder how a private person operating a Telegram channel manages to obtain information before an official military body that owns the most advanced radars in the world. The answer to this lies in the information systems shared by the military and civilian bodies, and in the time gap created by the need to verify data before activating a warning to the public.

The reason for this is that the bots and private groups are ahead of the front line command rooted in the military decision-making process. As soon as the radar detects a launch, it transmits to the Air Force an initial indication of a missile moving towards the State of Israel. This information goes to the Home Front Command, and there they have to decide whether to activate the alarm. Baer points out that the Home Front Command performs a repeated and strict check on every alert. There are cases when a launch is detected in the direction of Jerusalem, for example, and upon further inspection it turns out that the missile is about to fall in Jordanian territory and not in Israel. This is why the official system does not send the alert immediately The initial detection. The army prefers to wait a few more seconds to be sure that the threat is indeed relevant to the population, while the private operators distribute the information as soon as it appears on the screen in HML.

The closer the missile’s flight time gets to the target, the more accurate the indication becomes. The computerized systems create a kind of ellipse of an estimated impact zone that gets smaller and smaller as the missile advances. Baer explains that in the past information would be disseminated even 8 minutes before the impact, but today the modern systems are more focused. If you jump the population 2 minutes before the fall, the information is much more accurate about the final position. Although the early information looks tempting, Baer emphasizes that there is a considerable risk involved. He always says not to rely on external apps, even though knowledge is power. For some people this early information does harm and creates unnecessary anxiety, especially when it is inaccurate.

One of the main problems in these groups is the broken phone phenomenon. Baer says that he knows operators who transmit information late or with disruption. An operator can write that the fall will be in 3 minutes, when in practice there is only one minute left. Therefore, the unequivocal recommendation is to order information exclusively from the official Home Front Command application. The military system is the only one that is directly linked to the physical alarm horns, and no other private application has this direct connection.