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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

• 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.