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Lawmakers say US Military used laser to take down Border Protection drone in TX

59 points by thinkcontext 7mo ago

happymellon 7mo ago
Just waiting for these lasers to take out important stuff because they can shoot first, ask later. Mistook a helicopter for a drone because of depth perception problems.
crusty 7mo ago
So if you're keeping score, that's one party balloon and one of their own drones. The future looks bright!
- Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo ago
  The party balloon was also ours. It wasn't even an intruder balloon.
- blitzar 7mo ago
  They are not sending their finest
- nkrisc 7mo ago
  It only looks bright if the laser is aimed directly at you. But I suppose even that depends on the wavelength used.
  - blitzar 7mo ago
    Its only bright for a couple of nano seconds, then it gets really dark ... for ever
heisenbit 7mo ago
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.
- kgwxd 7mo ago
  Geez, I even recently watched a video about the making of that song, and completely forgot it was exactly about that. Now I'm even more depressed, but at least I have an upbeat riff stuck in my head.
mapt 7mo ago
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.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo ago
  The USA is moving away from concepts like 'laws' and 'illegal' and more towards a system based on vibes and bribes.
  - lazide 7mo ago
    It’s always been a case of ‘if they can’t catch you/enforce it, it didn’t happen’. It’s absurdly blatant now, however, and backlash is likely to be pretty crazy in 5ish-10ish years once it’s impacted enough people.
    - zombot 7mo ago
      By then the opposition will have been renditioned to black holes or killed.
      - lazide 7mo ago
        The current opposition maybe. No empire/government/strongman lasts forever.
        XorNot 7mo ago
        Russia has been a basket case for the better part of the last 1,000 years. History sucked for a very long time. It is not a natural law that things will just get better.
philipallstar 7mo ago
> 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.
- pjc50 7mo ago
  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. Compare the MH-17 incident. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident , which also involved no confirmed actual drone.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Georgelemental 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - iso1631 7mo ago
      Yet the US government can't seem to parade the hundreds of drones they are surely catching with the new operating model? 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
    - t-3 7mo ago
      Drones are not perfectly reasonable when semi-trucks filled with literal tons of drugs pass the border every day. They are used to smuggle drugs into prisons, but not really any better than the old hollow tennis ball trick and more trackable as well.
comrade1234 7mo ago
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.
- duxup 7mo ago
  The current administration has staffed administrators who seem to choose "shoot first and ask questions later" and generally struggle to communicate / coordinate like adults.
  - derektank 7mo ago
    While I think Trump political appointees have set the stage for these kinds of incidents generally by cutting back on training for DHS law enforcement officers (though I’m not sure if CBP has been impacted to the same degree as ICE), I’m not convinced that this kind of communication failure at the tactical level couldn’t have happened under previous administrations
    - bonsai_spool 7mo ago
      > I’m not convinced that this kind of communication failure at the tactical level couldn’t have happened under previous administrations What examples do you have? There was a Chinese spy balloon that was monitored for a whole week before it got shot down - the exact opposite of what’s happened twice (!!) this month in the current administration.
    - XorNot 7mo ago
      Sure, like most things it's possible and yet it didn't and it's on top of a list of compounding failures of a similar nature: e.g. firing live artillery over an in use highway (while insisting it was safe, and then damaging the vice presidential motorcade) [1]. It's worth noting this screw up happened on the back of the FAA basically hitting the panic button when they realized the military was going to shoot at air targets with high power lasers near an active civilian airport. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c051p3981m4o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c051p3981m4o
october8140 7mo ago
It could be a soldier who is not a fan of ICE and border protection saw an opportunity and shot it down.
- kgwxd 7mo ago
  If there's 1 person making the choice to fire at stuff in the sky, or somehow only they knew it was a US drone and just didn't say anything, there's a huge problem with intelligence, and the chain of command.
aaron695 7mo ago
[dead]
blondie9x 7mo ago
How much do drones like the one shot down cost? Will taxpayers be getting a refund?
- kgwxd 7mo ago
  Obviously, tariffs will cover it.

59 points by thinkcontext 7mo ago

Just waiting for these lasers to take out important stuff because they can shoot first, ask later. Mistook a helicopter for a drone because of depth perception problems.

crusty 7mo ago

So if you're keeping score, that's one party balloon and one of their own drones. The future looks bright!

Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo ago
The party balloon was also ours. It wasn't even an intruder balloon.
blitzar 7mo ago
They are not sending their finest
nkrisc 7mo ago
It only looks bright if the laser is aimed directly at you. But I suppose even that depends on the wavelength used.
- blitzar 7mo ago
  Its only bright for a couple of nano seconds, then it gets really dark ... for ever

heisenbit 7mo ago

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.

kgwxd 7mo ago
Geez, I even recently watched a video about the making of that song, and completely forgot it was exactly about that. Now I'm even more depressed, but at least I have an upbeat riff stuck in my head.

mapt 7mo ago

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.

Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo ago
The USA is moving away from concepts like 'laws' and 'illegal' and more towards a system based on vibes and bribes.
- lazide 7mo ago
  It’s always been a case of ‘if they can’t catch you/enforce it, it didn’t happen’. It’s absurdly blatant now, however, and backlash is likely to be pretty crazy in 5ish-10ish years once it’s impacted enough people.
  - zombot 7mo ago
    By then the opposition will have been renditioned to black holes or killed.
    - lazide 7mo ago
      The current opposition maybe. No empire/government/strongman lasts forever.
      - XorNot 7mo ago
        Russia has been a basket case for the better part of the last 1,000 years. History sucked for a very long time. It is not a natural law that things will just get better.

philipallstar 7mo ago

> 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.

pjc50 7mo ago
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. Compare the MH-17 incident. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident , which also involved no confirmed actual drone.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- Georgelemental 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - iso1631 7mo ago
    Yet the US government can't seem to parade the hundreds of drones they are surely catching with the new operating model? 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
  - t-3 7mo ago
    Drones are not perfectly reasonable when semi-trucks filled with literal tons of drugs pass the border every day. They are used to smuggle drugs into prisons, but not really any better than the old hollow tennis ball trick and more trackable as well.

comrade1234 7mo ago

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.

duxup 7mo ago
The current administration has staffed administrators who seem to choose "shoot first and ask questions later" and generally struggle to communicate / coordinate like adults.
- derektank 7mo ago
  While I think Trump political appointees have set the stage for these kinds of incidents generally by cutting back on training for DHS law enforcement officers (though I’m not sure if CBP has been impacted to the same degree as ICE), I’m not convinced that this kind of communication failure at the tactical level couldn’t have happened under previous administrations
  - bonsai_spool 7mo ago
    > I’m not convinced that this kind of communication failure at the tactical level couldn’t have happened under previous administrations What examples do you have? There was a Chinese spy balloon that was monitored for a whole week before it got shot down - the exact opposite of what’s happened twice (!!) this month in the current administration.
  - XorNot 7mo ago
    Sure, like most things it's possible and yet it didn't and it's on top of a list of compounding failures of a similar nature: e.g. firing live artillery over an in use highway (while insisting it was safe, and then damaging the vice presidential motorcade) [1]. It's worth noting this screw up happened on the back of the FAA basically hitting the panic button when they realized the military was going to shoot at air targets with high power lasers near an active civilian airport. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c051p3981m4o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c051p3981m4o

october8140 7mo ago

It could be a soldier who is not a fan of ICE and border protection saw an opportunity and shot it down.

kgwxd 7mo ago
If there's 1 person making the choice to fire at stuff in the sky, or somehow only they knew it was a US drone and just didn't say anything, there's a huge problem with intelligence, and the chain of command.

aaron695 7mo ago

[dead]

blondie9x 7mo ago

How much do drones like the one shot down cost? Will taxpayers be getting a refund?

kgwxd 7mo ago
Obviously, tariffs will cover it.