7 ms·

Mysterious Drones Swarmed Langley AFB for Weeks

159 points by peutetre 3y ago

aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
yinser 3y ago
Glass half full thought: someone is red teaming US installations and we’ll be more secure for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- whartung 3y ago
  Years ago, somewhere in Northern California, there was attack of (I think) power substation. Someone was shooting at parts of the station. As described it was a very well run, very knowledgeable operation. The shooting was quite precise. Far as I know it’s unsolved. And I, too, thought it was some kind of red team style thing to test who knows what. It was very direct action, seemed a bit much for an exercise. But it can also be thought of what the attack didn’t do, how far they didn’t press even with the evidence that they probably could have.
  - dgacmu 3y ago
    Yeah, it was power substations. Probably this one? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack And there was a still unsolved one in North Carolina two years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County_substation_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County_substation_atta... Which killed at least one person. There were also a few others in the SeaTac area around the same time: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-four-pierce-county-power-substations https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-fou... But they caught those, and the suspects said they had planned to use the power outage to commit a burglary.
    - whartung 3y ago
      Yea, Metcalf. My understanding (if it’s the right one) was the NC attack struck a pair of stations that were particularly important to the network. That the loss of those two stations had a much higher impact in contrast to the loss of two arbitrary stations. Those were selected for a reason. I think this attack was used as an argument against having things like details of the electric grid being public knowledge.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      There’s been a string of these attacks for a decade now. One of the various neonazi/Patriot movements (Idaho flavor iirc) espouses infrastructure attacks and disruption as being the kickoff for their RaHoWa, and they keep trying to pop off every couple years. There hasn’t been a ton of coverage about it because of a desire to avoid copycats and avoid publicizing or popularizing the ideology in general. But like, occupying that nature preserve didn’t come out of nowhere, just there’s not a lot of benefit for centrists/sympathizers in pushing this particular culture war, with how many Americans are touchy about guns etc. https://news.yahoo.com/unsealed-warrant-provides-closer-look-210616746.html?guccounter=1 https://news.yahoo.com/unsealed-warrant-provides-closer-look... https://myfox8.com/news/investigations/power-grid-attack/neo-nazi-power-substation-plots/?ipid=promo-link-block1 https://myfox8.com/news/investigations/power-grid-attack/neo... (afaik the Facebook lady idea has been essentially discarded, she seems to be a moron but not involved. And then there’s this other guy with ties to a patriot group who supposedly started and then aborted plans for a similar attack… or perhaps not aborted after all?) (also, the patriot/militia movement is heavily involved with RNC and Russian funding in general… Maria Butina was attached to the NRA after all etc. The leader of one of these groups (literally “The Base”) has a Russian wife and lived in Russia etc. Generally speaking these groups are one of the tools Russia uses to inflame local tensions - whatever is most disruptive etc.) https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jan/23/report-leader-of-neo-nazi-terrorist-group-owns-lan/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jan/23/report-leader-...
  - onlypassingthru 3y ago
    It was the Metcalf substation.[0] I believe they found the rock cairn(s) used for the sniper rest on the hill across the highway.[1] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack [1]https://www.google.com/maps/search/metcalf+substation/@37.219343,-121.7358122,15.56z?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/search/metcalf+substation/@37.21...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    What do you mean by “well run” and “precise”?
    - whartung 3y ago
      Well, they cut communication lines in advance. They apparently used signaling to coordinate the attack. They knew exactly what they were shooting at, it wasn’t a bunch of yahoos blasting away at highway signs. It would be interesting to hear a discussion about the shot placement on the transformers. Were they grouped tight, target right where they need to be, etc.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        What do you mean communication lines? And what do you mean signaling? You don’t really need to be precise with shooting a transformer to damage it.
  - tw04 3y ago
    I’m far more concerned with the “not a missile” than the power stations. I don’t believe it was ever solved. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mystery-missile-launch-seen-off-calif-coast/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mystery-missile-launch-seen-off...
- Duanemclemore 3y ago
  This has a distinct red / blue flavor to it.
- WatchDog 3y ago
  Sounds very much like an exercise to me.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
slicktux 3y ago
Level the playing field. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0ji1sAXl8&pp=ygUNQW5kdXJpbCBkcm9uZQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0ji1sAXl8&pp=ygUNQW5kdXJpbCB...
- purpleidea 3y ago
  Remove tracking info when you post links please.
  - a1o 3y ago
    This is a fair request and nice thing to do to fellow users of this forum, people should not downvote this person.
  - someotherperson 3y ago
    Also on this, it looks like Brave's "copy clean link"[0] doesn't work on this particular URL. I wonder why. [0] https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/9982188779405-What-does-Copy-clean-link-mean https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/9982188779405-Wh...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
purpleidea 3y ago
Wouldn't be surprised if this was being done by one of the U.S. defence contractors so that they can convince politicians to buy their anti-drone products. What's most disappointing about this article is it has no actual details. What size drones? How fast were they going? How many total? How many at a single time? Did they catch any? What models? Let's see a photo of one... and so on...
- jkhanlar 3y ago
  or using hedgefunds infinte ftd failure to deliver assets as collateral to deploy such an operation that is not as traceable/trackable. where's Jonathan Frakes? https://youtu.be/GM-e46xdcUo https://youtu.be/GM-e46xdcUo
- dralley 3y ago
  There's absolutely no need to stage an incident to convince anyone of the need for anti-drone products. The utilitarianism of drones employed en-masse, cheaply and without deep technical knowledge on both sides in Ukraine proves that point just fine.
- signatoremo 3y ago
  > Wouldn't be surprised if this was being done by one of the U.S. defence contractors so that they can convince politicians to buy their anti-drone products. No way they could do that without the military’s knowledge. That can have serious consequence. Anti drone is a hot area that the US is very interested in. All a vendor needs to do is to ask nicely. > What's most disappointing about this article is it has no actual details. That’s because the US military was intentionally ambiguous about their anti-drone capabilities: "To protect operational security, we do not discuss impacts to operations," the statement added. "We don’t discuss our specific force protection measures but retain the right to protect the installation …”
- thegrim000 3y ago
  Ah yes, a white collar CEO at a private US company just decided one day that his company was going to start committing felonies and sending swarms of drones to accost a US military installation. And the CEO ordered everyone involved to be somehow threatened into complete silence about the operation. That's totally something that would happen in the real world and not a deranged conspiracy theory.
iJohnDoe 3y ago
Probably testing new reconnaissance capabilities to see how effective it is.
codezero 3y ago
What I wonder is if a radar is watching drones, what is it missing? Could a drone swarm be used to draw attention away from another incursion or are radar systems able to handle slow and low things at the same time as higher and faster objects?
- greedo 3y ago
  Normally radars are configured to detect aircraft faster than a small drone. They just filter that out as noise. Now the military could obviously afford multiple radars to fill this gap, but they haven't focused enough attention on this.
  - bushbaba 3y ago
    A bird and a drone are pretty similar. Heck you could make a drone look and fly similar to a bird. Slow small object detection brings its own challenges. The realistic aspect though is a small drone by itself can’t do huge damage. And a swarm would surely be detected.
    - greedo 3y ago
      Well, considering FPV drones in Ukraine are destroying aircraft, tanks, IFVs etc, that could be an issue. Langley houses F-22s that are basically priceless.
      - dghlsakjg 3y ago
        A battlefield front line in Eastern Europe is a far cry from a USAF base surrounded by 3 letter agencies. I would bet that the people who invented drone warfare have some awareness of the risks.
        llm_trw 3y ago
        Sounds like the perfect place to drop some biological weapons. >Crazy that Covid 2025 was first detected in Langley isn't it? What's worse is that this won't take more than a garage bio lab to do. Makes me want to move to Antarctica.
mapmeld 3y ago
When I hear that this military base on US soil, with dedicated security and surveillance, can't recover one drone, or get photos to trace who or what sent the drone, I think of the London airport shutdown from 2018. There is no super drone swarm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident
- cirgue 3y ago
  Where did it mention that they were unable to get imagery of the drones or recover one? If the thesis is that this may be a foreign incursion, I very much doubt that they’d broadcast that they’d captured one.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    This doesn't make sense to me. The government is more than thrilled to stir negative sentiment against every geopolitical competitor we have via the media, if this is one of said competitors drones then they obviously would know if it had been captured, and if you're concerned about public 'panic' - you already released the information anyhow. You also have government planes doing loopity-loos around Langley with their public transponders turned on which shows a desire to make such actions publicly visible and available to literally anybody and everybody on the planet.
    - wewxjfq 3y ago
      Sure, after the public circus with the spy balloon, the government is eager to have a round two, this time with off-the-shelf consumer drones. Be honest, a picture of a $1000 drone would leave you totally unfazed.
    - cykros 3y ago
      There's one country they've not been so thrilled to publicize when they've acted against us in the past. See: The USS Liberty Incident. Not saying that's what's going on here. But it is the exception to the rule you posit.
  - 3y ago
ishtanbul 3y ago
Probably just the aliens…
someotherperson 3y ago
You can probably screw with a lot of places by strapping a solar powered 2.4ghz radio transmitter to a bunch of birds and letting them roam around. Actually it doesn't even need to be solar powered if it could be low-power enough, just enough battery for a couple of weeks of intermittent signal.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  You can buy commercial drones off Amazon capable of flying miles high with firmware mods. The hardware's more than capable, it's just the software that's crippled.
huytersd 3y ago
The US army really doesn’t use enough cheap, small drones. All the drones we use are large and expensive.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  Not at all. There are a number of small drones (field launchable by a single person) used for surveillance and delivering kinetic payloads. This is one of many that are publicly acknowledged https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade The RQ-11 is a hand launchable drone used by the US (among others) with more than 19k airframes having been delivered.
  - mcculley 3y ago
    That says unit cost is $52,914. Not cheap by most standards. Yes, cheap compared to military aircraft, but the interesting changes around doctrine are happening at cheap enough to be disposable.
    - nabogh 3y ago
      I think this might be considered disposable by military prices. Missiles, torpedoes etc are very expensive
      - mcculley 3y ago
        I am aware that missiles and torpedoes are very expensive. Disposable drones are changing doctrine in ways that more expensive missiles and torpedoes do not.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      Isn't that much, much cheaper than most missiles?
      - mcculley 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
modzu 3y ago
pics or it didn't happen
johnohara 3y ago
Can't speak to the issues of security or surveillance, but the aerial shot included in the article does reveal a moderately challenging golf course immediately to the north of the main runway. My personal surveillance suggests it might be more difficult to line up an approach shot on that par 4 (5?) dog leg right than it is to line up an approach vector to the main runway. Just sayin'.
- Cacti 3y ago
  officers love to golf with other officers
perihelions 3y ago
For those unaware, a drone attack killed three American soldiers a few weeks ago [0]. The early findings are that the military base that was attacked never detected the drone at all—possibly because it flew at too low altitude for its radar. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/06/drone-jordan-attack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/06/... ("Drone that killed U.S. troops in Jordan likely went undetected")
- verdverm 3y ago
  The explanation I've heard was that the drone came around the same time they were expecting a friendly drone to return. They are shooting down drones all the time in the Middle East, it just doesn't make the news. Very similar for Israel iron dome. It only makes news when it doesn't work
  - perihelions 3y ago
    That was early speculation that's been contradicted by subsequent reporting, like the Post story I linked, - "Taken together, the preliminary findings appear to undermine previous assertions that U.S. air defenses mistook the attacking aircraft for an American drone returning to the base about the same time"
    - verdverm 3y ago
      It sounds like there is no clear answer either way, certainly nothing official at this point
paganel 3y ago
At least this is a step from "Chinese weather balloons have invaded the contiguous territory of the United States!". I wonder what they'll come up with next.
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  You should question your certainty of chinese origin. Maybe it saves your or your sons life by not fighting in a distant war based on propaganda.
  - paganel 3y ago
    I was commenting it from the other side, i.e. I see this as a "fear campaign" (for lack of a better expression) carried out by Western intelligence services. All of the sudden we should trust the CIA that there are unidentified drones surveilling their Langley home-base, there were times when the Western media would have at least tried to get to the bottom of this story but nowadays they're just forwarding it to us, the mostly unsuspecting public, with no relevant questions asked.
  - ipqk 3y ago
    What claim is there that it was not Chinese? China claimed it as their own, ableit not a military one.

159 points by peutetre 3y ago

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

yinser 3y ago

Glass half full thought: someone is red teaming US installations and we’ll be more secure for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

whartung 3y ago
Years ago, somewhere in Northern California, there was attack of (I think) power substation. Someone was shooting at parts of the station. As described it was a very well run, very knowledgeable operation. The shooting was quite precise. Far as I know it’s unsolved. And I, too, thought it was some kind of red team style thing to test who knows what. It was very direct action, seemed a bit much for an exercise. But it can also be thought of what the attack didn’t do, how far they didn’t press even with the evidence that they probably could have.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  Yeah, it was power substations. Probably this one? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack And there was a still unsolved one in North Carolina two years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County_substation_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County_substation_atta... Which killed at least one person. There were also a few others in the SeaTac area around the same time: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-four-pierce-county-power-substations https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/two-charged-attacks-fou... But they caught those, and the suspects said they had planned to use the power outage to commit a burglary.
  - whartung 3y ago
    Yea, Metcalf. My understanding (if it’s the right one) was the NC attack struck a pair of stations that were particularly important to the network. That the loss of those two stations had a much higher impact in contrast to the loss of two arbitrary stations. Those were selected for a reason. I think this attack was used as an argument against having things like details of the electric grid being public knowledge.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    There’s been a string of these attacks for a decade now. One of the various neonazi/Patriot movements (Idaho flavor iirc) espouses infrastructure attacks and disruption as being the kickoff for their RaHoWa, and they keep trying to pop off every couple years. There hasn’t been a ton of coverage about it because of a desire to avoid copycats and avoid publicizing or popularizing the ideology in general. But like, occupying that nature preserve didn’t come out of nowhere, just there’s not a lot of benefit for centrists/sympathizers in pushing this particular culture war, with how many Americans are touchy about guns etc. https://news.yahoo.com/unsealed-warrant-provides-closer-look-210616746.html?guccounter=1 https://news.yahoo.com/unsealed-warrant-provides-closer-look... https://myfox8.com/news/investigations/power-grid-attack/neo-nazi-power-substation-plots/?ipid=promo-link-block1 https://myfox8.com/news/investigations/power-grid-attack/neo... (afaik the Facebook lady idea has been essentially discarded, she seems to be a moron but not involved. And then there’s this other guy with ties to a patriot group who supposedly started and then aborted plans for a similar attack… or perhaps not aborted after all?) (also, the patriot/militia movement is heavily involved with RNC and Russian funding in general… Maria Butina was attached to the NRA after all etc. The leader of one of these groups (literally “The Base”) has a Russian wife and lived in Russia etc. Generally speaking these groups are one of the tools Russia uses to inflame local tensions - whatever is most disruptive etc.) https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jan/23/report-leader-of-neo-nazi-terrorist-group-owns-lan/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jan/23/report-leader-...
- onlypassingthru 3y ago
  It was the Metcalf substation.[0] I believe they found the rock cairn(s) used for the sniper rest on the hill across the highway.[1] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack [1]https://www.google.com/maps/search/metcalf+substation/@37.219343,-121.7358122,15.56z?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/search/metcalf+substation/@37.21...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  What do you mean by “well run” and “precise”?
  - whartung 3y ago
    Well, they cut communication lines in advance. They apparently used signaling to coordinate the attack. They knew exactly what they were shooting at, it wasn’t a bunch of yahoos blasting away at highway signs. It would be interesting to hear a discussion about the shot placement on the transformers. Were they grouped tight, target right where they need to be, etc.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      What do you mean communication lines? And what do you mean signaling? You don’t really need to be precise with shooting a transformer to damage it.
- tw04 3y ago
  I’m far more concerned with the “not a missile” than the power stations. I don’t believe it was ever solved. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mystery-missile-launch-seen-off-calif-coast/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mystery-missile-launch-seen-off...
Duanemclemore 3y ago
This has a distinct red / blue flavor to it.
WatchDog 3y ago
Sounds very much like an exercise to me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

slicktux 3y ago

Level the playing field. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0ji1sAXl8&pp=ygUNQW5kdXJpbCBkcm9uZQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0ji1sAXl8&pp=ygUNQW5kdXJpbCB...

purpleidea 3y ago
Remove tracking info when you post links please.
- a1o 3y ago
  This is a fair request and nice thing to do to fellow users of this forum, people should not downvote this person.
- someotherperson 3y ago
  Also on this, it looks like Brave's "copy clean link"[0] doesn't work on this particular URL. I wonder why. [0] https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/9982188779405-What-does-Copy-clean-link-mean https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/9982188779405-Wh...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

purpleidea 3y ago

Wouldn't be surprised if this was being done by one of the U.S. defence contractors so that they can convince politicians to buy their anti-drone products. What's most disappointing about this article is it has no actual details. What size drones? How fast were they going? How many total? How many at a single time? Did they catch any? What models? Let's see a photo of one... and so on...

jkhanlar 3y ago
or using hedgefunds infinte ftd failure to deliver assets as collateral to deploy such an operation that is not as traceable/trackable. where's Jonathan Frakes? https://youtu.be/GM-e46xdcUo https://youtu.be/GM-e46xdcUo
dralley 3y ago
There's absolutely no need to stage an incident to convince anyone of the need for anti-drone products. The utilitarianism of drones employed en-masse, cheaply and without deep technical knowledge on both sides in Ukraine proves that point just fine.
signatoremo 3y ago
> Wouldn't be surprised if this was being done by one of the U.S. defence contractors so that they can convince politicians to buy their anti-drone products. No way they could do that without the military’s knowledge. That can have serious consequence. Anti drone is a hot area that the US is very interested in. All a vendor needs to do is to ask nicely. > What's most disappointing about this article is it has no actual details. That’s because the US military was intentionally ambiguous about their anti-drone capabilities: "To protect operational security, we do not discuss impacts to operations," the statement added. "We don’t discuss our specific force protection measures but retain the right to protect the installation …”
thegrim000 3y ago
Ah yes, a white collar CEO at a private US company just decided one day that his company was going to start committing felonies and sending swarms of drones to accost a US military installation. And the CEO ordered everyone involved to be somehow threatened into complete silence about the operation. That's totally something that would happen in the real world and not a deranged conspiracy theory.

iJohnDoe 3y ago

Probably testing new reconnaissance capabilities to see how effective it is.

codezero 3y ago

What I wonder is if a radar is watching drones, what is it missing? Could a drone swarm be used to draw attention away from another incursion or are radar systems able to handle slow and low things at the same time as higher and faster objects?

greedo 3y ago
Normally radars are configured to detect aircraft faster than a small drone. They just filter that out as noise. Now the military could obviously afford multiple radars to fill this gap, but they haven't focused enough attention on this.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  A bird and a drone are pretty similar. Heck you could make a drone look and fly similar to a bird. Slow small object detection brings its own challenges. The realistic aspect though is a small drone by itself can’t do huge damage. And a swarm would surely be detected.
  - greedo 3y ago
    Well, considering FPV drones in Ukraine are destroying aircraft, tanks, IFVs etc, that could be an issue. Langley houses F-22s that are basically priceless.
    - dghlsakjg 3y ago
      A battlefield front line in Eastern Europe is a far cry from a USAF base surrounded by 3 letter agencies. I would bet that the people who invented drone warfare have some awareness of the risks.
      - llm_trw 3y ago
        Sounds like the perfect place to drop some biological weapons. >Crazy that Covid 2025 was first detected in Langley isn't it? What's worse is that this won't take more than a garage bio lab to do. Makes me want to move to Antarctica.

mapmeld 3y ago

When I hear that this military base on US soil, with dedicated security and surveillance, can't recover one drone, or get photos to trace who or what sent the drone, I think of the London airport shutdown from 2018. There is no super drone swarm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident

cirgue 3y ago
Where did it mention that they were unable to get imagery of the drones or recover one? If the thesis is that this may be a foreign incursion, I very much doubt that they’d broadcast that they’d captured one.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  This doesn't make sense to me. The government is more than thrilled to stir negative sentiment against every geopolitical competitor we have via the media, if this is one of said competitors drones then they obviously would know if it had been captured, and if you're concerned about public 'panic' - you already released the information anyhow. You also have government planes doing loopity-loos around Langley with their public transponders turned on which shows a desire to make such actions publicly visible and available to literally anybody and everybody on the planet.
  - wewxjfq 3y ago
    Sure, after the public circus with the spy balloon, the government is eager to have a round two, this time with off-the-shelf consumer drones. Be honest, a picture of a $1000 drone would leave you totally unfazed.
  - cykros 3y ago
    There's one country they've not been so thrilled to publicize when they've acted against us in the past. See: The USS Liberty Incident. Not saying that's what's going on here. But it is the exception to the rule you posit.
- 3y ago

ishtanbul 3y ago

Probably just the aliens…

someotherperson 3y ago

You can probably screw with a lot of places by strapping a solar powered 2.4ghz radio transmitter to a bunch of birds and letting them roam around. Actually it doesn't even need to be solar powered if it could be low-power enough, just enough battery for a couple of weeks of intermittent signal.

somenameforme 3y ago
You can buy commercial drones off Amazon capable of flying miles high with firmware mods. The hardware's more than capable, it's just the software that's crippled.

huytersd 3y ago

The US army really doesn’t use enough cheap, small drones. All the drones we use are large and expensive.

dghlsakjg 3y ago
Not at all. There are a number of small drones (field launchable by a single person) used for surveillance and delivering kinetic payloads. This is one of many that are publicly acknowledged https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade The RQ-11 is a hand launchable drone used by the US (among others) with more than 19k airframes having been delivered.
- mcculley 3y ago
  That says unit cost is $52,914. Not cheap by most standards. Yes, cheap compared to military aircraft, but the interesting changes around doctrine are happening at cheap enough to be disposable.
  - nabogh 3y ago
    I think this might be considered disposable by military prices. Missiles, torpedoes etc are very expensive
    - mcculley 3y ago
      I am aware that missiles and torpedoes are very expensive. Disposable drones are changing doctrine in ways that more expensive missiles and torpedoes do not.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    Isn't that much, much cheaper than most missiles?
    - mcculley 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

modzu 3y ago

pics or it didn't happen

johnohara 3y ago

Can't speak to the issues of security or surveillance, but the aerial shot included in the article does reveal a moderately challenging golf course immediately to the north of the main runway. My personal surveillance suggests it might be more difficult to line up an approach shot on that par 4 (5?) dog leg right than it is to line up an approach vector to the main runway. Just sayin'.

Cacti 3y ago
officers love to golf with other officers

perihelions 3y ago

For those unaware, a drone attack killed three American soldiers a few weeks ago [0]. The early findings are that the military base that was attacked never detected the drone at all—possibly because it flew at too low altitude for its radar. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/06/drone-jordan-attack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/06/... ("Drone that killed U.S. troops in Jordan likely went undetected")

verdverm 3y ago
The explanation I've heard was that the drone came around the same time they were expecting a friendly drone to return. They are shooting down drones all the time in the Middle East, it just doesn't make the news. Very similar for Israel iron dome. It only makes news when it doesn't work
- perihelions 3y ago
  That was early speculation that's been contradicted by subsequent reporting, like the Post story I linked, - "Taken together, the preliminary findings appear to undermine previous assertions that U.S. air defenses mistook the attacking aircraft for an American drone returning to the base about the same time"
  - verdverm 3y ago
    It sounds like there is no clear answer either way, certainly nothing official at this point

paganel 3y ago

At least this is a step from "Chinese weather balloons have invaded the contiguous territory of the United States!". I wonder what they'll come up with next.

throwawayqqq11 3y ago
You should question your certainty of chinese origin. Maybe it saves your or your sons life by not fighting in a distant war based on propaganda.
- paganel 3y ago
  I was commenting it from the other side, i.e. I see this as a "fear campaign" (for lack of a better expression) carried out by Western intelligence services. All of the sudden we should trust the CIA that there are unidentified drones surveilling their Langley home-base, there were times when the Western media would have at least tried to get to the bottom of this story but nowadays they're just forwarding it to us, the mostly unsuspecting public, with no relevant questions asked.
- ipqk 3y ago
  What claim is there that it was not Chinese? China claimed it as their own, ableit not a military one.