When I read the headline at nytimes I was thinking that it was a test drone and they were testing the process of communicating across branches to coordinate taking down drones (a real problem) but no, it was just incompetence and idiocy. Guess I'm not cynical enough yet to match reality.
The current administration has staffed administrators who seem to choose "shoot first and ask questions later" and generally struggle to communicate / coordinate like adults.
When Nena was singing about 99 balloons we thought it was hyperbole. Few understood she was a traveler from a future where soldiers where literally shooting down birthday balloons before progressing to drones. Scary to think about the next level of escalation.
> Cartels routinely use drones to deliver drugs across the Mexican border and surveil Border Patrol officers. Officials told Congress last summer that more than 27,000 drones were detected within 1,600 feet (500 meters) of the southern border in the last six months of 2024.
No wonder they mistook one of theirs for one of these.
I wonder how accurate that number is. Are detected drones just blips on some detection system? Are they even drug running drones, are they even drones at all?
That's such am inefficient, hands-on, loud and dumb way to smuggle drugs across a border this large, this cannot be true. Unless you they are talking about submarines and land RCs, in that case sure, probably.
Alternative hypothesis: the reported number of drones isn't real (anything the Trump government says about "cartels" can be assumed to be made up). The military got increasingly on alert, with senior officers pushing to get a shootdown on one of the not real drones. Therefore the laser operators end up firing on the first drone they confirm seeing.
Wait, do you think the cartels aren’t real? Was all the violence in Mexico these past few days committed by ghosts or something?
Because if they are real, and they are trying to get drugs into the United States (their primary income source), then drones seem like a perfectly reasonable method they might use to go about it. And yes, their have been plenty of confirmed cartel drones seized, shot down, etc with lower-tech methods in the past.
Both of these actions are extraordinarily illegal under US law and FAA regulation for a number of reasons. Among them - Permanently blinding a human pilot can be done at 1000 times the range that it takes to melt aluminum, and laser weapons are powerful enough that secondary scatter off shiny surfaces is a real hazard.
We have a civilian airspace, and we have laser weapons, and we have CBP/ICE MAGA militia dabbling in military work. No two of those are safe to have at the same time in the same place.
> We have a civilian airspace, and we have laser weapons, and we have CBP/ICE MAGA militia dabbling in military work. No two of those are safe to have at the same time in the same place.
Day of the Triffids, but only for small border city.
No wonder they mistook one of theirs for one of these.
Compare the MH-17 incident. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident , which also involved no confirmed actual drone.
Because if they are real, and they are trying to get drugs into the United States (their primary income source), then drones seem like a perfectly reasonable method they might use to go about it. And yes, their have been plenty of confirmed cartel drones seized, shot down, etc with lower-tech methods in the past.
It seems 100% of the drones they have shot down are US government ones.
Which is it
1) US government is deliberately avoiding the cartel ones
2) US government is completely incompetent and the cartel outmatch the might of the US military
3) The cartel isn't actually using drones
4) The US government have shot down dozens of drones but are keeping quiet about it
We have a civilian airspace, and we have laser weapons, and we have CBP/ICE MAGA militia dabbling in military work. No two of those are safe to have at the same time in the same place.
It’s absurdly blatant now, however, and backlash is likely to be pretty crazy in 5ish-10ish years once it’s impacted enough people.
Day of the Triffids, but only for small border city.
Mistook a helicopter for a drone because of depth perception problems.