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That's such am inefficient, hands-on, loud and dumb way to smuggle drugs across a border this large, this cannot be true. Unless you they are talking about subm
by orwin 8mo ago
That's such am inefficient, hands-on, loud and dumb way to smuggle drugs across a border this large, this cannot be true. Unless you they are talking about submarines and land RCs, in that case sure, probably.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 8mo agoWhat about model trains?
- derwiki 8mo agoOnly works at the Canadian border, Jacob
- smallerize 8mo agoQuadrotors are loud, but fixed-wing drones are quieter, more efficient, and have much longer range.
- carefulfungi 8mo agoThe statements can also be parsed as "we have thousands of detections of an unknown number of drones that are being used by cartels to surveil the border in order to smuggle". The number of drones vs. the number of detections is ambiguous. How detections are counted is ambiguous. Whether drones are physically moving drugs or part of an intelligence network is ambiguous. It would seem entirely unsurprising that cartels are monitoring border enforcement by drone. That's not great, obviously. But different from "thousands of drones are carrying contraband into the US".
- kgwxd 8mo agoThere's no reason to believe a single letter or number that comes from these people, and every reason to believe it's completely made up.
- philipallstar 8mo agoDoes that include the original story that they shot down a friendly drone?
- XorNot 8mo agoThat's about 142 detections per day and yeah the big question is are they tracking unique drones (probably not) or radar contacts which appear and disappear? In which case the same drone flying around for 20 minutes and then being recharged would appear multiple times. That number breaks down to 6 detections per hour across the entire boarder.
- philipallstar 8mo agoYes, but they react based on detections, not based on unique drones. The number is the right number to think about.
- JasonADrury 8mo agoLets be realistic, at best it actually means: "We have thousands of possible detections of an unknown number of possible drones that are possibly being used by cartels to surveil the border in order to smuggle"
- orwin 8mo ago> It would seem entirely unsurprising that cartels are monitoring border enforcement by drone That's actually more plausible. I knew one person in "import-export" of illegal substance (Afghan/Iranian cannabis, he is probably out of work since the US left Afghanistan tbh, his clan was heavily involved with the british/US in both country since at least the Shah coup) and he explained how easy it is to smuggle a few tons of drugs and how hard it is to detect it, it seemed inefficient. Now surveillance drones, i buy that way more
- Aurornis 8mo agoWhy do you say that? Fixed wing RCs can fly fast and have long range. Anyone can buy radios for them that transmit for many kilometers. There are open source autopilot projects. Drugs like Fentanyl are so potent that each dose is less than a milligram. It’s not far fetched at all.
- orwin 8mo agoIt's not efficient, and easier to detect.You need radio hackers and a lot of very technical job to be as risk-free as a truck, a dead drop in the water or a container, with less quantities. When i think about it, even land RC don't make sense. The Mexican cartels aren't small smugglers that sent 1g of fentanyl, especially when you can smuggle a few ton to any coastal city basically risk-free.
- piokoch 8mo agoCheck what is happening in Ukraine. The war moved a field of moderately cheap and moderately powerful drones forward. We don't understand the consequences yet... Ukraine is actively working on hunter drones that could operate on 10 km altitude to shot down enemy targets. Now, imagine that cartel, terrorists put their hands on such technology, endangering whole civilian air transport.
- stronglikedan 8mo ago> loud and dumb way Sounds like the perfect distraction!