maybe it wasn't a "party balloon"
A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
111–120 of 147 posts
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#112The rate of return on this is phenomenal. A 53" balloon costs $9.99. You could shut down all large and medium hubs in the US for $629.37/day. The asymmetry is astounding and I'm surprised we don't defend against this kind of attack more efficiently.
"99 red balloons" starts playing in the background.
99 Decision Street, 99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super scurry
Call out the troops now in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it, boys, this is war
The President is on the line as 99 red balloons go by
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#113Compared with the AI bubble $573k is nothing.
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#114The rate of return on this is phenomenal. A 53" balloon costs $9.99. You could shut down all large and medium hubs in the US for $629.37/day. The asymmetry is astounding and I'm surprised we don't defend against this kind of attack more efficiently.
"99 red balloons" starts playing in the background.
"99 red balloons" sounds almost quaint and innocent, even ironically a bit darkly refreshing, with its portrayal of the relatively clear threat of cold war nuclear annihilation.
Compare it to the constant flux of threats we now face, all given similar coverage today, large or small, sometimes plausibly real, but often ultimately fictional: brought on for distraction, by deception, incompetence, poor communication, ego, and/or other unethical agenda.
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#115Nena, you are a messenger from god!
https://youtu.be/Fpu5a0Bl8eY?si=vpSXWV5-pUOIjvac
And when there are exactly 99 comments on this subject.
Someone please make this into a meme.
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#116Thinking more practically though. Why wouldn't there be "narco drones", with drone technology becoming so ubiquitous and cheap? And what would their operators care about airspace restrictions? The practical ones, as in "not get sucked into a jet engine or damage a wing and cause a plane crash"?
I would suspect that flying such drones near an airport is likely to be a bad idea because it's very likely to be detected.
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#117the double down on stupidity is that the cartels now know that deploying party balloons will work as decoys, too bad they dont have mirror finnish ones, oh wait!
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't usually work. There are over a thousand incursions by unmanned aircraft systems along the U.S.-Mexico border each month, per the NORAD commander: https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/370778... . They pretty much never result in shutting down air space or launching missiles. Responding to a single party balloon with a giant laser, thus causing a saner government official to close the airspace…
'saner govt official because moron firing giant lasers into the air' - lasers just go everywhere at once and hit everything in the air, into the stratosphere? it's a big sky and gets bigger the higher you go.
were they really firing it randomly into empty air? they sound even less competent than I thought.
Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#119Re: A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
#120Thinking more practically though. Why wouldn't there be "narco drones", with drone technology becoming so ubiquitous and cheap? And what would their operators care about airspace restrictions? The practical ones, as in "not get sucked into a jet engine or damage a wing and cause a plane crash"?
How would flying drones be useful to a drug runner? Their priorities are to transport a large amount of material over a long distance and to avoid detection. Drones have a relatively low payload capacity, have limited range, and are easily detected - they're not practical. (A very different kind of "drone" has seen quite a bit of use in drug running - remote-controlled submarines! They've proven able to carry a large…
There are commercially available drones that can carry a payload of high-single-digit to low-double-digit kilograms for at least 10km.[1] They fly low enough and are small enough to avoid most radar.
Their use in cross border smuggling of weapons and drugs is well documented[2]; interception rate is low enough that they can make multiple runs before being downed, and they can pay back their purchase cost with only a few successful runs. Typical concept of operations is similar to manned ground crossings, but with drones covering the most dangerous 5-10km of actually crossing the border: a team on one side loads them up and sends them to a team on the other side, with both having a LOT of real estate to hide in because of the drone's range.
(I work on counter drone EW, and border-control customers are under intense pressure to get this under control.)
[1] Just from DJI, see e.g. the Matrice 400 [https://enterprise.dji.com/mobile/matrice-400/specs], with 6kg payload and approximately zero purchase controls; or the T25 [https://ag.dji.com/mobile/t25p/specs], with >20kg of payload capacity, and even in restrictive regulatory regimes only requiring a shell crop spraying company to buy.