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

https://apnews.com/article/military-laser-border-drone-texas-airport-55aaab7093f7d6dd174f909f3875001c
32•thinkcontext•2h ago

Comments

happymellon•1h 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•1h ago
So if you're keeping score, that's one party balloon and one of their own drones. The future looks bright!
Eddy_Viscosity2•1h ago
The party balloon was also ours. It wasn't even an intruder balloon.
blitzar•58m ago
They are not sending their finest
nkrisc•49m ago
It only looks bright if the laser is aimed directly at you. But I suppose even that depends on the wavelength used.
blitzar•18m ago
Its only bright for a couple of nano seconds, then it gets really dark ... for ever
heisenbit•1h 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.
mapt•1h 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•1h ago
The USA is moving away from concepts like 'laws' and 'illegal' and more towards a system based on vibes and bribes.
lazide•1h 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.

AreShoesFeet000•1h ago
Laws and morality have always been bendable. It’s just that doing the bending requires a certain competence that was somehow lost.
lazide•36m ago
It used to be they had enough shame to try to cover it up. That certainly is in the past!
HardwareLust•4m ago
"Vibes and bribes" is a wonderfully apt description of our current regime.
general1465•1h ago
> 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.

Day of the Triffids, but only for small border city.

philipallstar•1h 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•35m 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 , which also involved no confirmed actual drone.

Georgelemental•11m ago
Wait, do you think the cartels aren’t real? Was all the violence in Mexico these past few days committed by ghosts or something?

Because if they are real, and they are trying to get drugs into the United States (their primary income source), then drones seem like a perfectly reasonable method they might use to go about it. And yes, their have been plenty of confirmed cartel drones seized, shot down, etc with lower-tech methods in the past.

orwin•18m 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•4m ago
What about model trains?
comrade1234•53m 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.
october8140•37m ago
It could be a soldier who is not a fan of ICE and border protection saw an opportunity and shot it down.
blondie9x•5m ago
How much do drones like the one shot down cost? Will taxpayers be getting a refund?

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

https://apnews.com/article/military-laser-border-drone-texas-airport-55aaab7093f7d6dd174f909f3875...
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