Zaranthos The irony. One administration can't shoot down actual spy balloons until they travel half the country, and the next shoots down party balloons. The bigger anything is the more mistakes it's going to make. Reply
COLGeek Zaranthos said: The irony. One administration can't shoot down actual spy balloons until they travel half the country, and the next shoots down party balloons. The bigger anything is the more mistakes it's going to make. Vastly different scenarios. PSA: Just a friendly reminder to NOT spiral into political morass. Thank you. Reply
bill001g So if I am the bad guys smuggling drugs in with drones all I do is make sure I do it near a airport and the FAA will protect my drones from other agency shooting them down. Does the FAA not care that a drone might collide with a plane. Maybe they should just shut down the airport permanently because the drug smugglers are using drones and they are preventing anyone from stopping them. Reply
Gururu bill001g said: So if I am the bad guys smuggling drugs in with drones all I do is make sure I do it near a airport and the FAA will protect my drones from other agency shooting them down. Does the FAA not care that a drone might collide with a plane. Maybe they should just shut down the airport permanently because the drug smugglers are using drones and they are preventing anyone from stopping them. There is nothing new here but the person that decided to laser a party balloon. Reply
bit_user It's a lot cheaper to user a laser weapon than scrambling a fighter and firing expensive missiles. So, I'd say this is progress from the last party balloon shoot-down incident. Zaranthos said: The irony. One administration can't shoot down actual spy balloons until they travel half the country, That was never a question of capability, as fighters were scrambled to photograph it, early on – and the same were ultimately used to shoot it down. They had reasons for wanting to do it over water, like civilian safety & debris recovery. Not taking immediate action also demonstrated its ability to maneuver and made it abundantly evident that any claims of being a weather or scientific research vehicle were false. They might also have gathered useful signals intelligence by just observing it, for a while. Zaranthos said: the next shoots down party balloons. The bigger anything is the more mistakes it's going to make. Oh, there have been other shoot-downs of party balloons, particularly as radar sensitivity to balloon-like objects was increased after the 2023 incident you referred to. bill001g said: So if I am the bad guys smuggling drugs in with drones all I do is make sure I do it near a airport and the FAA will protect my drones from other agency shooting them down. Does the FAA not care that a drone might collide with a plane. I think the issue between the agencies was mostly a procedural one. Certainly, the FAA does not want drones flying near airports, nor anywhere they can interfere with regular air traffic, but they also don't want defense actions to pose a risk to civil aviation. Airports are somewhat routinely shut down by drone incursions. Reply
Gururu bit_user said: Oh, there have been other shoot-downs of party balloons, particularly as radar sensitivity to balloon-like objects was increased after the 2023 incident you referred to. I would be very interested in seeing actual frequency statistics because if there is anything I know, my people like to party and lose millions of party balloons annually to the skies of El Paso. Reply
USAFRet Zaranthos said: The irony. One administration can't shoot down actual spy balloons until they travel half the country, and the next shoots down party balloons. The bigger anything is the more mistakes it's going to make. Completely different. And it absolutely wasn't a case of "can't". Rather…"lets follow it and see what it does". The jet that shot the balloon down took off a runway 1/2 mile from my office. Reply
edzieba bill001g said: So if I am the bad guys smuggling drugs in with drones all I do is make sure I do it near a airport and the FAA will protect my drones from other agency shooting them down. Does the FAA not care that a drone might collide with a plane. Maybe they should just shut down the airport permanently because the drug smugglers are using drones and they are preventing anyone from stopping them. Do you think the FAA can deploy some magical anti-LASER field? Or that cartels will just obligingly obey a NOTAM? The FAA issued the NOTAM because some yahoos with a high powered laser were about to start firing it off without confirming their targets, and that's an airspace that you want civilian aircraft to stay the hell away from. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/advanced-pentagon-laser-weapon-shot-down-party-balloons-by-mistake-says-report-airport-shut-down-after-customs-and-border-protection-mistakenly-believed-it-was-targeting-mexican-cartel-drones#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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