Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 631 posts

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#381

Post by noelsusman »

boringg wrote: post #308
sva_ wrote: post #200

> Airline sources told Reuters the grounding of flights was believed to be tied to the Pentagon's use of counterdrone technology to address Mexican drug cartels' use of drones of the U.S.-Mexico border. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-halts-all-flights-texass...

>. "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region. The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming." https://x.com/SecDuffy

Doesn't really pass the sniff test. Why would you need a 10 day closure to deal with a drone incursion?

I'm guessing DoD and the FAA were squabbling over a test the military wanted to run, and it didn't go up the chain fast enough to get resolved before testing was scheduled to begin.

Edit: Here's the actual notice from the FAA[1]. Note that it was issued at 0332 UTC, but the restrictions weren't scheduled to go into place until 0630 UTC. Either the FAA is clairvoyant, or Sean Duffy is lying.

[1]https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#382

Post by indoordin0saur »

noelsusman wrote: post #381
boringg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region. The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming." https://x.com/SecDuffy

Doesn't really pass the sniff test. Why would you need a 10 day closure to deal with a drone incursion? I'm guessing DoD and the FAA were squabbling over a test the military wanted to run, and it didn't go up the chain fast enough to get resolved before testing was scheduled to begin. Edit: Here's the actual notice from the FAA[1]. Note that it was issued at 0332 UTC, but the restrictions weren't scheduled to go into…

Was it meant to be "up to 10 days" rather than 10 days? If the drones are no longer flying over the airport it makes sense they'd open it back up.

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#383

Post by djcapelis »

guerrilla wrote: post #376
morpheuskafka wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them just like 9/11 or the Iran hostage crisis. The US has been trying to extent the "foreign terrorist" label and casus belli to drug activities forever to justify military operations (ex. the "arrest" of Maduro was for drugs, not oil/Cuba/political stuff). That would be a massive self-own on the cartels part. (And if…

> A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

> In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

I think you’re getting tripped up by some specific wording and managing to miss the point the poster was making. The point should be taken seriously even if imprecisely articulated. While most folks are against the cartels, there’s a much wider range of belief on how much they warrant government or military intervention and to what degree we should be spending various resources on them. The historical state of play was(is?) that cartels are criminal organizations which are generally a policing matter that has escalated to specialized policing agencies and multinational networks of policing agencies. The marked escalation of the military into this is a more recent piece that is somewhat more controversial. One doesn’t have to be “in favor of the cartel” to ask questions about whether our military should be bombing boats or invading countries to ostensibly neutralize organizations that historically have been subject to policing operations.

To go back to the parallel… the public wasn’t in favor of Al Qaeda before 9/11 either, but there was a huge difference in the level of response the public was in favor of after. It turned from an intelligence monitoring level of response into an active military invasion of multiple countries.

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#384

Post by ryandrake »

boringg wrote: post #302
antonymoose wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of dead Vietnamese. In any case that was a war against a hardened, experienced, determined enemy fighting for its freedom from any form of colonial occupation, both as a formal military and as an insurgent force in South Vietnam. I scarcely think the Mexican population would rise up in defense of the cartels here.

I think a lot of people would be cheering on the destruction of the cartels.

They'd probably quickly stop cheering as their own homes and families were destroyed as collateral damage, which is what would happen if the "full force of the US military" were deployed against the cartels.

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#385

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #369
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the US elected the only celebrity of the 80s and 90s who hates blow. On the other hand a careful analysis of the plumbing system of Trump's Tower and Trump's Hotels in general would reveal possibly the highest concentration of coke than any other building in the world considering the intersection of wealth and istrionic personalities who called those apartments home at one time or the other. Fate sure love…

> But hey you can gulp 60 oz of super strong energy drinks which equate to about 5-6 fat lines Are you joking? Look, I’m no stranger to drugs, but coke is not a “60oz energy drink” and its potential for generally destroying someone’s life is, while not at the same level, definitely in the same ballpark as crack, heroin, and meth.

60 oz energy drink = 5-6 fat lines perhaps more

The most dense energy drinks have 350-400 of caffeine in a can these days and on top of that there's the taurine etc.

60 oz is 4 cans, do your math. 4 * 400 = 1600mg of caffeine alone

> > potential for generally destroying someone’s life is, while not at the same level, definitely in the same ballpark as crack, heroin, and meth.

That's more of the result of the enviornment and the associated people who frequent such circles and not the stimulant per se.

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#386

Post by weirdsweatsuit »

Representative Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat, said in a news conference that the explanation citing Mexican drones crossing the border as the reason for the closure was “not the information that we in Congress have been told.”

She said that there was no current or past threat to the area. “There’s no threat. There was not a threat, which is why the F.A.A. lifted this restriction so quickly,” she said. “The information coming from the administration does not add up.”

“There have been drone incursions from Mexico going back to as long as drones existed. So this is nothing new” (NYT)

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#387

Post by staticassertion »

guerrilla wrote: post #376
morpheuskafka wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them just like 9/11 or the Iran hostage crisis. The US has been trying to extent the "foreign terrorist" label and casus belli to drug activities forever to justify military operations (ex. the "arrest" of Maduro was for drugs, not oil/Cuba/political stuff). That would be a massive self-own on the cartels part. (And if…

> A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

It is, of course. What they mean, I assume, is that it would reach a tipping point where intervention would be more broadly supported. Virtually everyone is willing to say "that's bad" with regards to something happening somewhere, it is far less agreed upon that the US should intervene in that bad thing. An effective tipping point is probably something on the order of "we feel attacked".

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#388

Post by reactordev »

resters wrote: post #350
reactordev wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from groups that just pickup busses of people to murder, I wouldn’t be so sure that firing back at the US would be out of the question.

who are we (the US)? People who wantonly murder people on fishing boats, etc.

I’m not saying our cartel is any better…

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#389

Post by yunnpp »

boringg wrote: post #351
ajross wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm merely passing on live information to update the conversation. Don't shoot the messenger.

When you have multiple paragraphs in a quotation, each paragraph must start with a quote. Only the last paragraph in the quotation ends with a quote. Just pick up any book with dialogue in it and see for yourself. This is why I think your comment came across as you personally endorsing the official statement; it's not clear at first glance where the quote ends. The correct/incorrect placing of quotes is the kind of subtle thing that would lead someone to interpret one thing or the other without actually realizing what just happened.

Re: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

#390

Post by janalsncm »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #380
p-e-w wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the answer. The cartels would have to be insane to poke that particular bear. They would get crushed like a bug. IIRC they murdered a single US undercover officer in the 90s and the retaliation was so bad that they themselves handed over the perpetrators.

> They would get crushed like a bug. Much as I despise them, I'm not so sure that would be the case. I seem to remember folks saying the same about the Taliban, and the cartels have a lot more money and high-tech kit, than the Taliban. Asymmetric warfare is a tough gig, on all sides.

I don’t think the technology matters nearly as much as the asymmetry. Iraq had better technology than the Taliban and their military didn’t last a week.
Post reply on HN