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BTW, this is (also) why the occasional Russian missile successfully penetrates the eastern flank of Europe. The damage potential of switching your entire air de

BTW, this is (also) why the occasional Russian missile successfully penetrates the eastern flank of Europe. The damage potential of switching your entire air defense setup to a more aggressive posture will eventually result in civilian casualties. This happens everywhere, just the other day an American F-18 was shot down by an American destroyer in the Red Sea, and an F-18 carries additional deconfliction equipment that an airliner doesn't have. As of today Europe is still using the peacetime kosher method of "we need to intercept it with a combat jet, have a look, ask the president, then maybe shoot it down".

perihelions 2y ago
It's also the reason the US (last I checked*) has standing orders not to attempt to down the drones of unknown origin (adversary espionage, I guess) that swarm at military bases. The risk of accidentally attacking a civilian aircraft vastly outweighs—what they assess as—the immediate threat of the drones. When there was a panic about the Chinese spy balloon last year, the US sent armed F-22's to shoot down... at least three different unmanned civilian balloons [0,1]. edit: I think I was wrong; apparently the US has a new "deadly force" order as of last week [2]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653 ("Hobby Club’s Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down by USAF (aviationweek.com)") 371 comments [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717 ("The US Air Force may have shot down an amateur radio pico balloon over Canada (rtl-sdr.com)", 168 comments [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/us-temporarily-bans-drones-in-parts-of-nj-may-use-deadly-force-against-aircraft/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/us-temporarily-b... ("US temporarily bans drones in parts of NJ, may use “deadly force” against aircraft")
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  No, I think you're right. I'm quite sure the "deadly force" wording was for effect, more than any kind of actual change in posture or practice. Unless I'm mistaken there are still plenty of drones being seen in NJ and they're not blasting them out of the sky. And they've always had the option of lethal force around bases anyway. what they assess as—the immediate threat of the drones None of us know for sure but I think the immediate threat of the drones is negligible. If US bases are leaking signals that can be intercepted by drones overhead then these same signals could be just as easily intercepted by cars driving past the bases or nearby homes. And as far as the visible spectrum is concerned all the major players have satellites overhead anyway. And as you say, the risks of shooting drones down are high. Damage to nearby property. Accidental shootdowns of innocent craft. Successful shootdowns would reveal our capabilities. Unsuccessful shootdowns would reveal our inability to deal with the threat. And in aggregate this would all give the enemy lots of intel as to where we do and don't have defenses. And open war (!!!) over our skies is, to put it mildly, kind of a big deal. There are, to put it mildly, global economic consequences. Of course, that's all if these drones are of hostile origin, which I think is still a very open question. If these drones are "ours," which would be weird but also plausible, then the "deadly force" note in the FAA notice could just be part of the cover story.
  - inetknght 2y ago
    > If US bases are leaking signals that can be intercepted by drones overhead then these same signals could be just as easily intercepted by cars driving past the bases or nearby homes Not really. Some signals can be very much unidirectional (eg, visible only to an overhead drone) instead of omnidirectional (eg, a car).
    - idunnoman1222 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - unethical_ban 2y ago
        Relevant signals are encrypted, too. Metadata could be useful to intercept.
    - powersnail 2y ago
      Just curious; what kind of signals would be uni-directionally beaming upwards? For communicating with aircrafts that directly hover above the base? Wouldn't that be really limiting in terms of usefulness?
      - jusssi 2y ago
        Satellites.
      - traverseda 2y ago
        Satellite base stations
  - exe34 2y ago
    I'm surprised the US doesn't carry bigger drones with butterfly nets.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      But those drones would have to wear the same uniforms as the Keystone Cops to put it to full effect.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  What adversarial intelligence would fly drones at night extremely low with their lights on? IMO most likely commercial LIDAR mapping by some company that’d rather remain stealth.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    None and in most cases it’s not even clear it’s happening. Due to perspective, a plane far away and a drone up close could look very similar at night when all you can see are lights in a dark sky.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Totally, it at least seems quite clear it's not happening anywhere near the extent to which it's suspected of happening. Drones fly around. It's legal. It's fun. It's interesting for countless reasons to countless people. Really speaks to the state of our information environment that so many have been thrown into an absolute tizzy.
      - mattmaroon 2y ago
        Most people just don’t know much about drones or planes really. They don’t know how their brain interprets what it sees. Etc It’s obviously just mass hysteria.
        aceazzameen 2y ago
        This would make a fascinating case study about how many people have never looked up at their own skies before. I also wouldn't be surprised if the hysteria is being amplified to distract from all the other nonsense in the world right now.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      A star light-years away also looks the same, and it's pretty hilarious when they're mistaken for "drones"
- giantg2 2y ago
  "It's also the reason the US (last I checked*) has standing orders not to attempt to down the drones of unknown origin" I think it depends. The smaller drones are allowed to be zapped using equiptment designed to take down drowns. They generally aren't shooting traditional munitions at drones domestically for multiple safety reasons, unless they are over a specific size/altitude.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    The government has no right to destroy property (by any method) of private citizens who are flying drones when there is no evidence of illegality or of them being a credible threat. To say "flying a drone makes it a credible threat" to say "drones are illegal," which someone is free to take up as their legislative priority.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      If you're flying your drone in a restricted area, then it would be illegal. Many of the drone-downing systems do not permanently destroy it. On a side note, do you have a TRUST or Part 107?
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        Yeah, duh if it's in a restricted area. That's not what the drone hysteria is about. > Many of the drone-downing systems do not permanently destroy it. Uhh yeah if a consumer grade drone falls 300 feet out of the sky then yes it's destroyed.
        giantg2 2y ago
        "Yeah, duh if it's in a restricted area. That's not what the drone hysteria is about." Look up TFRs. Look up all the other restrictions these drones are supposed to be following. Tell me how they're legal. "Uhh yeah if a consumer grade drone falls 300 feet out of the sky then yes it's destroyed." Not irreparably. Some components will.
- tehjoker 2y ago
  Important to note that it was a panic about an alleged chinese spy balloon, but in all likelihood it was just a weather balloon. There was no proof it was a spy balloon.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    Ummm, no. We recovered the balloons and they were full of surveillance equipment. They seemed to not have a way to phone home, so more than likely China’s plan was to recover the balloon to get the data. That may be what you recall. For all we know they had been doing so for years successfully. But they were definitely spy balloons.
    - jameshart 2y ago
      The US downed and recovered a Chinese balloon, not balloons. The 2023 incident is pretty well written up on Wikipedia[1]. There was one Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down. Subsequent shoot-downs of balloons over the arctic and Great Lakes were not attributed to China - one that was recovered was definitively identified as a private weather balloon. There were also previous Chinese surveillance balloon overflights - as well as one over Central America - that were not shot down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident
  - indymike 2y ago
    > in all likelihood it was just a weather balloon Normal weather balloons are 20ft in diameter. This one was 200 feet in diameter and carried quite a payload - about the size of a couple of box cars. Additionally it had propellers and the ability to steer itself. > There was no proof it was a spy balloon. There was a preponderance of evidence - from the route of the balloon (over US strategic nuclear missle silos), to the equipment that was recovered to radio intercptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident
- Spooky23 2y ago
  A lot of this stuff is “doing something” to calm people down. People are losing their minds. Where I live in upstate NY, Nextdoor.com was losing its shit over a “drone”, actually a lidar mapping plane, and some of the dumber people were suggesting taking shots at the Iranians.
  - nativeit 2y ago
    I’m waiting for the next seemingly inevitable object lesson: it’s insanely illegal, federally illegal, to shoot at flying objects, for what I would have hoped were obvious reasons. But it seems we’re still really rather dumb as a collective.
    - hansvm 2y ago
      > obvious reasons It's maybe worth mentioning that the obvious reasons almost entirely have to do with the things you'd hit in the air, not once the bullet descended. If everyone on earth suddenly shot upward at around 80 degrees from the ground, you'd expect approximately zero casualties on average from the bullets falling and lethally striking surface objects (there would be a number of welts and bruises as well as minor property damage, but even that is less likely than you might suspect).
      - CydeWeys 2y ago
        People are routinely killed by falling bullets. It turns out that the vast majority of idiots firing blindly into the air don't know or care to shoot only straight up, and it would be the same problem for whichever idiots were trying to shoot down drones.
        hiatus 2y ago
        > People are routinely killed by falling bullets. Do you have a citation for that? I can't find any numbers on people getting hit by falling bullets, let alone fatalities. Things let celebratory gunfire don't seem to be comparable since people tend to congregate outside for celebrations resulting in larger groups of potential unintentional targets.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  I think a solid 95% of what people think are drones are actually passenger planes so I’m glad we’re not firing at them.
jjtheblunt 2y ago
There’s no “identify friend or foe” excuse for shooting down an airliner beyond human error.
- teitoklien 2y ago
  A missle travels at tremendous speeds and require automated defence systems to neutralize the target at a safe explosion distance in the sky, which often does not afford humans to make “phone calls” and “meetings” and “discussion” to down the threat, before it potentially blasts a population centre or a military installation with thousands of soldiers and civilians at the base. Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles. With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? At a glance, just looking at the trajectory of this UFO for half a minute would be enough to determine if it's an airline with stable flight path, VS a missile that has some sort of trajectory that doesn't look at all like a airline. Not to mention the radar signature has to be different in at least some ways. But again, I don't know the capability or process of the Russian military, in a high-tension environment sometimes shit just goes wrong even though it shouldn't.
    - teitoklien 2y ago
      > With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile If they exclude radar signature of commercial airliners, and let them fly, it will just make weapon makers start designing high-speed missiles with the radar signature of an airliner lol. There is a reason why a lot of military and sci-fi movies have the phrase “aircraft with radar signature of a bird” , anything that the military excludes or allows to pass off, just becomes the cloning target of missile makers under the tag of “camouflage”.
simoncion 2y ago
> deconfliction equipment By this do you mean "electronic warfare" equipment, like radar/laser detectors and other such "target searching and seeking" detectors, as well as jammers, spoofers, and other such "search or seek disruption" devices?
- RealityVoid 2y ago
  I think they mean fancy IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) emitters. If you think about it, it sounds like a pain of a problem, the plane must be as stealthy as possible, but somehow, during those moments, communicate in a non-spoofable way that it's a friendly. No idea how they do this. Is there any interesting textbook on electronic warfare, I wonder?
  - simoncion 2y ago
    > Is there any interesting textbook on electronic warfare, I wonder? I know that there are unclassified textbooks on this very topic, but I've long forgotten their names. > If you think about it, it sounds like a pain of a problem, the plane must be as stealthy as possible, but somehow, during those moments, communicate in a non-spoofable way that it's a friendly. No idea how they do this. Well, part of this problem is pretty trivial to solve: if you're coming back from a mission and are well in friendly airspace, you don't need to be stealthy at all, so you turn on your radio transmitters. It's my understanding that when you're on a mission where you need to be as hard to spot as possible, you turn off all unnecessary transmitters and rely on Command telling Air Traffic Control and other interested parties where you're operating so as to reduce the chance that you collide with another aircraft and/or get shot down by friendlies.
    - H8crilA 2y ago
      DSSS is magic. Truly. It's like you can create an ~infinite number of "new frequencies" to send on, each being orthogonal to any other, then chose them cryptographically as needed. With enough care it's possible to make it difficult for the adversary to even detect the presence of a signal. And the tech used by the likes of F-35 with MADL and low-probability-of-intercept radars may be even fancier than that. That being said in the Red Sea incident they likely were not stealthy at all. For one F-18 has a rather big cross section, it's a 4th generation jet. For another the Houthis are not known to operate any sensible air defense (I may be wrong here, someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
Dalewyn 2y ago
[flagged]
- sigzero 2y ago
  Except it is the greatest naval power in the World.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  Nobody is saying “as hard if not harder,” that is 100% dishonest, and you know it’s dishonest. The claim is that the US Navy hasn’t faced much active combat over the last 80 years, and by comparison the Houthis’ guerrilla navy is formidable. The Navy saw periods of combat during the “Tanker Wars” of the 1980s in the Persian Gulf, but that largely involved ships hitting mines. The Houthi assaults involve direct attacks on commercial vessels and warships. “This is the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II — easily, no question,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage…” I hate how often people here just shamelessly lie.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    Quoting a former Navy sailor in that article: >“This is the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II — easily, no question,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage. … If you let it fester, the Houthis are going to get to be a much more capable, competent, experienced force.” The UK and the Royal Navy are also less than impressed[1]. Once upon a time a US Navy Carrier Strike Group was touted as more destructive than an average country's entire air force, but the reality is the US Navy today is stretched thin fighting an enemy that's so overwhelming them that they make WW2 comparisons and underperform to the point of abject failure known as friendly fire. [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/24/red-sea-houthis-us-navy-prosperity-guardian-iran-gaza/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/24/red-sea-houthis-...
Qem 2y ago
> This happens everywhere, just the other day an American F-18 was shot down by an American destroyer in the Red Sea, and an F-18 carries additional econfliction equipment that an airliner doesn't have. The Houthis claim the F-18 was downed by them[1], so it's still not clear if this was an actual friendly fire incident. This is consistent with reports the carrier retreated to northern red sea soon after the incident. [1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241222-yemens-houthis-claim-to-down-us-fighter-jet-over-red-sea/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241222-yemens-houthis-cl...
- amenhotep 2y ago
  No, it's pretty clear.
  - medo-bear 2y ago
    It is as clear as this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown
- mapt 2y ago
  That depends on whether you trust the Houthis or the US Navy's sheepish apology for shooting at two F-18s (one missed), which will almost certainly have career consequences for somebody.
  - Qem 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      Yes, they can down aircraft flying over their territory. But downing an American aircraft right next to its fleet, shortly after takeoff, is not something I would imagine they could do.
      - 2y ago
medo-bear 2y ago
[flagged]
- AppleAtCha 2y ago
  Why would Ukraine be accountable for a Russian missile hitting a civilian plane?
  - ajuc 2y ago
    Because Russia is innocent by definition. That's how Russians actually think.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      It’s hard to see how Russia’s neighbours will avoid war long term if attitudes like this exist in any significant number. It’s pretty grim.
      - medo-bear 2y ago
        If Iran launched drones againt Israel and Israel shot down a civilian airliner ... how would that be spun
        ajuc 2y ago
        If Israel invaded and annexed parts of Iran and openly demanded Iran as a state was destroyed? Pretty obvious.
        medo-bear 2y ago
        Like they are doing to Palestine ?
    - chgs 2y ago
      That’s how a large percent of the Us seems to think too

perihelions 2y ago

It's also the reason the US (last I checked*) has standing orders not to attempt to down the drones of unknown origin (adversary espionage, I guess) that swarm at military bases. The risk of accidentally attacking a civilian aircraft vastly outweighs—what they assess as—the immediate threat of the drones. When there was a panic about the Chinese spy balloon last year, the US sent armed F-22's to shoot down... at least three different unmanned civilian balloons [0,1]. edit: I think I was wrong; apparently the US has a new "deadly force" order as of last week [2]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653 ("Hobby Club’s Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down by USAF (aviationweek.com)") 371 comments [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717 ("The US Air Force may have shot down an amateur radio pico balloon over Canada (rtl-sdr.com)", 168 comments [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/us-temporarily-bans-drones-in-parts-of-nj-may-use-deadly-force-against-aircraft/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/us-temporarily-b... ("US temporarily bans drones in parts of NJ, may use “deadly force” against aircraft")

JohnBooty 2y ago
No, I think you're right. I'm quite sure the "deadly force" wording was for effect, more than any kind of actual change in posture or practice. Unless I'm mistaken there are still plenty of drones being seen in NJ and they're not blasting them out of the sky. And they've always had the option of lethal force around bases anyway. what they assess as—the immediate threat of the drones None of us know for sure but I think the immediate threat of the drones is negligible. If US bases are leaking signals that can be intercepted by drones overhead then these same signals could be just as easily intercepted by cars driving past the bases or nearby homes. And as far as the visible spectrum is concerned all the major players have satellites overhead anyway. And as you say, the risks of shooting drones down are high. Damage to nearby property. Accidental shootdowns of innocent craft. Successful shootdowns would reveal our capabilities. Unsuccessful shootdowns would reveal our inability to deal with the threat. And in aggregate this would all give the enemy lots of intel as to where we do and don't have defenses. And open war (!!!) over our skies is, to put it mildly, kind of a big deal. There are, to put it mildly, global economic consequences. Of course, that's all if these drones are of hostile origin, which I think is still a very open question. If these drones are "ours," which would be weird but also plausible, then the "deadly force" note in the FAA notice could just be part of the cover story.
- inetknght 2y ago
  > If US bases are leaking signals that can be intercepted by drones overhead then these same signals could be just as easily intercepted by cars driving past the bases or nearby homes Not really. Some signals can be very much unidirectional (eg, visible only to an overhead drone) instead of omnidirectional (eg, a car).
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - unethical_ban 2y ago
      Relevant signals are encrypted, too. Metadata could be useful to intercept.
  - powersnail 2y ago
    Just curious; what kind of signals would be uni-directionally beaming upwards? For communicating with aircrafts that directly hover above the base? Wouldn't that be really limiting in terms of usefulness?
    - jusssi 2y ago
      Satellites.
    - traverseda 2y ago
      Satellite base stations
- exe34 2y ago
  I'm surprised the US doesn't carry bigger drones with butterfly nets.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    But those drones would have to wear the same uniforms as the Keystone Cops to put it to full effect.
llamaimperative 2y ago
What adversarial intelligence would fly drones at night extremely low with their lights on? IMO most likely commercial LIDAR mapping by some company that’d rather remain stealth.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  None and in most cases it’s not even clear it’s happening. Due to perspective, a plane far away and a drone up close could look very similar at night when all you can see are lights in a dark sky.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Totally, it at least seems quite clear it's not happening anywhere near the extent to which it's suspected of happening. Drones fly around. It's legal. It's fun. It's interesting for countless reasons to countless people. Really speaks to the state of our information environment that so many have been thrown into an absolute tizzy.
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      Most people just don’t know much about drones or planes really. They don’t know how their brain interprets what it sees. Etc It’s obviously just mass hysteria.
      - aceazzameen 2y ago
        This would make a fascinating case study about how many people have never looked up at their own skies before. I also wouldn't be surprised if the hysteria is being amplified to distract from all the other nonsense in the world right now.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    A star light-years away also looks the same, and it's pretty hilarious when they're mistaken for "drones"
giantg2 2y ago
"It's also the reason the US (last I checked*) has standing orders not to attempt to down the drones of unknown origin" I think it depends. The smaller drones are allowed to be zapped using equiptment designed to take down drowns. They generally aren't shooting traditional munitions at drones domestically for multiple safety reasons, unless they are over a specific size/altitude.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  The government has no right to destroy property (by any method) of private citizens who are flying drones when there is no evidence of illegality or of them being a credible threat. To say "flying a drone makes it a credible threat" to say "drones are illegal," which someone is free to take up as their legislative priority.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    If you're flying your drone in a restricted area, then it would be illegal. Many of the drone-downing systems do not permanently destroy it. On a side note, do you have a TRUST or Part 107?
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Yeah, duh if it's in a restricted area. That's not what the drone hysteria is about. > Many of the drone-downing systems do not permanently destroy it. Uhh yeah if a consumer grade drone falls 300 feet out of the sky then yes it's destroyed.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        "Yeah, duh if it's in a restricted area. That's not what the drone hysteria is about." Look up TFRs. Look up all the other restrictions these drones are supposed to be following. Tell me how they're legal. "Uhh yeah if a consumer grade drone falls 300 feet out of the sky then yes it's destroyed." Not irreparably. Some components will.
tehjoker 2y ago
Important to note that it was a panic about an alleged chinese spy balloon, but in all likelihood it was just a weather balloon. There was no proof it was a spy balloon.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Ummm, no. We recovered the balloons and they were full of surveillance equipment. They seemed to not have a way to phone home, so more than likely China’s plan was to recover the balloon to get the data. That may be what you recall. For all we know they had been doing so for years successfully. But they were definitely spy balloons.
  - jameshart 2y ago
    The US downed and recovered a Chinese balloon, not balloons. The 2023 incident is pretty well written up on Wikipedia[1]. There was one Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down. Subsequent shoot-downs of balloons over the arctic and Great Lakes were not attributed to China - one that was recovered was definitively identified as a private weather balloon. There were also previous Chinese surveillance balloon overflights - as well as one over Central America - that were not shot down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident
- indymike 2y ago
  > in all likelihood it was just a weather balloon Normal weather balloons are 20ft in diameter. This one was 200 feet in diameter and carried quite a payload - about the size of a couple of box cars. Additionally it had propellers and the ability to steer itself. > There was no proof it was a spy balloon. There was a preponderance of evidence - from the route of the balloon (over US strategic nuclear missle silos), to the equipment that was recovered to radio intercptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident
Spooky23 2y ago
A lot of this stuff is “doing something” to calm people down. People are losing their minds. Where I live in upstate NY, Nextdoor.com was losing its shit over a “drone”, actually a lidar mapping plane, and some of the dumber people were suggesting taking shots at the Iranians.
- nativeit 2y ago
  I’m waiting for the next seemingly inevitable object lesson: it’s insanely illegal, federally illegal, to shoot at flying objects, for what I would have hoped were obvious reasons. But it seems we’re still really rather dumb as a collective.
  - hansvm 2y ago
    > obvious reasons It's maybe worth mentioning that the obvious reasons almost entirely have to do with the things you'd hit in the air, not once the bullet descended. If everyone on earth suddenly shot upward at around 80 degrees from the ground, you'd expect approximately zero casualties on average from the bullets falling and lethally striking surface objects (there would be a number of welts and bruises as well as minor property damage, but even that is less likely than you might suspect).
    - CydeWeys 2y ago
      People are routinely killed by falling bullets. It turns out that the vast majority of idiots firing blindly into the air don't know or care to shoot only straight up, and it would be the same problem for whichever idiots were trying to shoot down drones.
      - hiatus 2y ago
        > People are routinely killed by falling bullets. Do you have a citation for that? I can't find any numbers on people getting hit by falling bullets, let alone fatalities. Things let celebratory gunfire don't seem to be comparable since people tend to congregate outside for celebrations resulting in larger groups of potential unintentional targets.
mattmaroon 2y ago
I think a solid 95% of what people think are drones are actually passenger planes so I’m glad we’re not firing at them.

jjtheblunt 2y ago

There’s no “identify friend or foe” excuse for shooting down an airliner beyond human error.

teitoklien 2y ago
A missle travels at tremendous speeds and require automated defence systems to neutralize the target at a safe explosion distance in the sky, which often does not afford humans to make “phone calls” and “meetings” and “discussion” to down the threat, before it potentially blasts a population centre or a military installation with thousands of soldiers and civilians at the base. Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles.
- diggan 2y ago
  > Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles. With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? At a glance, just looking at the trajectory of this UFO for half a minute would be enough to determine if it's an airline with stable flight path, VS a missile that has some sort of trajectory that doesn't look at all like a airline. Not to mention the radar signature has to be different in at least some ways. But again, I don't know the capability or process of the Russian military, in a high-tension environment sometimes shit just goes wrong even though it shouldn't.
  - teitoklien 2y ago
    > With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile If they exclude radar signature of commercial airliners, and let them fly, it will just make weapon makers start designing high-speed missiles with the radar signature of an airliner lol. There is a reason why a lot of military and sci-fi movies have the phrase “aircraft with radar signature of a bird” , anything that the military excludes or allows to pass off, just becomes the cloning target of missile makers under the tag of “camouflage”.

simoncion 2y ago

> deconfliction equipment By this do you mean "electronic warfare" equipment, like radar/laser detectors and other such "target searching and seeking" detectors, as well as jammers, spoofers, and other such "search or seek disruption" devices?

RealityVoid 2y ago
I think they mean fancy IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) emitters. If you think about it, it sounds like a pain of a problem, the plane must be as stealthy as possible, but somehow, during those moments, communicate in a non-spoofable way that it's a friendly. No idea how they do this. Is there any interesting textbook on electronic warfare, I wonder?
- simoncion 2y ago
  > Is there any interesting textbook on electronic warfare, I wonder? I know that there are unclassified textbooks on this very topic, but I've long forgotten their names. > If you think about it, it sounds like a pain of a problem, the plane must be as stealthy as possible, but somehow, during those moments, communicate in a non-spoofable way that it's a friendly. No idea how they do this. Well, part of this problem is pretty trivial to solve: if you're coming back from a mission and are well in friendly airspace, you don't need to be stealthy at all, so you turn on your radio transmitters. It's my understanding that when you're on a mission where you need to be as hard to spot as possible, you turn off all unnecessary transmitters and rely on Command telling Air Traffic Control and other interested parties where you're operating so as to reduce the chance that you collide with another aircraft and/or get shot down by friendlies.
  - H8crilA 2y ago
    DSSS is magic. Truly. It's like you can create an ~infinite number of "new frequencies" to send on, each being orthogonal to any other, then chose them cryptographically as needed. With enough care it's possible to make it difficult for the adversary to even detect the presence of a signal. And the tech used by the likes of F-35 with MADL and low-probability-of-intercept radars may be even fancier than that. That being said in the Red Sea incident they likely were not stealthy at all. For one F-18 has a rather big cross section, it's a 4th generation jet. For another the Houthis are not known to operate any sensible air defense (I may be wrong here, someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

Dalewyn 2y ago

[flagged]

sigzero 2y ago
Except it is the greatest naval power in the World.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
Nobody is saying “as hard if not harder,” that is 100% dishonest, and you know it’s dishonest. The claim is that the US Navy hasn’t faced much active combat over the last 80 years, and by comparison the Houthis’ guerrilla navy is formidable. The Navy saw periods of combat during the “Tanker Wars” of the 1980s in the Persian Gulf, but that largely involved ships hitting mines. The Houthi assaults involve direct attacks on commercial vessels and warships. “This is the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II — easily, no question,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage…” I hate how often people here just shamelessly lie.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Quoting a former Navy sailor in that article: >“This is the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II — easily, no question,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage. … If you let it fester, the Houthis are going to get to be a much more capable, competent, experienced force.” The UK and the Royal Navy are also less than impressed[1]. Once upon a time a US Navy Carrier Strike Group was touted as more destructive than an average country's entire air force, but the reality is the US Navy today is stretched thin fighting an enemy that's so overwhelming them that they make WW2 comparisons and underperform to the point of abject failure known as friendly fire. [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/24/red-sea-houthis-us-navy-prosperity-guardian-iran-gaza/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/24/red-sea-houthis-...

Qem 2y ago

> This happens everywhere, just the other day an American F-18 was shot down by an American destroyer in the Red Sea, and an F-18 carries additional econfliction equipment that an airliner doesn't have. The Houthis claim the F-18 was downed by them[1], so it's still not clear if this was an actual friendly fire incident. This is consistent with reports the carrier retreated to northern red sea soon after the incident. [1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241222-yemens-houthis-claim-to-down-us-fighter-jet-over-red-sea/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241222-yemens-houthis-cl...

amenhotep 2y ago
No, it's pretty clear.
- medo-bear 2y ago
  It is as clear as this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown
mapt 2y ago
That depends on whether you trust the Houthis or the US Navy's sheepish apology for shooting at two F-18s (one missed), which will almost certainly have career consequences for somebody.
- Qem 2y ago
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  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Yes, they can down aircraft flying over their territory. But downing an American aircraft right next to its fleet, shortly after takeoff, is not something I would imagine they could do.
    - 2y ago

medo-bear 2y ago

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AppleAtCha 2y ago
Why would Ukraine be accountable for a Russian missile hitting a civilian plane?
- ajuc 2y ago
  Because Russia is innocent by definition. That's how Russians actually think.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    It’s hard to see how Russia’s neighbours will avoid war long term if attitudes like this exist in any significant number. It’s pretty grim.
    - medo-bear 2y ago
      If Iran launched drones againt Israel and Israel shot down a civilian airliner ... how would that be spun
      - ajuc 2y ago
        If Israel invaded and annexed parts of Iran and openly demanded Iran as a state was destroyed? Pretty obvious.
        medo-bear 2y ago
        Like they are doing to Palestine ?
  - chgs 2y ago
    That’s how a large percent of the Us seems to think too