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Comment by allturtles | Hacker News Reader

There's a good probability that some of these UFOs are commercial aircraft. Shooting them down would be... not good.

Commercial aircraft swooping around naval vessels on maneuvers should expect to be shot down, and even be disappointed not to be. If you weren't there to be shot down, what were you after? Maybe a story about how unready the Navy is for modern warfare conducted with cheap expendable drones. You don't need to dodge an Exocet missile if you can take out the targeting system that would have directed it.

I'm not sure what incident you're referring to. e.g. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2oaQWmqkk, there's no swooping, and no indication that the ship was "on maneuvers." Navy ships and aircraft can't help being near commercial aircraft much of the time, and vice versa, since flight paths crisscross the whole world.

But whether they "deserve to be shot down" or not (a highly questionable moral position I think), it would be pragmatically unwise to do so. You will either create a domestic political crisis that will shake up the whole military, or an international incident, depending on the carrier.

Nobody said "deserve to be shot down", so the quote marks are at best disingenuous. Since I unambiguously referred to an incident reported when naval ships were on maneuvers, you imagine some entirely other time, place, and circumstance. I will leave my response to your speculative moralizing to the reader's imagination.

"Shoot first and ask questions later" isn't a great doctrine for diplomacy either.

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